i just renamed the community section on my site and i’m happy with it. had not a single complaint about it from any of my users. a few didn’t like the whole sidebar thing when i first switched the navigation menu from hamburger drop down, but that didn’t last long once i showed them out how to customize their own setup and added some global links they like.
3 Likes
What did you change it to, Lilly?
2 Likes
the name of my forum (which is more or less the name of my forum community) 
i recognize that this sort of naming approach may not work for others.
but i am still contemplating hiding the more section and adding those links in the section above it.
5 Likes
FWIW, i also made a Navigation Menu Modifier theme component that has a lot of further customizations for the sidebar mode that i use on my site, and that address a number of sidebar mod requests i’ve seen on Meta.
3 Likes
i’ve actually decided to hide that section (community) from anon users on my site, then added the about link to the global custom section. i felt that anon users don’t need to see a lot of that stuff like birthdays, etc.
I’ve been in online communities where celebrating birthdays is a big deal, automating it doesn’t really seem to do that. And if a community grows beyond some size, birthdays become too commonplace to be worth celebrating. I’m on one site where the daily birthday list can have dozens of names on it, I never look at it, I don’t know if others do, but I suspect not.
With anonymous guests, I’m not sure if having things that increase the sense of ‘community’ tend to lead the anonymous readers into joining the site. (If there’s a fee involved, that complicates matters.)
On my food site, we tend to talk about what we’re cooking and baking on a daily basis. That’s a holdover from the site that most of us came from that was discontinued by its sponsor, King Arthur Flour. I don’t know the reasons why they dropped support for their forums, maybe they thought all that chatting about what we’re cooking and baking wasn’t helping sales. But I can say that I used to order products from King Arthur’s catalog several times a year, since they dropped their forums in 2016 I’ve probably ordered from them maybe three times.
3 Likes
I like what you’ve done in this topic, @mattdm . Congrats 
After reading the whole topic, this would be the potential suggestions which came to my mind:
There could be 2 higher ranking clickable titles for (1) the “public” section and (2) the “private” section. Both of these would have a “create” button, which could stay always apparent (or not). It could remain a + sign or be more prominent, like a “create” or “new” button.
The “personal chat” collapsible section could get a hiding pencil button like “categories” and “tags”, which would direct to the homepage of chat. Then this section works the same way as the categories and tags ones. It makes sense to me: You have the people you chat regularly with, the button lets you edit that list, and 1 additional click for a new chat is available from there.
The “New”, “unread” and “sent” links appearing in the sidebar when you click “inbox” aren’t really necessary and could be discarded (or not). If it feels bizarre to only have the “Message” clickable title and directly the collapsible “personal chat” section under it, a permanent “Sent” could be put there. This would be the equivalent of the “My posts” in the public section. A “More” could also be added, if there is some use for it.
1 Like
I just did the same, having just switched from legacy mode to sidebar. I changed “Community” to “Forum”.
1 Like
nice. i love all the customization options available to us now. i actually hid that section from anonymous users and made a custom global section for all users. i’m sure i could have done it either way, but i liked having the my posts and toipcs updating for member and they are pointless for anon.
1 Like
We’ve done a bit more research on this to see how other sites are using the navigation menu today and what the impact of a change like this would be. There are also handful of moving pieces to this, but here’s a description of what we plan to do now and why:
We want to remove the heading from the primary section in the navigation menu because we think it is not necessary.
- less important links are already hidden behind “More…”
- the name “Community” has been a bit contentious
- we observe others where it seems in conflict with the rest of their site design
- having a fixed section at the top with no heading follows a pattern established by other apps
In order to remove it we have to make a few other changes:
- Remove section heading from Primary section unconditionally
Don’t show it in the modal at all. I haven’t seen cases where it’s “too busy” and there are lots of sites on header dropdown now anyway. I have seen clashes of the term “Community”. - Move
Edit section...to be last item underMore...
(Don’t allow this to be customized; don’t show this in the edit section UI) - Make
/new-topicwork correctly
When included, clicking it should open the composer without navigating you away from the current page.
Finally, here’s one change we’ve decided not to do:
- We won’t bother adding a
+ New Topicby default right now
We can revisit this based on feedback, but our assumption is that most sites don’t need this. This has been partially validated by some informal surveying we’ve done previously. Those that want it can add it. Individuals on sites that don’t have it and miss it can add it into their own custom section. In the future we may allow personalization of the Primary section.
8 Likes
the More section is one i hid from my site. i am simply not a fan of drop-downs within other menus. i put the contents of More that i wanted users to see in other sections.
4 Likes
I agree about the drop-down – but kept it for external links (and renamed it from “More”).
1 Like
We’ve just shipped a commit that removes the header for the “Community” section from the sidebar.
Desktop sidebar navigation menu
Desktop header dropdown navigation menu
Mobile
8 Likes
Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate your listening to my quixotic plea here. 
6 Likes
I wasn’t exactly enamoured with the label “Community”, but I have to say that now that the header is gone, it creates an inconsistent look that’s bugging me a bit. I’m not sure how easy it would be to implement, but from a UX point, I would appreciate at least the option to have a header for that section (with customizable title).
4 Likes
Hey the heading community was structuring the menu in a good way and it was customizable, is there a way to add it back because it made most sense for my setup. I would be grateful if I can get an answer
2 Likes
it sounds like what is really needed is the option to either have that top (community) section header or not in the section customization modal. it is easily renamed in text replacement.
4 Likes
I strongly agree with @Lillinator!!
Also I have some questions:
Is there a possibilty to have it back or a way to work around it, or we should wait for the next update? It really made the difference.