When you say ‘each update’ do you mean of the theme or of BuddyPress?
I suggest going into phpnyadmin and trying a database repair. It sounds like a corrupted db
Database repair is not the issue… and yes it is when the plugin is updated. It has happened over the last 3 or 4 updates, each time without fail.
Same thing happens to my site.
If you are sure the option field in the db for your sidebars isn’t corrupted, then it may be a clash in the way you’ve named (id’d) them, or perhaps in where you have your hook to create them.
It’s impossible to say without more information, or someone taking time to walk through your site, examine your code, and test your db pre and post upgrade, etc
[Edit: I’m assuming you’ve also gone through an upgrade with all other plugins deactivated, and using the bp-default theme, to ascertain whether that preserves the widgets, before switching to your theme, and reactivating the other plugins]
== fter I reactivate my theme, I then have to go through an re-add all my widgets… this is very painful. Is there anything that might be causing this? ==
When you registere your widgets in your functions.php file, did you remember to add a unique ID for each widget? Otherwise, whenever you deactivate your child theme or even add a new widget in functions.php file, the widgets would disappear or would move to another widget area
ID e.g.
`register_sidebar( array(
‘name’ => ‘Sidebar’,
‘id’ => ‘sidebar-1’,
etc.`