strapi-plugin-content-manager-organizer

A Strapi v5 plugin that lets you organize the Content Manager sidebar into collapsible, labeled groups — configured entirely through a brand new visual Settings UI with Drag & Drop.

![Content Manager Organizer Demo]

🚀 What's New in v2!

We've completely overhauled the plugin with a ton of new features and quality-of-life improvements:

• 🎨 Brand New UI Dashboard: A completely redesigned, settings dashboard.
• 🖱️ Drag & Drop Ordering: Visually re-arrange your content types and groups with smooth drag-and-drop mechanics.
• 📑 Single Types Support: You can now organize your Single Types into groups! Collection Types and Single Types are cleanly separated in the dashboard.
• 🔀 Sort Orders: Choose exactly how your sidebar renders:
  • Alphabetical (Default): Automatically sorts groups and items alphabetically.
  • Custom Order: Respects the exact drag-and-drop order you set in the dashboard.
• 🔍 Enhanced Search: Quickly find and filter your content types within the settings dashboard.

🎯 Why Content Manager Organizer?

When your Strapi project grows to 20, 30, or 50+ content types, the default sidebar becomes a long, unmanageable list. Content Manager Organizer solves this by letting you:

| Problem | Solution | |---------|----------| | 50+ content types in one list | Group into logical sections | | Alphabetical order not useful | Custom drag-and-drop ordering within groups | | Can't find content types fast | Collapse irrelevant groups | | Single types cluttering sidebar | Group them separately | | Config lost on redeploy | Saved safely to the database |

Screenshots

Interactive Drag & Drop Dashboard

Collection vs Single Types Separation

Grouped Sidebar — Dark Mode

✨ Features

• 📁 Group content types into named, collapsible sections
• 📄 Single Types support — organize Collection Types and Single Types separately
• 🖱️ Drag & Drop — re-arrange groups and items visually
• 🔀 Custom Sort Orders — choose between Alphabetical or Custom ordering
• 🔍 Real-time Search — instantly filter content types in the settings
• 💾 Persisted to database — survives redeploys (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• 🌙 Dark/Light theme — auto-detects Strapi theme perfectly
• ⚡ Zero config required — works out of the box
• 🎛️ Visual Settings UI — no code changes needed

📦 Installation

npm

npm install strapi-plugin-content-manager-organizer

yarn

yarn add strapi-plugin-content-manager-organizer

pnpm

pnpm add strapi-plugin-content-manager-organizer

🎛️ How It Works

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  First launch (no config in DB)                 │
│  → Shows default Strapi sidebar order           │
└──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
                       │
                       ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  User configures via Settings > Content Manager Organizer  │
│  → Config saved to database                     │
└──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┘
                       │
                       ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Every subsequent visit                         │
│  → DB config loaded → grouped sidebar shown     │
│  → Survives redeploys ✓                         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Database Storage

The plugin creates a hidden content type content-manager-configuration that stores your config as JSON. It's hidden from the Content Manager and Content-Type Builder — you'll never accidentally see it.

plugin::content-manager-organizer.content-manager-configuration
├── key: "main"          (always "main", one record)
└── config: { ... }      (your full group config as JSON)

Supported Databases

| Database | Supported | |----------|-----------| | SQLite | ✅ Yes | | PostgreSQL | ✅ Yes | | MySQL | ✅ Yes | | MariaDB | ✅ Yes |

📋 Settings Page Reference

Tabs

Switch between Collection Types and Single Types to manage them independently.

Sort Order Toggle

• Alphabetical: Automatically sorts your sidebar groups and items alphabetically.
• Custom Order: Respects the exact drag-and-drop order from the dashboard.

Drag & Drop Interface

• Create Groups: Click the "New Group" button to create a section.
• Drag Items: Drag content types from the left panel into any group on the right.
• Reorder Items: Drag items up and down within a group.
• Reorder Groups: Drag entire groups up and down to change their order in the sidebar.

🔐 Permissions

The plugin registers two permissions under Plugins → Content Manager Organizer:

| Permission | Description | |------------|-------------| | settings.read | View the settings page | | settings.update | Save configuration changes |

Assign these in Settings → Roles to control who can configure the plugin.

🛠️ Advanced: Pre-seeding Config via Code

If you want to ship a default config for your team (without UI configuration), you can seed the database on bootstrap:

// src/index.ts (your Strapi project, not the plugin)
export default {
  async bootstrap({ strapi }) {
    // Only seed if no config exists
    const existing = await strapi.db
      .query('plugin::content-manager-organizer.content-manager-configuration')
      .findOne({ where: { key: 'main' } });
 
    if (!existing) {
      await strapi.db
        .query('plugin::content-manager-organizer.content-manager-configuration')
        .create({
          data: {
            key: 'main',
            config: {
              stripNumericPrefix: true,
              sortBy: 'alphabetical',
              groups: [
                {
                  id: 'products',
                  label: 'Products',
                  defaultExpanded: true,
                  kind: 'collectionType',
                  items: ['product', 'category'],
                },
                {
                  id: 'blog',
                  label: 'Blog',
                  defaultExpanded: false,
                  kind: 'collectionType',
                  items: ['article', 'tag', 'author'],
                },
                {
                  id: 'settings',
                  label: 'Global Settings',
                  defaultExpanded: true,
                  kind: 'singleType',
                  items: ['site-config', 'footer'],
                }
              ],
            },
          },
        });
    }
  },
};

📄 License

MIT © Chetan Hasarmani

🙏 Acknowledgements

Built with Strapi Plugin SDK and Strapi Design System.