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Are you looking to fix the missing admin bar issue in WordPress?
The admin bar is a floating bar that appears on every page of your website when you are logged in. It has helpful shortcuts that take you to different sections of the WordPress admin area.
In this article, we will show you how you can fix the missing WordPress admin bar issue, step by step.
What Is the WordPress Missing Admin Bar Issue?
For most WordPress websites, the admin bar is always at the top of the screen when you are logged in. But, when users are experiencing the missing admin bar issue, it will be replaced by a white bar at the top of the screen.
This can be very inconvenient since you have to go to your WordPress admin panel (WP admin) whenever you want to edit posts and pages, respond to comments, change plugin settings, and do other actions. This means logged-in users can’t easily do things from the front end of your website.
The missing admin bar issue is usually caused by poorly coded themes, plugin conflicts, and user profiles that aren’t set up the right way.
With that said, let’s take a look at a few ways you can fix missing admin bar issue on your site. Simply use the quick links below to go straight to the method you want to try:
Method 1: Fix Missing Admin Bar by Checking User Profile Settings
One of the easiest fixes for the WordPress admin bar issue is checking your WordPress user profile settings. There is a setting that lets you turn off the admin bar for specific users.
This could have been turned off by mistake or disabled by another user on your website.
To check this, simply go to Users » Profile in your WordPress admin panel and then locate the ‘Toolbar’ option.
You need to make sure the box that says ‘Show Toolbar when viewing site’ is checked.
Then, click the ‘Update Profile’ button at the bottom of the page to save your settings.
Method 2: Fix Missing Admin Bar By Checking WordPress Theme Files
Another common reason for the missing admin bar is when your WordPress theme is missing the wp_footer function.
First, you will want to switch back to a default theme. This will help you see if your current theme is causing the problem.
Simply go to Appearance » Themes in your WordPress dashboard, hover over one of the default theme options, and then click ‘Activate’.
If the admin bar appears, then you know there is an issue with your existing WordPress theme.
Now, switch back to your original theme and create a complete WordPress backup so that you can restore your site if anything goes wrong.
After that, you must connect to your WordPress site using an SFTP/FTP client or the File Manager app in your WordPress hosting account dashboard.
For more details, you can see our beginner’s guide on how to use FTP to upload files to WordPress.
Next, go to your website theme folder, which is located inside wp-content/themes/your-theme-name, and find a file called footer.php.
After that, you need to open the file in your preferred text editor and scroll to the end of the file to see if you have this code before the closing <body> tag:
If you don’t have this, then you will need to add the code and upload the saved file back to your server.
Checking Functions.php File for Added Line of Code
Another reason for the missing admin bar error is that it is being hidden by your theme’s functions.php file. This code snippet could have been added by your theme developer.
To fix this, you need to open up your functions.php file and then look for the following code snippet in the file and delete it.
After that, you just need to save the file and upload it back to your website’s theme folder.
Method 3: Fix Missing Admin Bar By Checking for WordPress Plugin Issues
A plugin conflict or a poorly-coded plugin could also be causing the missing admin bar issue in WordPress.
First, you need to figure out which plugin is causing the problem. To do this, navigate to Plugins » Installed Plugins to reach the active plugins page.
Next, you need to select all the plugins, then select ‘Deactivate’ from the ‘Bulk Actions’ dropdown menu.
Next, click the ‘Apply’ button to deactivate every plugin.
After that, you can go one by one and click the ‘Activate’ button underneath each plugin.
If you activate a plugin and it causes the admin bar to disappear, then you need to deactivate it and find a replacement. For more ideas, see our list of the must-have WordPress plugins for business websites.
Finally, another problem could be causing the admin bar to disappear. If none of the above solutions worked, then you can turn on debugging so that WordPress will show you warnings and notices that were hidden before.
To do this, you need to open your wp-config.php file and locate the line of code that says:
Then, you need to change the ‘false’ to ‘true’.
This will give you clues as to what is causing the issue so that you can troubleshoot WordPress to solve the problem.
For more details, see our beginner’s guide to troubleshooting WordPress errors.
We hope this article helped you fix the ‘WordPress admin bar not showing’ issue. You may also want to see our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website and our comparison of the best GoDaddy alternatives.
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