Making customizing categories in the sidebar more discoverable

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AI-generated summary

The discussion focuses on improving the discoverability of customizing categories in the sidebar. pfaffman highlights the difficulty in finding the relevant settings, noting that searching for “sidebar” doesn’t help and that the “configure defaults” link for categories is missing. They suggest either adding a link to the default_navigation_menu setting or including a dedicated “configure defaults” link under categories. Moin supports this, referencing a prior suggestion and a screenshot from 2022, noting that the feature exists but is only visible when the setting is empty. The conversation underscores the need for better visibility and accessibility of these settings in the admin interface.

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I’m finally getting around to figuring out how to customize the navigation on the sidebar. It’s easier and harder than I expected.

Searching settings for “sidebar” doesn’t help.

Under tags on the sidebar, there is a link that says “configure defaults” which searches settings for default_navigation_menu_tags, but there is no such link for categories. After a few minutes, it was “obvious” that I could edit that site setting search to default_navigation_menu and see that there is also a default navigation menu categories setting! From there, it was great!

An easy change would be the have that “configure defaults” link to default_navigation_menu so you can see both tag and category defaults. Another would be to add another “configure defaults” link under the category to link to the category defaults, but I think I prefer the first solution.

Another idea would be to have the pop-up modal on the “Customize this section” at the top either include those settings or link to them.

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I came across this topic because I suggested something related in Add link to sidebar category setting to new admin menu in categories section of the sidebar

I think this has been there for quite a while. I have a screenshot from a year ago

But I think it was added in 2022. I think the main problem is that it’s only visible if the setting is empty.

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