Sidebar
A site-wide navigation rail down the side of your store — a persistent “Browse” menu that stays with shoppers as they move around.
What it’s for. Giving shoppers an always-there way to jump around your store — to games, sets, or filtered collections — without reopening the header menu each time. It’s a plain navigation container: you fill it with menus and text, and every link goes wherever you point it.
When to use it. Turn it on when your catalog is deep enough that the header menu alone feels cramped — most card stores. On desktop it sits as a rail beside your pages; on phones it collapses into a slide-out drawer behind a Browse button, so it never crowds a small screen.
Turning it on. The sidebar is off by default. Switch it on and choose where it shows in Theme settings → Sidebar (the gear icon in the theme editor):
- Enable site-wide sidebar turns it on.
- The Show on toggles pick which pages get it — home, collections, product, search, regular pages, and blog. (Home, collections, and search are on by default; product, regular pages, and blog are off, since those are usually full already.)
- Layout sets the heading text (“Browse” by default), width, padding, and spacing; Behavior sets whether menu groups start collapsed.
Those store-wide controls live in Theme settings, not on the section — the Sidebar section itself just holds the content blocks.
Filling it. The rail is empty until you add blocks to the Sidebar section in the theme editor. There are two kinds:
- Menu — points at one of your Shopify navigation menus (Online Store → Navigation). Top-level links show as plain links; any link that has sub-links becomes a collapsible group. To list collections, build a menu whose links point at them.
- Text — a freeform rich-text note: store hours, a short blurb, a heads-up.
Add several blocks to group things — a “Games” menu, a “Sealed” menu, a text note — and drag them into the order you want.
Tips
- The sidebar builds no links of its own; every destination comes from the menu you point it at. Point a link at a filtered collection URL to make one-click shortcuts (a single game, in-stock only, and so on).
- It inherits your theme colors and fonts, so it matches the rest of the store with no extra styling.
- On mobile it’s a drawer behind a Browse button at the top of the page — check it there too, not just on desktop.
- If the rail looks empty, either no block has been added yet, or the menu you pointed it at has no links.
Blocks
This section supports blocks — repeatable content items you add, configure, and reorder inside the section.
Block: Menu
| Setting | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Heading | Text | — |
| Menu | Menu | A navigation menu. Top-level links render as plain links; any link with sub-links becomes a collapsible group. |
Block: Text
| Setting | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Heading | Text | — |
| Text | Rich text | — |
Was this page helpful?
Spotted something wrong, or want to suggest an improvement? Email support → — your message goes straight to engineering.