Navigation (sidebar) menu display control

[Lilly]

	Summary	Allows displaying sections and links for staff, logged-in and anon users
	Repository	https://github.com/Lillinator/navigation-menu-display-control
	Install Guide	How to install a theme or theme component
	New to Discourse Themes?	Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes

Install this theme component

Description

The Navigation Menu Display Control theme component allows for the display of various default sections and links for staff-only and/or logged-in users only. You can also specify custom sections or custom links (placeholder names are included). Additionally, there is a setting for displaying a custom menu section for anonymous users only, as well as settings for setting the order of the default sections (category, tags, chat, channels, messages) . The sections and links in the settings are lists that include defaults that can be added or removed as you require, as well as as many custom sections or links as you wish to add.

Settings

Note that for the list settings, the defaults can be removed and new custom sections or links added. The defaults are just for a starting point and should be configured to suit your forum. Also, for custom menu sections, they must be visible globally when you set them up (the Make this section public and visible to everyone checkbox must be enabled).

The top section is called “community” in the code, and this is reflected in the default settings as well. Some of the defaults refer to links installed with plugins, but they will not affect the functionality if you do not have the respective plugins installed (for example, docs, anniversaries and birthday links).

There are also settings that override each other - having a specific link in More visible to logged-in users will be overridden by the More drop down setting being visible only to staff.

Setting Name	Description
show these sections for staff only	List of sections to show for staff only. Can include custom sections with “Staff Menu = staff-menu” slug style naming format.
show these sections for logged-in only	List of sections to show for logged-in users only. Can include custom sections with “User Menu = user-menu” slug style naming format.
show these links for staff only	List of links to show for staff only. Can include custom links named with the same case format (“Staff Link” = “Staff Link”).
show these links for logged-in only	List of links to show for logged-in users only. Can include custom links named with the same case format (“User Link” = “User Link”)
show more for staff only	Check-box to show the More drop-down section for Staff only.
show more for logged-in only	Check-box to show the More drop-down section for logged-in users only.
show custom for anon only	Text field for a custom menu section so show for anonymous users only (hides for logged-in users).
show navigation menu to logged-in only	Check-box to show the entire navigation sidebar menu to logged-in users only (hide from anonymous users).
hide custom menus globe icon	Hide the globe icon from staff for custom menu sections (not visible to non-staff by default).
default menu section ordering	Allows re-ordering of the default menu sections (does not apply to custom menus)

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Screenshots

Settings for staff and logged-in only sections

Settings for staff and logged-in only links

Settings for more section, custom menu section for anonymous users only, globe icon, hiding entire navigation menu, and changing order of the default menu sections

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For custom group-specific navigation sidebar menu sections, please use the Group Menu Sections theme component.

[Lilly]

Added a section to allow re-ordering of the default menu sections.

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

I don’t think the hiding links thing is quite working correctly at the mo.

Sections hide just fine for me, but I can’t hide individual custom links when I convert them to lowercase and dashes.

But the official links seem to need lowercase. So they might be handled differently.

However - they work if the full title text is used (with spaces and capitals). So maybe only the OP (can it be wikified?) and the instructions in the TC need to be changed. Or maybe a core change is needed for consistency.

[Lilly]

thanks Nathan. yea something has changed there. will have a look at this over the weekend.

[Lilly]

Ok the component is still functioning properly, but the custom link class name format has changed so I had to make some changes to the field documentation in the component and the OP. Please update the theme component.

Unlike the custom menu sections, for the custom links, the names in the component settings should be the same case format as their actual custom names. Of course the default ones should still be lowercase just to make things even more confusing lol.

For example, if I want to show a specific custom link called “GitHub Repo” for logged in users only:

I would enter the same link name in the show these links for logged-in only setting in the theme component:

So if you have custom links in the links display settings - show these links for staff only and show these links for logged-in only - you will need to change those component settings entries to match the link names.

Note that for custom menu sections (not links), the naming convention is still the same as it was before - it is still lower case slug style (ie: “Custom Menu Name” = custom-menu-name).

Thanks again for bringing this to my attention @nathank

At some point I want to add the ability rearrange all the navigation sidebar menu sections, including custom ones, not just the default ones as it does currently. I know how to do it in hardcode, I just have to build it in to use settings and variables.