I just fixed an annoying bug. And the obviousness of it just bugs me.

I am creating a local sandbox for all my sites, so I can test modifications without having to repeatedly upload to test them over the web.

I at first just copied over the version of software and linked it to a copy of their respective database. This worked swimingly for every site except www.treptower.com.

All of the blocks in the sidebars went missing. I started this process last week, decided to skip this site and came back to it today. I finally figured out that is was a theme issue.

But get this, if it was a bug in the theme, why did it work okay on the server but not on my laptop?

Well because real servers have to be very forgiving. But my laptop OS X web server OTOH had no such pretensions. "If it is a bug, I am damn well gonna treat it like the big ugly hairy bug that it is is. Dammit!" Searching on Drupal revealed no knowledge of the issue UNTIL I figured out where the problem was. And there in the theme project, listed as FIXED was the answer. The block template file had a simple php error in it.

AARRRGGHHH! It took less time to actually fix it then it is taking me to talk about it.

Whenever you are moving around sites, always change to a default theme first. Then log out before copying the database. That way you will know instantly when the problem is theme related.

You will thank me for this later. Truly, you will.