How to Make More Than 9 Text Sidebar Widgets in WordPress

UPDATE Feb 2008: If you are using Wordpress 2.3, here is an article that gives you information how to get more widgets with WP 2.3. If you are using an older version of Wordpress then read on.

If you are using the plugin Sidebar Widgets by Automattic, Inc. you’ve noticed that there are only 9 text widgets available. If you need more than 9 text widgets, here is the simple hack to increase this number.

You will need to edit the widgets.php file which is not as hard as it seems.

Here’s how:

UPDATE OFFLINE. Open widgets.php from your files on your computer.
SAVE BACKUP. Do Save As on widgets.php and call it original_widgets.php so if anything happens you can go back to the original. (Of course you could always download it again too if you have a problem.)
CHANGE FILES. Make the following changes:
FIND: widget_text_setup(), CHANGE the number 9 to your desired number where it says if ( $number > 9 ) $number = 9;
FIND widget_text_register(), CHANGE the number 9 to your desired number where it says if ( $number > 9 ) $number = 9;
for ($i = 1; $i <= 9; $i++)
FIND widget_text_page(), then look for <?php for ( $i = 1; $i < 10; ++$i ) echo CHANGE the number 10 to be your desired higher number plus one. For example if you are changing the number of items to 20 then you will put 21 here.
UPLOAD. Save and Upload this new via FTP to your server. You may either overwrite the old file or delete the old file and then upload the newer version. (Keep the same name of the file)
INCREASE. Go into your Wordpress admin panel>Presentation>Sidebar Widgets and using the dropdown menu click on the number of widgets you want.