You may have noticed a gray, blue, or black bar at the top of your pages when logged into your WordPress.com account. This bar is called the Admin Bar, an easy-to-access toolbar with shortcuts to some central WordPress.com dashboard pages.
In the bottom right of your, or another, WordPress.com site, you will also see the Action Bar. This bar provides different shortcuts based on what page you’re on and if you’re logged into your account.
This guide explains these tools in more detail.
In this guide
The Admin Bar provides quick links to your dashboard, the Reader, Write (to start a new post), your profile, help, and the notification bell.
When you visit any WordPress.com site while logged into your account you will see a thinner, black version of the Admin Bar. This version has the same functionality as the Admin Bar you see within your account.
This toolbar may not be altered or removed. However, on plugin-enabled plans, site owners can switch to the WordPress.org toolbar.
Visitors not logged into WordPress.com will not see the toolbar at the top of your site.
My Site will take you to your dashboard, where you’ll find the main menu for editing and managing your site. All the tools you need to create site pages, and posts, edit existing content and manage your settings will be in a menu under My Site.
By default, the first page you will see is My Home. You will find helpful tips and tricks on My Home for growing your site.
You will see My Sites instead of My Site in your Admin bar if you have more than one site. You can switch to another site you own or manage from My Sites.
- Click on My Sites.
- Click Switch Site.
- Select the site you want to edit from the list.
The Reader button takes you to the WordPress.com Reader, where you can see the latest posts from any sites you follow and browse topics (tags).
On the right-hand side of your Admin Bar are Write, Profile (or Me), and Notifications.
The Write button takes you to the New Post Editor.
The number to the right of the Write button indicates the number of Post drafts you have. Clicking that number shows the list of your drafts.
The Profile link (which shows your Gravatar if you have one) takes you to the Me section of your account. You can manage your account profile, settings, purchases, and more from this section.
The Help icon opens the Help Center, where you can find helpful support guides, videos, webinars, and options for contacting our Happiness Engineers.
Clicking on Notifications will open a dropdown that displays your latest notifications, including recent likes and comments.
The Action Bar appears at the bottom right of your site. Various shortcuts appear when expanded through the three dots in the Action Bar.
Visitors who are not logged in to WordPress.com will see the following:
- Sign Up
- Log In
- Copy Shortlink
- Report this content
- Manage Subscriptions
Note that, depending on the theme you are using, the Action Bar may not show the Follow option on sites that have a Static Homepage set or on sites that have less than two Blog Posts.
Visitors who are logged in to WordPress.com will see the following:
- Get theme: theme-name
- Copy shortlink
- Report this content
- Manage Subscriptions
If you access any WordPress.com sites that do not have plugins enabled, you will see the following:
- Get theme for one of your other sites
- Copy shortlink
- View post in Reader
- Manage subscriptions
- Collapse this bar
And the normal Follow button is replaced with Customize, Edit, and Stats.
You can hide the Action Bar from your site using the following Custom CSS code.
#actionbar {
display: none;
}Learn more about adding Custom CSS.
The Action Bar is not available for plugin-enabled sites. Instead, you can use the Subscribe Block to add an option for your visitors to subscribe to your site.
