WordPress 3.1 is now out and one of the most talked about features is the “admin bar”. WordPress.com users have had something similar for a while, and it seems to be one of those “love it or hate it” features. (If you’re not a fan of the admin bar – then check out Scott Kingsley’s excellent Admin Bar Disabler.)

Personally I’m a big fan of the feature, it makes the whole system just that little bit easier to use for non technical people with it’s simple menus for adding new posts, managing comments, and being alerted to updates:

However, the admin bar only shows up when you’re logged in – which means that your users have to go to login before they’ll see it. That’s fine if you tick the “Remember Me” box when logging in – but I’m not sure I’m happy to recommend to people that they stay permanently logged in.

So, one of the first things I thought of with the new feature was “Wouldn’t it be great if the admin bar was always there”.

Announcing the “Always Show The Admin Bar” plugin.

This handily ensures that the admin bar is always visible for anyone who’s previously logged into the site. It’s a neat solution for providing site editors / admins with an easy to use way to log in, while not cluttering up your site for everyday visitors with an intrusive login form.

If you like it – you should donate here: