Sidebar categories/archives no longer showing up after server migration..??

If the DNS is not pointed, how are you checking the installation on the new server?  IP address?

DNS is pointed to the new server for sandbox.usbswiper.com.  I have tested www.usbswiper.com on the new server, too, though, by updating my local hosts file to point to the correct IP address.

Again, though, as it stands now, www points to my current live server and sandbox points to my new server where the problem is happening.  Everything was copied over directly, though.  

What is the Wordpress URL set to on the new server then?

sandbox.usbswiper.com.

Everything about it is working great except for the sidebar items.  The blog itself loads fine.  I can get into the admin panel.  I can see all of the pages, posts, categories, etc.  But the sidebar items just don't show up for some reason.

Again, it's only happening with the theme I made that matches my site, but the same exact theme files are working great on the www site.  On sandbox, though, they're not.  

Since the files and the DB are exactly the same (except for www vs sandbox) I'm stuck on how to troubleshoot or fix this.

I also just now noticed that while "the loop" seems to be working and displaying the Posts on my blog home page, it's not showing the author correctly like it should.  

I'm still just lost, though, because all of the files are exactly the same as what's on the server that's working.

Install the Search and Replace plugin and see if there are any database entries that have www. instead of sandbox.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/

There are no database entries with www.  The procedure I always follow (and have literally done 100+ times without ever having this issue) is...

1) Download all site files from original server and upload everything to new server directly.
2) Export SQL file from original database.  Then open that up and do a find/replace for www.domain.com to change them all to sandbox.domain.com.
3) Execute SQL file on new server database.
4) Load sandbox.domain.com in the browser and everything works accordingly.

This procedure has never failed me, and even now, if it was seeing www everything else wouldn't load.  

On top of that, I moved everything direclty without any change at all so I could test www.domain.com on the new server as well.  When doing this I follow this procedure...

1) Download all site files from original server and upload to  new server directly.
2) Using Navicat, I transfer the database from the original server to the new server directly.  No exporting or importing, no find/replace, etc.  All data is transferred directly from one DB to the other.
3) Update local hosts file to point www.domain.com to the new server IP so I can test prior to actually updating DNS.
4) Load www.domain.com in browser for testing accordingly.

Here again, though, I'm having the exact same problem.  So there's no chance at all that the site URL could be the issue in this case as everything was copied directly from one to the other and the site URL did not change in this case.  Still, though, I'm having the exact same problem on both www.domain.com and sandbox.domain.com on this new server.

What's interesting, too, is that previously, I had www.domain.com running on 1 server, while sandbox.domain.com was running on an entirely different server.  I had followed all of the same procedures at that time and both of those servers worked as expected.

Now I've got both www and sandbox running on the same server, and they're both having this problem.  Again, though, other themes are working fine.  It's only my theme that's having this issue (which is further evidence that the site URL is not the problem).

Okay, I'm just trying to rule things out.  

Can you post the relevant PHP for categories and archives from the sidebar?  

I've attached my sidebar.php here, as well as functions.php.  Let me know if you need to see anything else.

<aside>
    <?php if (function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('Sidebar Widgets')) : else : ?>
        <!-- All this stuff in here only shows up if you DON'T have any widgets active in this zone -->
    	<?php // get_search_form(); ?>
    	<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>' ); ?>
        <h2>Categories</h2>
        <ul>
    	   <?php wp_list_categories('show_count=1&title_li='); ?>
        </ul>
        <h2>Archives</h2>
    	<ul>
    		<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
    	</ul>
    	<?php // wp_list_bookmarks(); ?>
        <h2>Subscribe</h2>
    	<ul>
    		<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>">Entries (RSS)</a></li>
    		<li><a href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>">Comments (RSS)</a></li>
    	</ul>
    	<h2>Login</h2>
    	<ul>
    		<?php wp_register(); ?>
    		<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
    		<?php wp_meta(); ?>
    	</ul>
	<?php endif; ?>
    <h2>Login</h2>
    	<ul>
    		<?php wp_register(); ?>
    		<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
    		<?php wp_meta(); ?>
    	</ul>
</aside>

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<?php	
// Add RSS links to <head> section
automatic_feed_links();

// Load jQuery
if ( !is_admin() ) {
   wp_deregister_script('jquery');
   wp_register_script('jquery', ("http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js"), false);
   wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
}

// Clean up the <head>
function removeHeadLinks() {
	remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
	remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
}
add_action('init', 'removeHeadLinks');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

// Declare sidebar widget zone
if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
	register_sidebar(array(
		'name' => 'Sidebar Widgets',
		'id'   => 'sidebar-widgets',
		'description'   => 'These are widgets for the sidebar.',
		'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
		'after_widget'  => '</div>',
		'before_title'  => '<h2>',
		'after_title'   => '</h2>'
	));
}

// 06.14.2011 - Added shortcodes pulled from an ElegantThemes theme.
require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/blog/wp-content/themes/usbswiper/assets/shortcodes/shortcodes.php');
?>

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I enabled the WP debugger, and now I'm seeing this error..

[Table 'usbswipe_usbswiper_dev.aewp_users' doesn't exist]

That database does exist on m y server, however, wp-config.php does not reference it at all.  My WP tables are installed in usbswipe_wordpress_dev, and that is what wp-config.php references.

Since my theme is the only one with this problem, it must be my theme somehow making it look at the wrong database...but I have no clue how that could be.  Do you have any ideas?

Yeah, somehow my theme's db connection is conflicting with the WP db connections.

I've got my own config.php that uses $db_host, $db_name, $db_username, and $db_password.  This is what drives my primary site.  The WP blog is secondary to all of this and has its own database.

wp-config.php points to the WP database, but somehow, my theme (which does connect and display data from my own database) is overriding that with my primary DB credentials, so then the WP tables aren't found.

I can't figure out why that would be happening, though.  I don't have that problem on my other servers with the same theme files.

It wouldn't be wp_config, it would be in the WP tables somewhere or hardcoded into the theme.  What is it for?  Plugin?

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