Admin bar does not display when going from the dashboard to the site unless the Refresh button is pressed

[pressuser79]

I noticed a condition where the Admin Bar does not display across the top of the front end (not the dashboard). This happens in a bare bones installation, default 2013 theme, no active plugins.

0. Clear the browser cache/history just to be sure.
1. Put the URL of the site directly into the browser to view the site's front page.
2. Modify the URL by adding /wp-admin to the end of the URL. It's critical that this done after visiting the front page of the site.
3. On the login page, login to the wordpress dashboard.
4. While viewing the dashboard, click on the top left corner of the site (on the admin bar) on the button next to the Wordpress logo. This button contains the site name and will take you back to the front end of the site. (You may also hover over this button and select the "Visit Site" link that drops down.)
5. You will be taken back to the front page of the site, but the admin bar WILL NOT be displayed. However, if you press the browsers Refresh button, the admin bar will magically pop in and proceed to work as expected.

Note
It is critical that you first visit the site's front page and then try to login. If you were to go directly to ​http://site.com/wp-admin, the admin bar WILL display correctly when you go from the dashboard back to the site. There's something about visiting the front page first and then coming back to it after login that is preventing the admin bar from displaying. Perhaps something is being cached and the Refresh action clears the cache, allowing the admin bar to be displayed.

[samuelsidler]

@pressuer79: Thank you for this report! Unfortunately, I can't actually reproduce this issue using the current WordPress trunk. Can you reproduce it with WordPress 3.8.1?

@bansod_deven: Please don't close tickets without leaving a comment, otherwise it's unclear why you closed it. Likewise, please only use keywords from the list. The two keywords you added aren't ones we use.

[nacin]

This sounds like caching control headers on the frontend. If this isn't reproducible in stock WordPress, then it's likely out of our control.

[pressuser79]

@samuelsidler: I am able to reproduce on stock Wordpress 3.8.1. I'm starting to think it might have something to do with the server configuration. All of the Wordpress sites from this particular server have this error. I checked one site on a different server and it worked fine.

@nacin: Is there something specific I should check?

[eherman24]

@pressuser79 maybe check your .htaccess file for cache headers being sent. I haven't noticed this issue before when developing sites locally and on live sites. It does sound more of a caching issue as opposed to a WordPress bug itself.

[SergeyBiryukov]

This sounds like some kind of a caching issue specific to your configuration, probably similar to the one in #28114.

Until the exact bug is identified and confirmed, I'd suggest trying the ​support forums for troubleshooting.