Change design of the sidebar

Would also be lovely to be able to change the icons of the custom links

Agreed, It would be great to have a main home page that you always start on, that doesn't have updating information like comments, that people can come back to center with the sidebar as the rooms and resources on the left.

I would also love to see messages on the same left side menu. With the new design, everything is on the left side (on desktop), except messages. It feels like it's on an island by itself in the top, right corner. I would love to keep those back over where they used to be, or at least the messages menu option (instead of seeing all the messages there like they used to be).

I like the new design a lot, however, the right sidebar… I can't find a way to expand it so that I can see the names of the members which is something I really do need to see. Not sure if that's part of this?

This would be amazing and I hope must be on the roadmap. The current design feels overly complicated and a bit off putting from a user experience point of view