so what has changed? things wont suddenly start working differently…

and you mean the wp admin bar here right?  or at least that is what you say…  nothing to do with simple press…

and the default behaviour of wp is to show it to all users though they can each go turn it off in the wp profiles…  if you want to completely remove it, you will need to write some code or use a plugin such as:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-admin-bar/

Hi. 

1.   You said things won’t suddenly start working differently but they did.  That’s why I listed above what I had worked on before the change.

What changed is that suddenly when members login to our site they have that grey WP admin bar showing which they didn’t have two days ago.  It hasn’t shown to members since I installed your forum — only to admins.  

2.   I don’t know why it’s suddenly visible.  If you don’t think one of the things I did stated above caused the problem, then I certainly haven’t a clue what happened.  Nor do I care.  I just would like it back the way it was. 

3.   I understand that the default WP behavior is to show it.  But two days ago, it didn’t show to members only to admins.  That’s the way my client wants it because the site is beautiful and that bar is ugly.  

I don’t want to remove the admin bar completely but I would like it to go back to only showing to logged in admins as it was before, if possible.  If not, I’ll kill it.

In your expert opinion, is it better to try changing its behavior with css or hacking the function.php?  I’m trying to avoid too many plugins if I can.

Thank you.

have you started allowing members into the admin?  ie were you using the sp block admin function but now turned it off?

we really dont do anything to or know about the wp admin bar…  unless the block admin affects its displaying too…

No, the site’s not live yet so there aren’t any real members.  I have been testing it as a “Member.”  The sp block admin function is turned on and it will stay that way.

Sorry to bother you. I’ve only been aware of your forum since a few days after you released v 5.0 (about a month, right?) and, although I’ve been designing sites since 2006, they’ve all been shopping cart sites. So I’m new to WP and very new to your great forum plugin. 

I apologize again for bugging you about what I guess is a WP issue but I just don’t/didn’t know the difference.

Mea culpa. 

Oh, it’s no problem. Sorry, was just pointing out its a wp thing. I would search the wp codex for an admin bar plugin that does what you want.

Start with: http://digwp.com/2011/04/admin-bar-tricks/

Which might give you some insight how to enable for admins only.

Thank you. I’d already done a search and fixed the problem before I came back here but I appreciate the link.  Funny enough, the solution I used was on that page, LOL.

For the benefit of others who might want to keep your forum looking great by hiding that seriously ugly and totally redundant WP bar from members but leaving it useful for admins this is what worked for me.  I put the following code in my theme’s functions.php:

// show admin bar only for admins
if (!current_user_can(‘manage_options’)) {
 add_filter(‘show_admin_bar’, ‘__return_false’);
}

The point was made that any setting can be used for current_user_can()  to specify showing or hiding the admin bar to any user group.

For the record, I’m using: 
WordPress v 3.3.1
Simple:Press v 5.0.3
Gabfire’s Transcript Theme v 1.5

Thanks Mr. Papa.  Your forum is too great looking and those overlays just ROCK so I really didn’t want to ruin how nice it looks!

PS. Edited this a bunch b/c I couldn’t get the syntax highlighter not to truncate the code so I finally just blocked it. LOL. 

Feel the same way about that damn bar. Whatever possessed the WP team to make it so hard to get rid of the thing is beyond me.

Yeah, me too.  And while hunting for a way to do so I kept reading about code functionality and we can do this and we can do that in defence of that ugly grey stripe — all posted by techs, mind you — and not a single mention was made of the fact that blogs were invented for WRITERS TO WRITE and for PEOPLE TO READ. 

Not for us to code.  But for writers, most of which are about as tech savvy as a snail (present company excepted!) and need WordPress to make it easy for them to spill out onto an electronic page their dreams, their stories, and their brilliant wit which entertains us all. 

When did we start to think that we’re central to blogging?  We’re supposed to be the support personnel.

Well said 🙂

Thank you. 🙂

np. glad we could help!