# מקטעי סרגל צד מותאמים אישית נבדקים במטא
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303
**Category:** Announcements
**Tags:** sidebar
**Created:** [15 בפברואר, 2023, 10:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303 "2023-02-15T22:46:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [16 בפברואר, 2023, 3:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/21 "2023-02-16T15:55:22Z")
@awesomerobot, you are probably far ahead of me, but I was thinking about this this morning and wanted to put it in writing in case it’s helpful. I can think of these different types of menu items:
## Internal Links
What’s there now, with usability enhancements and so on.
## External Links
Probably most important for admin-configured menus — docs, legal/compliance policy links, etc.
## “Watchable” Items
As many of the non-custom sections have now: selected **categories** , **tags** , **inboxes** , **messages** , **chat channels** , **personal chats**.
Might as well also add the ability to pin a particular **topic**. This _could_ be bookmarks, but I would use this for a few particular posts beyond bookmarks (which I mostly use for timed reminders). For example [Fedora Strategy 2028: a topic index for our planning process - Fedora Discussion](https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-strategy-2028-a-topic-index-for-our-planning-process/46733).
(The difference from an internal link: it’d have an indicator of new replies or edits, and possibly a counter.)
## Dynamic Watchables
Rather than _particular_ channels, tags, topics, etc., there could be:
- most recently-active _N_ categories
- tags that match the pattern `release-*`
- top 5 topics that match a search term
- most-used personal chats
.. these would, I hope obviously, add _multiple_ entries. (Possibly requiring the whole section to be for that? Maybe!)
## Moderator Tools
Could duplicate the notification for the review queue (with indicator for something needing to be handled), but I’m thinking beyond that:
- last five topics from new users
- new hits for a particular watched word
- topics which are getting heated (using the [Disorder plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disorder-for-fedoras-sites-or-just-the-new-merged-one/249198) or other heuristics like two people replying back and forth quickly
- something indicating _other_ mods’ recent actions?
- probably a lot more ideas…
Also, this could be where my “ **sudo mode** ” switch would go. 🙂
## User Options
Like the theme selector, but other options too. Title, status, flair, featured topic, etc.
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### Author:  [@twofoursixeight](https://meta.discourse.org/u/twofoursixeight)
#### Post date: [16 בפברואר, 2023, 4:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/22 "2023-02-16T16:02:34Z")
Why is adding external links banned? It would be cool to switch from [meta.discourse.org](http://meta.discourse.org) to another forum or service.
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [16 בפברואר, 2023, 5:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/23 "2023-02-16T17:34:12Z")
Oh, another one, which doesn’t quite fit cleanly into the categories I made: tag/category intersections. (Posts with a given tag in a specific category — or posts in a given category with a specific tag, depending on how you think of it.) This can be expressed with an internal link, but again it’d be nice to have the right category and tag styling, and to have the activity indicators.
Speaking of which — the sidebar now has blue dots, but… am I imagining things? Did it originally have counters? If this wasn’t a performance optimization, it might be nice to have count-or-just-dot as an option when customizing.
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [17 בפברואר, 2023, 3:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/24 "2023-02-17T15:08:56Z")
> [@mattdm](#):
>
> Did it originally have counters?
Yes, it was changed to dots a while ago 🙂
> [@Sidebar topic list links prefer unread and new over latest](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sidebar-topic-list-links-prefer-unread-and-new-over-latest/239575/82):
>
> @awesomerobot and @tgxworld just merged this pull request, which I think should address some of the above feedback: Now when using the default user preference, you see this: And when you use the “power user” preference, you see this: So, casual users have a bit less noise in their sidebar, and for everyone, what you see in the li…
You can change the setting here: [https://meta.discourse.org/my/preferences/sidebar](https://meta.discourse.org/my/preferences/sidebar)
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [17 בפברואר, 2023, 3:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/25 "2023-02-17T15:26:08Z")
Cool — then my suggestion stands: this would be nice as a per-custom-list-item config option rather than a global one.
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### Author:  [@nathank](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nathank)
#### Post date: [18 בפברואר, 2023, 3:18am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/26 "2023-02-18T03:18:01Z")
It doesn’t let me use `/my/profile` or similar - they need to be actual relative links. This is inconsistent with other bits of the UI (such as Watched Words Links)
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### Author:  [@rahim123](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rahim123)
#### Post date: [18 בפברואר, 2023, 4:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/27 "2023-02-18T04:35:41Z")
Thanks for the heads-up, in that case it wouldn’t work for the main usage case I was planning on using it for, I would need the `/my/` links to work.
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [21 בפברואר, 2023, 11:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/28 "2023-02-21T11:05:25Z")
Two minor things:
- When we focus an input, as soon as we click elsewhere without entering anything, the input has an invalid state (red border).
- The icon list appears when we start typing in the icon selector. If we move the mouse cursor on an icon and continue to type, it clears the text we already typed, forcing us to re-write from the beginning. It can be slightly annoying when we want to complete the current text to find more similar icons.
- The red text on black or grey (selected) background on the WCAG Dark palette is hard to read:
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### Author:  [@simon\_tomes](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon_tomes)
#### Post date: [1 במרץ, 2023, 4:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/29 "2023-03-01T16:56:54Z")
I very much welcome customisable sidebars. Nice one, @kris.kotlarek @awesomerobot @sam.
Moving the location of default sections with the ability to rename them would be an excellent start (for Admins).
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### Author:  [@satonotdead](https://meta.discourse.org/u/satonotdead)
#### Post date: [1 במרץ, 2023, 5:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/30 "2023-03-01T17:13:33Z")
+1 and I suggest something related:
[details=“Little improvement on Community section”]
We would like to display more fields on “Community” section because people won’t trigger `More` and we have our leaderboard, groups and docs there (!)
Probably show 5 lines would be great for the majority (adding docs, leaderboard or rules).
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### Author:  [@Crius](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Crius)
#### Post date: [10 במרץ, 2023, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/31 "2023-03-10T15:29:59Z")
Is there any ETA yet on these functionalities?
The sidebar is a great improvement over the dropdown imho but I find that the lack of ability to even customize the top links (adding new, last, etc. for example) greatly limit its usability.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [10 במרץ, 2023, 4:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/32 "2023-03-10T16:53:03Z")
We don’t have an ETA, but we’ve got a rough list of interrelated features defined that we’re working on… in no particular order:
- Ability for admins to edit the Community section (including section name)
- Users can reorder sidebar sections
- Users can reorder links within custom sections
- Users can show/hide (not just collapse) sidebar sections
- Users can edit their own Community section
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### Author:  [@Crius](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Crius)
#### Post date: [10 במרץ, 2023, 9:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/33 "2023-03-10T21:40:50Z")
Loving EVERY one of those as they cover basically everything the users have been asking for 🙂
Thank you for the update!
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 11:59am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/34 "2023-03-17T11:59:10Z")
I just noticed that the alphabetical list of icons ends with “plug”. Are there no more icons or is the list cut at that position? I thought someting like share should be there.
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### Author:  [@Stephane\_Roy](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephane_Roy)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 3:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/35 "2023-03-17T15:17:44Z")
Hello
Is the “Custom sidebar sections” feature included in the latest beta version of Discourse (3.1.0.beta3) ?
Because there is information in “New Features” that suggests that…
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/36 "2023-03-17T15:29:27Z")
It came even earlier 😉
Settings and `enable custom sidebar sections`.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 4:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/37 "2023-03-17T16:04:02Z")
I can get it to bring up ‘question’ if I search, so I think the rest are in there somewhere:
I’m not sure why the list only has until ‘P’. The lookup list when creating a new badge cuts off at ‘C’ as well, so maybe there’s a limit?
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### Author:  [@Don](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Don)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 4:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/38 "2023-03-17T16:38:16Z")
Hello,
I have noticed two minor issue with usage. 🙂
1. On mobile, the fields little misaligned.
2. If I use capital in search it won’t find the icon. This can be a problem on mobile because when the field in focus the keyboard will capitalize letters first.
Thank you 🙂 This is a really great feature! Love it ❤
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 9:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/39 "2023-03-17T21:28:59Z")
Yeah there are hundreds of options, so the dropdown isn’t populated with them all. Maybe we could add a message or something at the bottom of menus like this to make it clear.
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [17 במרץ, 2023, 9:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/custom-sidebar-sections-being-tested-on-meta/255303/40 "2023-03-17T21:34:02Z")
It seems hard to cram a good UI into that little box. Something like the emoji widget for picking font awesome icons would be… well, it would be nice, but of all the places I’d hope for UI improvements in Discourse..
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