I’ve been getting the following question a lot lately:

How do  I get rid the of the Meta Widget in the sidebar?

New answer: the behavior of an empty Primary Widget Area (the top sidebar) has been changed in Weaver 1.6 so it really no longer is an issue. But you still may encounter the problem in other themes (including Twenty Ten), so read on…

The answer: add some widget of your choice to the Primary Widget Sidebar area and drag out the any widgets that show in the widget area don’t want. (Usually, when you get the automatically generated widgets, the widget area will be empty on the widget control panel.)

Here’s the story. For a long time, it has been customary for WP themes to automatically add several widgets to the main sidebar if the user hasn’t added any already. I suppose this is so that newbies don’t end up with an empty sidebar before they even know what a widget is. Twenty Ten, and thus 2010 Weaver, follow this long standing practice. So all you need to do to get rid of the automatically added widgets is to add just the widgets you want, and drag out any you don’t.