Admin and Action Bars

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.

Table of Contents

Admin Bar

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 from within your account.

This toolbar may not be altered or removed, except on sites with a Business Plan.

My Site(s)

My Site will take you to the main menu for editing and managing your site. By default, the first page you will see is your Stats page. All of the tools you need to create site pages, posts, edit existing content, and manage your settings will be in a menu under My Site.

Switch Site

You’ll 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.

Reader

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).

Write, Profile & Notifications

On the right-hand side of your Admin Bar is 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 such 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, account settings, purchases, and more from this section.

Clicking on Notifications will open a dropdown that displays your latest notifications, including recent likes and comments.

Action Bar

The Action Bar appears at the bottom right of your site. Various shortcuts appear when expanded through the three dots in the Action Bar.

Not Logged-in Visitors

Visitors who are not logged in to WordPress.com will see:

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.

Logged-in Visitors

Visitors who are logged in to WordPress.com will see:

Action Bar on Your Site

If you access any of your own sites that do not have plugins enabled, you will see:

You can hide the Action Bar from your site using Custom CSS code.

I Don’t See the Action Bar on My Site

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.