# Simplifying the top menu

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplifying-the-top-menu/68849
**Category:** UX
**Created:** [August 26, 2017, 9:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplifying-the-top-menu/68849 "2017-08-26T21:09:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![mcwumbly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcwumbly/32/103861_2.png) [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [August 26, 2017, 9:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplifying-the-top-menu/68849/1 "2017-08-26T21:09:39Z")

</div>

We did some initial user research via a survey and then about a dozen user interviews to learn more about how people are interacting with our site and what they find useful and confusing.

We discovered that the top menu is rarely used, and that people were quite confused about the difference between the “New”, “Unread” and “Latest” tabs. Most of the frequent visitors who read a lot just used the Latest tab.

In response to this, we are exploring simplifying the top menu.

In particular, what I’m thinking is going from this:

 ![top-menu-now](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/b/5/b5ec4e95e42e69003d02b40b72b5c6b554b32934.png)

To this:

 ![top-menu-later](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/3/0/30dd1f3a8f508943a919a93a8924481ddf447caa.png)

I think I can accomplish this by:

1. Updating the site setting for the top menu and just choosing `[latest, categories, unread]`
2. Adding some custom CSS to hide the categories dropdow

I figure people can still get to these other things via the hamburger menu, and to a category in 2 other ways: The categories page and. the label next to a topic. But are there any gotchas people can think of that I should be aware of with removing the categories dropdown?

One other things that I’d _like_ to consider is hiding the Unread tab if there is nothing there. How would I go about that?  
Has anyone tried anything like that?

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/simplifying-the-top-menu/68849)._