No sidebar, but old hamburger, on new Digital Ocean droplet install?

[jordan-violet]

I’ve been following the installation guide for the official Digital Ocean Discourse droplet for my own personal site. I just finished the installation, but I’m noticing two odd behaviors:

1. My sidebar is missing, but instead I have the old hamburger. I went to the settings and enabled the experimental sidebar, but I still have no sidebar even after a refresh.
2. My admin settings tags don’t seem to appear in my admin page.

[Moin]

Is the navigation menu setting set to header dropdown? Then the admin sidebar hides in that dropdpwn

[jordan-violet]

Thanks @Moin —that fixed the navigation! Now I see that the sidebar is vastly different than I’m used to. I run an enterprise community (SailPoint Developer Community - Learn. Build. Connect.) and our admin navigation looks tabular at the top like this:

Is the version I’m seeing on my new personal site new? It feels very outdated.

[Moin]

On your new site you probably see the new admin sidebar

Introducing experimental admin sidebar navigation

Update: the admin sidebar is no longer experimental and is now the only supported navigation in core Discourse. The reason for the change is to reduce complexity and to make Discourse easier to set up, launch and manage especially for people who are not already experts at Discourse. The reason we no longer support the old horizontal navigation is that it is not practicable to maintain two navigation menus and in any case the structure of the admin section is changing. Note for self hos…

You can choose who sees that new sidebar in the admin sidebar enabled groups site setting

[jordan-violet]

I wish I could mark two solutions, since you solved both problems!

I guess I’ve gotten so used to the current admin sidebar, that I’m becoming stuck in my ways, but it feels so much more familiar than the new navigation!

I suppose this is my chance to learn the new navigation. Thanks again!

[JammyDodger]

@jordan-violet

I went to the settings and enabled the experimental sidebar, but I still have no sidebar even after a refresh.

I think this would be the experimental setting for the new admin sidebar (admin sidebar enabled groups). The main sidebar/navigation menu is no longer an experimental feature.

You can remove the groups added to that to get the current/old way back (at least for now).

[jordan-violet]

I’ve built an enterprise community on Discourse, every day, for the last 3.5 years. I feel so wrong starting over on a Discourse community.

This feels like doing a prestige in a video game, or just…starting over. I don’t like this feeling. How do I start at level 20 with all my old gear?! /s

[JammyDodger]

Using the little `only show overridden’ checkbox on your main site’s admin setting page can be quite good to get a reminder of what adjustments have been made so that you can duplicate them on your test site.

But half the fun of a test site is to start over as a different character and work through a different skill tree.

[jordan-violet]

@JammyDodger

But half the fun of a test site is to start over as a different character and work through a different skill tree.

I like the way you think! You’re definitely the person on the right side of the bus: