WordPress: Please Bring Back The Old Admin Bar (Or Give Us The Option To Switch Back)

In late September, WordPress decided it’d be a superb idea to change their platform’s Admin Bar to a more simplified version. They posted a blog post about it on their blog titled  “Enjoy A Shiny New Simplified Admin Bar” but personally I have not been enjoying it. In fact, I have been finding this new bar downright annoying.

I know, as well, that I am not alone on this. When I asked on Twitter if I was alone on this I got an immediate response and I would like to hear from other bloggers using the WordPress platform if they are with me on this.

Old WordPress Admin Bar

New WordPress Admin Bar

I understand where WordPress was coming from when they simplified it. According to the blog post linked above they did it to “make it easier for [a blog’s] visitors to interact with [a blogger] via Likes and Follows, so [they have] cleaned it up a bit.” And I am all for this, keep innovating WordPress! Keep trying new things and making it easier for us to share content. But I say all that with one major stipulation – if it aint broke don’t fix it. What I mean is not one place in your post did you mention that you had looked into this and it would result in more Likes and Follows and you didn’t say that people had been complaining about the number of Likes and Follows they received. In fact, while I will sometimes Like a post I would say the vast majority of my friends, relatives, and acquaintances do not have WordPress accounts. Not, they-started-a-blog-once-don’t-post-but-have a-WordPress-account, they simply do not have a WordPress account. Even for myself I don’t think I have ever clicked that Follow button – for my own personal blog reading I subscribe to a site’s RSS feed using GoogleReader and if the site doesn’t have an RSS feed chances are pretty high I won’t read it again for a month or two if ever again.

What I am trying to say is that this new Admin bar is trying to foster a community of bloggers to read each others blogs – I get it – but there is such a thing as oversimplification. Beyond that, I am not even asking you, WordPress and your parent company Automattic Inc take a step backward to the old Admin bar and get rid of the new one. All I ask is that you give us the option of bringing back the old Admin bar for our own personal use (maybe even only when we are on our own blogs?) or at least some of the functionality of the old bar that is lost in the new bar.

I mean, let’s be serious here – am I going to follow my own blog? Why the heck would I ever click that button? I don’t need to follow my own blog because I post on my own blog! I know all the content written there because it’s my blog! (Also, I do subscribe to it in GoogleReader so I can share my best posts with other people on GoogleReader.)

So what do you say WordPress & Automattic? Bring back the option for the Old Admin Bar?

What do you say readers – looking at those of you who are bloggers and use the WordPress platform – do you want the old bar back?

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