I recommend looking into what BlueSky does, both for icons and customisability. Essentially you probably want to create a second navigation interface message structured like the sidebar with an extra |item for icon specifying, with a parser that functions similarly to a simplified version of the sidebar parser that outputs a standard portlet/set of portlets. This approach allows for onwiki customisation both for the rendered html (editing the mediawiki namespace interface message) and js overrides using the standard addportletlink etc functions, which work with pretty much anything following the expected structure.

...may also want to add a config variable so third party sites can just throw in their sidebar instead of having an entirely separate menu.

@ovasileva @Jdlrobson just came across this in the design backlog, wanted to call it out since it's something we've been talking about with Advanced Mobile Contributions.

In T65459#2950470, @Jdlrobson wrote:

Can you elaborate on the use case @Nirmos ? Why would you want to add a link via JavaScript?

IMO, there should be a way to customize this menu using user JavaScript files (common.js / minerva.js). Using userscripts is the only way I see for an individual user to customize this menu for his / her needs.

In T65459#5472323, @Masumrezarock100 wrote:

In T65459#2950470, @Jdlrobson wrote:

Can you elaborate on the use case @Nirmos ? Why would you want to add a link via JavaScript?

IMO, there should be a way to customize this menu using user JavaScript files (common.js / minerva.js). Using userscripts is the only way I see for an individual user to customize this menu for his / her needs.

Got it. This task is purely from the sysop perspective. Customising via JS gadgets is captured in another bug:

T231925: Minerva should support skin agnostic mw.util.addPortletLink or similar

Great idea, mw.util.addPortletLink can be used customize this menu.

I have no idea why this MW-1.27-release (WMF-deploy-2016-01-12_(1.27.0-wmf.10)) tag is still here.

I'd welcome the possibility to customise the mobile sidebar menu:

1. To be able to translate the menu item (in nia.wp's case, the menu items are half in Indonesian and half Nias);
2. To add basic community links (announcement, village pump, sandbox, community portal and help).

@Slaia: Hi. This task is only about making customization possible. Specific content in the sidebar of specific websites is off-topic for this task. Thanks.

The task [Open] [Feature] T65459 Allow configuration of the Minerva menu was already resolved by Extension:MinervaMenu that worked like charm until MW 1.39 when the hook MobileMenu was depreciated. The task can be resolved again by updating the orphaned extension MinervaMenu in line with the current hooks.

Any updates regarding this?

@Interstellarity All updates can be found in their very task.

MediaWiki:Sidebar's syntax is weird legacy syntax that isn't flexibly customisable because it isn't full wikitext. It needs replacing with something fit-for-purpose.

@Bugreporter2 Sure, and that comment is off-topic in this task. Please provide patches in a separate task.

Question for you: If I got a consensus to add something like WP:Contents to the sidebar in mobile view, would you now be able to do that?