Drupal Zen subtheme creation problem: sidebars, header and footer regions disappear

Question

I am currently trying to create a Drupal theme as a Zen subtheme, by doing the following:

• I created a new Zen subtheme by following instructions in "How to build your own sub-theme (6.x-2.x)" documentation
• The problem is that when I enable the new theme, no header, footer or sidebars are displayed. When the new theme is enabled, these regions disappear also from main Zen theme.
• I am using Drupal 6.16 with Zen 6.x-2.0
• I have succesfully created Zen subthemes with previous version of Zen (6.x-1.x), so I suspect this problem has something to do with the new version of Zen

Since Drupal doesn't display any error messages related to this issue, I am totally puzzled. Therefore any tips on how to debug or solve this problem are MUCH appreciated!

The following debugging has already been done:

• Apache error / access logs give no new insight
• Region variables ($content_top, $content_bottom, $header, etc.) in page.tpl.php are empty

Answer 1

Finally, I was able to work around the problem by using Zenophile:

• Installed and configured Zenophile
• Created new Zen subtheme with it
• Copied all customized files from my old sub-theme to the newly created Zenophile base

If nobody can tell me a better approach in a couple of days, I will close this question from my behalf and proceed with this approach in the future as well.