Including SMF feature inside WordPress

I recommend not trying to leverage the admin bar’s features to get what you want. I think it’d be better to develop your own top bar. You could disable admin bar display on the front end if you wish to, leaving only your own top bar visible.

If you are not using a custom theme that can be freely altered, you should create a child theme. You might want to significantly alter the theme’s nav menu section, or you could incorporate it into your new top bar code.

You mainly would need to copy all the HTML responsible for the top bar into the correct position of your theme’s header.php template. You also need to replicate all the CSS responsible for the top bar’s styling and appearance into the theme’s style.css file. Your browser’s element inspector tool can help you identify the applicable CSS you’d need to replicate.

Some rudimentary PHP knowledge is needed to do this, mainly just to avoid syntax errors when pasting in the HTML. Clear understanding of HTML and CSS would be most beneficial. You might need to alter some HTML or CSS to properly integrate it into your theme, but most of the effort is just copy/paste. What is key is knowing what to copy and where to paste.

Thank you for taking the time to give me your advice. It makes a lot more sense to make my own bar in that fashion.