Removing the Help text from the sidebar
Asked by Jens:

After deploying Confluecne 5.1, I have gotten the Sidebar that comes with the default Theme (yuk)... I guess Ill have to live with it for now, but what I can't figure out is how to remove the sort of help text in there:

> Here you can add shortcut links to the most important content for your team or project.Configure sidebar.

I Would also very much like to configure a default side bar where that isn't in there as well as the 2 default links is hidden... (Blog and Pages)

So that I don't have to make these changes every single time I create a new space.

Anyone have an awnser for those questions?


Answers:
author: Jens
body: @Mark - Ok, fair enough... I used the CSS option... (I know you can add custom CSS as I actually use it quite extensively to change fonts and other things, but it seemed more as a workaround than a solution to this problem, after all the help/welcome message on the dashboard can be removed trough layouts)

(btw. it would be awsome if you used ACE or some similar editor for those input fields in the admin interface rather than a plain old text box).

<br />

The other option is a bit redicilous in the light of the question... After all, it changes allot of other stuff as well... In rudeness, I could give an easy solution as well... Just Uninstall Confluence and Install another Wiki, then that help text goes away (awsome solution?!)...  

Both listed themes have an annoying sidebar, but the Documentation themes sidebar is actually worse... So I choose the lesser bad of the two...  

It is not that the sidebar can't be usefull, but it depends on the type of page you would like to host, which is brilliantly deducted in your own decision previously to have a sidebar for a documentation theme, where as for the default "collaboration" theme you did not... So you had the right solution before...  

Obviously I could choose a 3rd party theme, and they are currently under evaluation so that might happen, but most of them costs in the end, so there is a process to that... So for now I wanted to see if I could just get the default theme to be as minimalistic as possible...  

I might actually just end up canabalizing it using client side javascripts if possible.


author: Joachim Ooi
body: Hi Jens,

The new sidebar in Conf 5.1 comes from a plugin and to remove certain text in there may require some development work done in the plugin itself.

If you are finding it a little bit annoying, here is how you can disable this plugin:

1. Go to Confluence Admin \> Manage Add-ons
2. Search System for **Confluence Space IA (Left Sidebar)**
3. Disable it

comments: author: Jens
body: Well considering that the same "text" is not present at say: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Home>

While also not being present in any of the samples shown about the side bar... It is more if a "to get started" text.  

I imagine that there must be an easier way.  

I noticed it automatically gets removed if you add a custom link, but again, the above exampele doesn't seem to have done that, so it must be possible some how to remove it without doing so.


author: Mark Hrynczak
body: It does not appear on the sidebar you have linked to because you are not an admin on that site.

If you are an admin, then you do see it.

If you want to hide this section for every space in your site, you could use CSS to hide it. See <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Styling+Confluence+with+CSS>

Even easier would be just to set the default theme to be the Doc theme instead (or another theme that you like). See <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Applying+a+Theme+to+a+Site>


Tags: confluence-administration