Dude, I already made an app with a side menu and it's very simple.
Take a look at the documentation about it at link
You only need to use Ionic's own directives at a glance.
In this example below I picked up a project of mine, basically you have:
- Ionic Menu Container:
ion-side-menus
- Container content:
ion-side-menu-content
- Navigation bar, the top bar of the app:
ion-nav-bar
- Return button "native", responds to the browsing history:
ion-nav-back-button
- A container of buttons to insert in the top bar:
ion-nav-buttons
- Browser component of app views that I want to appear inside the menu container
- Out of the content container, comes the menus and their contents:
ion-side-menu
<ion-side-menus enable-menu-with-back-views="false">
<ion-side-menu-content>
<ion-nav-bar class="bar-dark">
<ion-nav-back-button></ion-nav-back-button>
<ion-nav-buttons side="left">
<button class="button button-icon button-clear ion-navicon" menu-toggle="left"></button>
</ion-nav-buttons>
</ion-nav-bar>
<ion-nav-view name="appView"></ion-nav-view> // nav view para trocar as telas mantendo o contexto do menu
</ion-side-menu-content>
<ion-side-menu side="left">
<ion-content>
<ion-list>
<ion-item menu-close ui-sref="page2">
Página 1
</ion-item>
<ion-item menu-close ui-sref="page2">
Página 2
</ion-item>
</ion-list>
</ion-content>
</ion-side-menu>
</ion-side-menus>