Trying to find the option to use sidebar menus instead of dropdown in 2.1

[Wellwisher]

Hello SMF Devs and community,

I am trying to find an option in SMF 2.1 which enables you to use sidebar menus instead of dropdown menus. This option allows to set as default to use a sidebar with all the navigation menus whenever? Currently using "Curve2".

Any helpful hint would be awesome. Thank you.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Sadly, sidebar menus were eliminated in 2.1.

[Wellwisher]

Arh man that sucks, would have been cool to see some kind of sidebar in 2.1 which would allow us to input html blocks, kind of like SP blocks. Thank you for the information. I thought I was going bonkers not finding this option anywhere.

[Antechinus]

The sidebar menu was never a system of portal blocks anyway. If you want portal blocks, you need to install a portal.

It'd actually be easy to reinstate the sidebar menu option. I may code it for a custom theme and/or mod at some point.

[Wellwisher]

The sidebar menu was never a system of portal blocks anyway. If you want portal blocks, you need to install a portal.

It'd actually be easy to reinstate the sidebar menu option. I may code it for a custom theme and/or mod at some point.

That would be pretty awesome @Antechinus. I am no php expert but I could create something simple using JS. Most SMF users only require a sidebar to add custom html code in. They also have Ads running on production sites and since advertisiers are picky about where they want their ads placed; setting php conditionals about which boards the sidebar displays in would be great.

Even though I don't really care about the portal features in sp mod, with simple blocks I could also add custom messages to display when members are viewing their inboxes. e.g "Remember do not save any private information blah blah" from the sidebar.

The downside of SP is that it's slow to execute check pingdom times for it, so I am not a huge fan of it.

[Antechinus]

I said "sidebar menu". Not "sidebar blocks". I have no interest in coding sidebar blocks with every conceivable functionality.

A sidebar menu option could be done just with CSS (well ok, and a little bit of PHP for settings).

[Wellwisher]

@Antechinus creating a simple sidebar with html and css is a relatively straight forward task. With sidebar blocks - a dev only needs to code in two main functionalites: one for adding custom html, and one to display blocks in certain boards. Then this mod will rule 2.1 realm with an iron fist. 

[Antechinus]

There are already several perfectly good portals available, some of which offer far more functionality than anyone is really likely to need. I'm not interested in re-inventing the wheel.

And if you knew the history of this project, you would be very wary of claiming that anyone or anything should "rule SMF with an iron fist". The whole minions of Mordor thing doesn't play well.