With a cleaner look and a focus on the more relevant actions

Sep 23, 2011 15:41 GMT  ·  By

WordPress.com is making some improvements to the ubiquitous admin bar that adorns every WordPress.com blog. It's cleaning it up a bit and it's also making it more intuitive to use.

The goal is to focus on the activities that users will want the most and to make it easier and clearer for users how to Follow or Like a blog.

"Now on the right hand side of the admin bar where your Gravatar is displayed, you have easy access to your user profile, all the blogs you can contribute to, and all the comments you’ve made across WordPress.com," WordPress.com's Erica Johnson announced.

"In the blog menu on the left side of the admin bar, you’ll see all the stuff related to the blog you’re currently viewing," she explained.

"Next to the blog menu are the Follow and Like buttons, along with a sparkline, which reflects the last 48 hours of page views on the blog," she added.

This grouping of related tasks makes sense. Anything having to do with the blog you're visiting, either yours or someone else's, is on the left, stuff related to you profile and the search button, things not specific to any blog are on the right.

WordPress.com also worked to remove unnecessary text and make the buttons smaller where possible. It also grouped some of the less used buttons under menus.

In the profile menu, you get access to your profile, obviously, to comments you've made on WordPress.com, to your Dashboard and any of your blogs.

If you're viewing your own blog, the blog menu will display links to several popular sections, you can go to your Dashboard, edit posts, add new ones, view and moderate comments and so on.

Overall, it's a nice visual update, but it also makes the bar more useful, an improvement on all fronts.

Photo Gallery (2 Images)

The new blog menu for the WordPress.com admin bar
The old versus the new WordPress.com admin bar
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