How to hide the sidebars?

[BackseatTyrant]

Previous versions allowed me to hide the sidebars of the forums main page, which I appreciated strongly, since it allowed me to hide the 'Latest posts'-bar. That bar is constantly featuring titles about current events from the Off-Topic forums, and Current Events™ is just not a topic I feel comfortable at all dealing with right now. Sadly, this feature no longer exists. In fact, a recent design seems to have placed it explicitly right at the top of the main page, meaning that practically the very first thing I see when I go to see this website, is like "BAD GUYS WINS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ELECTION - LET'S DISCUSS THIS" or some other doomposting thread that is not doing wonders to my already deteriorating mental health.

Look, I just come here to learn about Civilization and related games, and right now, the site seems kind of designed to draw my attention away from that, ironically enough, towards the topics I had hoped to take refuge from.

 

[Synobun]

Yeah, I used to collapse all the sidebar tabs as well. It'd be nice to have that back.

 

[Gori the Grey]

"BAD GUYS WINS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ELECTION - LET'S DISCUSS THIS"

OT in a nutshell. Ha!

 

[The_J]

we did not change a thing there

 

[The_J]

we did not change a thing there

Nope, didn't change a thing, so no clue when this was the last time an option.
I don't seen to have any customization options there, besides globally adding or removing something, so... I'm afraid the status quo is what it is :/.

 

[Synobun]

Nope, didn't change a thing, so no clue when this was the last time an option.
I don't seen to have any customization options there, besides globally adding or removing something, so... I'm afraid the status quo is what it is :/.

It's been a while. Maybe over a year. It was after an update that it went away.

 

[Quintillus]

Previous versions allowed me to hide the sidebars of the forums main page, which I appreciated strongly, since it allowed me to hide the 'Latest posts'-bar. That bar is constantly featuring titles about current events from the Off-Topic forums, and Current Events™ is just not a topic I feel comfortable at all dealing with right now. Sadly, this feature no longer exists. In fact, a recent design seems to have placed it explicitly right at the top of the main page, meaning that practically the very first thing I see when I go to see this website, is like "BAD GUYS WINS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ELECTION - LET'S DISCUSS THIS" or some other doomposting thread that is not doing wonders to my already deteriorating mental health.

Look, I just come here to learn about Civilization and related games, and right now, the site seems kind of designed to draw my attention away from that, ironically enough, towards the topics I had hoped to take refuge from.

That was probably on XenForo 1, or maybe way back in the vBulletin days. It's been... almost two years? since we moved to XenForo 2, and over five since we were on vBulletin.

But there is a way to remove it with a user script manager like TamperMonkey or GreaseMonkey. This is my "Off-Topic Mitigation" TamperMonkey script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         CFC OT Redirect
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      0.1
// @description  make myself have to make an effort to view Off-Topic
// @author       Quintillus
// @match        https://forums.civfanatics.com/*
// @icon         data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';
    var href = window.location.href
    if (href === "https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/off-topic.18/" || href.startsWith("https://forums.civfanatics.com/whats-new/posts/")) {
        window.location.href = "https://forums.civfanatics.com";
    }

    // Remove "New Posts"
    document.querySelector("div.block[data-widget-definition='new_posts']").remove();
})();

The last part removes the "New Posts" widget; the part above it redirects me to the home page when I click on Off-Topic or New Posts. I can disable it when I do feel like going to Off-Topic (and still get notified of responses to my posts there, if I'm subscribed), but it makes me have to think about whether I want to go there, and hides the sorts of posts you mention from being on the forum main page and dragging me in.

You can install TamperMonkey, create a new script, and paste this in, and it should start removing it for you as well.

(And yes, it would be great if XenForo had an option to limit "New Posts" to only certain forums. In lieu of that option, this is the best I have come up with to address the same concern as what you mentioned)