Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines on issues.

Motivation

The navbar error messages are not so great and some new users get confused when they encounter an error trying to modify a newly initialized Docusaurus project.

I think we should improve these error messages so that users understand what to do:

cf #8692

Also we could introduce a new docSidebar navbar item that links to a given sidebar. This is less likely to lead users to encounter errors when trying Docusaurus for the first time because they are less likely to delete/rename a sidebar IMHO.

The init template has an tutorialSidebar autogenerated sidebar: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/blob/main/examples/classic/sidebars.js

I suggest moving the init template from:

navbar: {
        items: [
          {
            type: 'doc',
            docId: 'intro',
            position: 'left',
            label: 'Tutorial',
          },
        ],
      },

to

navbar: {
        items: [
          {
            type: 'docSidebar',
            sidebarName: 'tutorialSidebar',
            position: 'left',
            label: 'Tutorial',
          },
        ],
      },

Good first issue for an external contributor that feels comfortable taking this task.

You can claim the issue here, but please submit a first draft PR within 24h.
Otherwise, someone else can claim it again and submit a new PR.

Self-service

• I'd be willing to do some initial work on this proposal myself.