@Lilly kindly suggested a fix which we tried out, but unfortunately the UX issue for large sites with multiple purposes remains.
Lily’s suggestion was to manually create all the categories and subcategories like this:
I gave it a try but unfortunately it breaks down when some categories/subcategories need to be hidden as the ‘Add custom section’ functionality creates sections with links that are visible to everyone, and so any hidden groups can’t be included. Members who don’t have permission to view them can see the link but can’t see the page it links to if they click it.
Instructing users to set their own sidebar up is a cool feature but isn’t good UX for new users who don’t yet know what is and isn’t important to them and should be guided by the navigation to that.
If there was a way to set the user permissions the navigation sidebar acts on that would solve it, without needing to create a fourth permission box.
Right now if a user can ‘see’ a cat/sub it shows in the navigation sidebar. If the sidebar had an option to only show cat/subs that users are able to ‘reply’ or ‘create’ that would give a lot more options for customising configuration. In my use case users would be able to see everything on the platform, but only see the cat/subs they have subscribed to in the navigation sidebar making their experience, especially when new, far more focused and less overwhelming.
We then use group permissions to allow them to choose what they want to interact with most often.