Everyone who manages a BuddyPress community needs to know about the new BuddyPress Toolbar plugin. It’s a small and lightweight plugin that changes the WordPress admin bar to include useful admin links and resources for BuddyPress sites.

The BuddyPress Toolbar includes links to all of the common settings pages, such as components, forums, widgets, users and profile fields/groups. It also gives you easy access to BuddyPress-related links and resources, such as the development blog, Trac tickets and bug reports, the BuddyPress codex, documentation, support forums and more. I cannot think of any reason a BuddyPress site administrator wouldn’t want all of these links handy in the admin bar. While working on your BuddyPress site, you can quickly jump over to the reference the codex or view your active extensions. All the settings you need are just one click away.

One of the best features of the BuddyPress Toolbar is that it supports many other BuddyPress plugins and themes out of the box, including BuddyPress Courseware, the Frisco theme, Custom Community, BP Group Organizer, and many more. The developer is very open to adding more useful third-party plugin links to settings pages, so if you want your BuddyPress plugin or theme added, make sure to get in touch with him. The BuddyPress Toolbar is also localized and ready for translation if you’d like to submit one.

The new admin bar will not be displayed unless the current user has the WordPress cabability of install_plugins. BuddyPress Toolbar is compatible with BuddyPress 1.5 as well as the upcoming 1.6 release. This is a plugin that I would recommend to anyone who manages a BuddyPress community. It makes all of your BuddyPress-related links instantly more accessible and can save you quite a bit of time navigating your settings menu. Download it for free from the WordPress plugin repository.