We had just launched a beautiful new website for one of my lovely clients, Roberta, who is doing really good work in helping widowed and divorced women find their confidence in themselves again.
We had completed our hourly training to walk through WordPress, give it a good how-do-you-do, and getting-to-know-you once over, and she was on her way. So far, so good.
A few weeks later, I get a mildly-alarmed voice mail from Roberta expressing justifiable concern that a toolbar had appeared at the top of her website, and it looked like it would allow anyone to be able to access things in her WordPress dashboard.
After I assured her that wasn’t the case, I pretty quickly realized that I had completely glossed over something in our training because it was one of those things that as a seasoned WordPress user, I don’t even hardly see any longer much less remember to point out to someone who is new to the platform.
So with that in mind…
Here are some quick pointers to help you understand and leverage that toolbar when you come across it on your own, shiny-new WordPress website:
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WordPress is smart (sometimes a little too smart) and tries to be helpful
If you’ve been logged into your WordPress dashboard any time in the past 2 weeks, WordPress will remember that and present you with a helpful toolbar at the top of your screen that lets you easily access some behind the scenes WordPress tasks directly and without having to open up the dashboard again.
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You are the only person that sees that toolbar
Regular visitors will never see that toolbar, because they would never have been logged into your websites dashboard, so there is no cause for concern that someone might inadvertently (or even maliciously) be able to change anything about your website or your website content.
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The toolbar actually comes in kind of handy sometimes
These are some of the quick actions you can typically perform directly from that toolbar. You can…
- Edit the post or page that you’re currently viewing by clicking the EDIT button
- Start a new blog post (by clicking on NEW / POST)
- View and moderate any comments you might have received on your blog posts by clicking on the conversation icon
- Tweak your sidebar or footer (by hovering over your website name and clicking WIDGETS). For instance, you might want to add a graphic and link to a new program or service you’re promoting.
- If you’re running the Yoast SEO plugin, you can also initiate a little keyword research for your next blog post by clicking on the Yoast icon, hovering over KEYWORD RESEARCH and choosing one of the 3 amazing tools that are available at your fingertips.
- Edit the post or page that you’re currently viewing by clicking the EDIT button
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If it is annoying to you, it is possible to turn it off.
In your WordPress dashboard, click on USERS in your left hand sidebar then click on your own username. Once it brings up your profile, you can uncheck the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” option and that will get rid of the toolbar all together for you.
So the Admin Toolbar is nothing to be alarmed about, and it’s actually quite useful. Next time you’re on your website, if you haven’t already, give it a click and see what it can do for you.
If you have a burning question about WordPress or some feature you’d like to understand better, give me a holler and let me know what it is. I’d love to help out! (And it will likely turn into one of these awesome blog posts.)
