This tutorial demonstrates how to use the sidebar in Discourse-powered forums.
Primary Menu
- Everything brings you to the latest posts on your forum.
- My Posts will allow you to see the posts you have written.
- Clicking on More will expand the details, and you can perform more functions.
- Groups takes you to the page where you can see your groups.
- Users takes you to the leaderboard for the users on your forum, if enabled.
- Badges will take you to a gallery of badges if enabled.
Please note that there may be additional buttons if you have plugins installed. For example, if you have Cakeday installed on your forum, Anniversaries and Birthdays will appear on your forum.
- About brings you to the page on your forum that explains details about your forum.
- FAQ brings you to your FAQ Page
If you are an admin, then Review and Admin will be available. Review is where you can review other people’s posts, and Admin takes you to the settings for your forum.
Categories and Tags
Categories and tags display the tags in the sidebar for easy access. Clicking on the categories will bring you to the category you selected.
In order to edit these categories, you need to click on the pencil icon. You will be brought to the sidebar settings page, where you can select your categories.
Then, click on the plus icon and add the categories or tags that you need.
Clicking on “All categories” will bring you to the menu where all the categories are displayed. The same goes if you click on “All tags”, this will bring you to a menu with all the tags.
Messages
Messages is a quick menu that allows you to view and compose messages. To compose messages, press the “+” button next to the Messages tab. To view messages, click on “Inbox”. If you are in a group, you may have multiple inboxes.
Chat
The Channels tab allows you to view chats and edit them. To enter a chat, click on the channel you want to go to. To edit channels, click on the pencil icon next to “Channels.”
From there, you can edit which channels you want to join or leave.
The Personal chat tab allows you to view personal chats. To compose a new personal chat, click the “+” button next to the personal chat tab. To remove a person, click on the “X” next to the user you want to remove.
Settings
There is a section in the Preferences tab of your profile where you can edit your sidebar settings.
From there, you can edit your categories, tags, and change the way the sidebar displays new posts.
There is a setting for the blue badges next to the posts. There is also a setting to link to unread and show a count of new items, which looks like this:
Sidebar Sections
First, click the “+” button to add things to the sidebar.
Then, a modal will be displayed:
This picture is an example of a custom sidebar section.
You can customize the icon, the name, or the links in the sidebar menu. This is a good way to increase productivity 
NOTE:
To open the sidebar on Mobile, you need to press the hamburger button on the top right corner, which is located next to your profile picture.
