NOTE: This plugin is no longer in development, so I recommend Viper’s WordPress Admin Bar. If that one doesn’t work for some reason, this one still does.
WP Admin Bar is an indispensable WordPress plugin which displays links to the Administration Panel at the top of a blog’s page – but only for users who are logged in and have permission to view the given functions.
I find this plugin to be absolutely essential to my enjoyment of WordPress. It allows me to easily jump back and forth between viewing the blog and various management functions on the back end. If you’ve never used it before you’re going to wonder how you got by without it all this time.
I’ve personally been using the WP Admin Bar from Matt Read since I started using WordPress. But with the update to WordPress 2.1 it isn’t functioning properly, Matt hasn’t updated the plugin in almost a year, and his site is currently very broken – so I decided to make the changes myself.
While I was modifying the plugin I made a number of other changes including:
- Removed support for WP 1.5. This cuts the coding in half.
- Removed the random message generator. No need to spend CPU cycles on this.
- Added new Admin links directly to “Users” and “Comments” moderation.
- Updated the links to work properly in WP 2.1.x
- Removed the automatic STYLE insertion into the WP Header.
Please Note:
If you are using my Rapid Access theme, you don’t need to do anything other than install and activate the plugin. The theme already has all of the code in it!
Frequently Asked Questions (that I’m sure are coming)
Q: Why did you remove the automatic STYLE insertion?
A: Because style rules should always be embedded into your site’s style sheet. There are too many reasons to list. It will only take you a minute to cut and paste them.
Q: Why did you remove support for WP1.5?
A: I don’t have a working copy to test it on, plus you can keep using Matt’s old version.
Q: Why are there different versions for 2.0.x and 2.1.x?
A: Because the WP developers made some slight changes that have to be compensated for.
Instructions (PLEASE READ!):
1.) If you are upgrading from the old WP Admin Bar use the Plugin Manager to disable it. If you do not, there WILL be a problem.
2.) Download, unzip and upload WP Admin Bar Reloaded to your plugins directory. wp-admin-bar-reloaded.zip
- If your blog is running WordPress 2.0.x upload only the version titled: wp-admin-bar-reloaded-v2_0.php.
- If your blog is running WordPress 2.1.x upload only the version titled: wp-admin-bar-reloaded-v2_1.php.
- There is only one difference between these two files. It has to do with the link to the Write page.
3.) Activate the plugin in WordPress.
4.) Add the following lines to the very end of your “style.css” or “style.php” file.
#wp-admin-bar {margin:0; padding:5px; background:#f9f9f9; border:1px solid #666; clear:both; text-align:center}
#wp-admin-bar ul {margin:0; padding:0}
#wp-admin-bar ul li {list-style-type:none; display:inline; margin:0 10px; padding:0}
5.) Add the following line to your “header.php” file immediately after the “<body>” tag:
<?php if(function_exists('wp_admin_bar')) wp_admin_bar(); ?>
6.) Enjoy!
If you have any problems or find a bug please drop me a comment below.
This plugin is distributed under the Nice Person license as PostcardWare. Please use it, modify it, build commercial Web sites around it, and make the Web a faster, more accessible place. Here is what you could do for me in return:
- If you could provide a link back to any article you find useful on One Man’s Blog from your Web site I sure would appreciate it.
- If you discover ways to improve the speed, accessibilty or features of this plugin, please let me know.
- Do something nice for someone you don’t know today.
- Finally, if you really like it, drop me an old fashioned post card in the mail! That would be completely awesome! You can send them to:
John Pozadzides
PO Box 2591
Frisco, TX 75034
USA
I’ll publish the really interesting ones, so include a URL!
The Man,
Thanks for the tip, the only problem was that having two tags messes up the widget look (they appear as two widgets) so I did the following ‘ugly’ hack:
1) Removed this code from the .php
# Login and logout link.
echo “\n\t”; wp_loginout(); echo “”;
2) In the following line, I removed
[Note: I'm no good at php, so I'm not sure whether I could have deleted the entire line.]
3) I removed this line:
echo ”;
4) I put the following into a Samsarin PHP Widget:
So basically I had to get the and tags out of the php in order to allow the wp_loginout to be inside the , but not part of the IF rule in the PHP. It would be nicer though if the plugin, instead of deciding whether or not to load depending on login status, decided *what* to load depending on that information. That way it could all go into the PHP.
I hope this helps, for an example click on my name, you can see the widget in action there, it’s the one called ‘Logbuch’.
Oh, another idea would be to have a link to the registration page which would disappear once you’re logged in.
BRILLIANT.
I’ve implemented this on my site and I’ve added this to my WordPress Plugins and Add-ons page that several people reference.
Thanks Rob. Of course, I can’t take full credit. Matt Read had the original brainstorm. I just added incremental improvements and updates. But I am happy that so many people are finding the updated version as useful as I do.
John
Yes !!! It works fine. Thanks a lot for this plugin. Keep on “plugining”
Hello.
With FireFox and Windows 2000, no trouble but with IceWeasel (same as FireFox) and Linux (Debian Etch) the links aren’t on the same line but on 10 lines. I’ve made a screen shot on my blog : http://wordpress-tuto.fr/admin-bar-82
What can I Do ?
Libretto,
I’m sorry you’re experiencing that issue. I know it’s frustrating. I have no experience with IceWeasel, but I’ll look into this in a little while. At the moment I’m heading out the door to eat with my wife.
Just to be clear, you’re telling me that you did install the style into your stylesheet, and viewing your page works properly in FireFox, but not IceWeasel, correct?
Be back later,
john
Libretto (and everyone else),
First of all, I just noticed that I had an error in the CSS. I’ve corrected it above, so please either recopy it into your style sheet, or simply remove “align:center” from the very beginning of the first line.
It is possible that this invalid definition was causing the error in IceWeasel, though the software should be resilient enough to keep going.
Other than that, the style declarations are completely valid and there is nothing out of the ordinary there. Furthermore they are very specific to lists that have an id=”wp-admin-bar” which should not interfere with anything else. So, it is possible that there is just a problem with IceWeasel’s CSS rendering.
One alternative you might consider would be putting it in a sidebar widget. Check out Gloda’s posts above for more info on that.
Let me know if any of the above worked for you.
John
Thanks a lot for the support. Tonight it’s going well with iceweasel. Probably a trouble with the navigator’s cache (sorry for the very poor english). BTW a friend of mine had the same trouble and said that removing “clear:both;” in “#wp-admin-bar”.
I hope it helps
Dear Mr.
Wonderful admin tool bar, but it can be improved. Only the first level are displayed. Could you look the code of the “admin drop down menu”. It provides access to 2nd menu level from the admin. I supposed it is not a major problem to merge the two concepts. http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/wordpress-admin-menu-drop-down-css/