Custom ordering for "Stack Exchange All Sites" dropdown

Question

Stack Exchange top bar is quite useful now and I like it. I have a request for custom ordering.

There are times when I wish ordering of the top bar is customizable like:

• Since there are 1 current site + Current site's meta + 4-5-6(?) top sites, It needs some effort to reach a site if it is not within the top 4 sites
• Reaching to a Meta Site is even harder since you must first go to the Main Site and then switch to meta.
• There are some beta sites I visit more often then the sites within my top 4 sites. But since my rep in those beta sites is not quite high.
• There are sites (like programmers) that I like to visit and read topics, but do not distribute to community in asking or answering, so my rep is low.
• I like to watch some beta sites closely, but top bar let me display only 5-6-7(?) sites.
• From time to time, I wish to watch some sites (for a few days.) Then re-change the ordering and turn it back to my normal daily ordering.

So, a customizable Stack Exchange All Sites drop-down can be very useful. There can be two tabs in the drop-down; pre-selected custom ordering and StackExchange default ordering. Or there can be only one ordering and it can be reset to default through a control panel\link\at-the-bottom-shortcut.

Update: as @psubsee2003 mentioned, pinning could be a good idea too.

• psubsee2003: I think what you want could be achieved by letting us "pin" specific sites near the top, or have a separate section of 1 or 2 "pinned" sites that we want to watch
• Laura: We are going to allow users to customize which sites appear at the top of the site switcher. Jeremy mentioned it when we first rolled out the new top bar; we've just been a little slow in building it because of the holidays and whatnot. But this feature is coming soon to a top bar near you!

Answer 1

Your communities should be fully editable and able to be reordered, and you have complete freedom to pin any site you want (including ones you don't have an account on) to your list.

See the StackExchange Blog for details on using this feature.

• user152859: But still showing only top five?
• George Duckett: I've managed to save 7.
• Grace Note: Note that while it's only currently configurable on Meta right now, the configuration extends network-wide anyway. Also, you can save as many as you want but it only properly displays up to 9 sites.
• Adam Lear: @GraceNote The display issue will be fixed in the next build.
• Adam Lear: @127.0.9.6 Not being able to pin per-site metas is an oversight on my part. A fix is coming soon(TM).
• Mp0int: I un-accept the answer, when per-site meta pinning added, I will accept it. Thank you for all (: .
• Adam Lear: @FallenAngel Per-site meta pinning is in. Enjoy!
• user152859: @AnnaLear there's slight confusion regarding "My Communities" concept, the original list showing only sites where I have account but now I can add sites where I don't have account to "My Communities" list. I assume it's by design so worth mentioning this above in the post as it's not part of the original feature request. See this question.
• How About a Nice Big Cup of: @AnnaLear The "resetting" may be due to the fact that when a user goes to a site [oops, community...] where they don't have an account, the switcher will revert to default when visiting that ...site. I understand why this happens, but this experience goes against the "one site, many communities" concept. This is not something that only devoted lurkers experience; the "hot questions" list draws users to various sites all the time, and they'll be trying to use site switcher to go back.
• Jeremy T: @127.0.9.6 It looks like there's not much we can do about that. If you're not logged in, we don't have your list of communities, and for performance reasons we can't just throw it in a cookie.