I’ve been thinking more about this, and have a suggestion to improve/solve UX issues for large sites with a modification of @Lilly’s excellent navigation sidebar mod, which almost solves this issue.
In the current system users create a custom menu and then choose which groups can see it.
My suggestion is to edit the component to have: ‘display category/subcategory to these groups only’ also, or instead if its a different component.
The admin then selects a category (the same modal currently there, but set for categories instead)
Admins add the groups categories are visible to below and the existing modal is perfect for this.
Why
the new navigation sidebar is supposed to fix UX but on a large site it becomes cluttered quickly as not all users will often visit all categories, unless the forum is narrowly focused.
If its spread out across a range of areas the sidebar turns into a wall of too much information, or you have to limit what’s there which isn’t good for user experience if users favourite area is missed.
This change would allows sites to set the sidebar to show users only categories related to the groups that they’ve joined, making navigation easy and to also keep all non-private categories and sub-categories open to everyone. Currently its either one or the other.