How to Use the WordPress Toolbar to Increase Efficiency

By Kyle Bowman | January 11, 2016

Many new WordPress users don’t take advantage of the ease and time savings the WordPress Toolbar offers. The WordPress Toolbar serves as a shortcut bar that can be enabled or disabled based on preferences.

The principle to remember here is twofold:

You can quickly toggle between the front side of your site and various section in the backend of your site.
Depending on the plugins you have activated, you can quickly access important areas like SEO.

If you’re doing a lot of work adding content, keep reading, because this is a tremendous time saver.

WordPress Toolbar Overview

To enable or disable the toolbar, navigate to Users > Your Profile and select your preference as noted in the red box below:

Let’s look into the various parts of the toolbar and how they can be used.

Section 1: Site Name

This section contains four areas: Dashboard, Themes, Widgets, and Menus.

Note: Once in the admin panel, you can quickly toggle back to the front end as well!

Section 2: Customize

Select Customize in the WordPress Toolbar if you would like to be taken directly to the customize section.

The customize section, as seen below, allows you to made changes to the following:

Section 3: New

If you’re adding a lot of content, you should familiarize yourself with this handy shortcut allowing you to quickly add the following:

Section 4: Edit Page

If you’re working on a page, you can quickly edit it by selecting “Edit Page”.

Note: If you are working in a Post, the title of this section would change to “Edit Post”, but the principle is the same.

There you have it! You’re well on your way to becoming a WordPress pro!