There have been lots of complaints about WordPress’ visual editor. It adds extra (usually unwanted) formatting whenever you have a line break. It’s just a pain to deal with. Understandably, I personally never use it. For those who may not be knowledgeable at HTML, there are excellent alternatives available. In this guide I’ll go over:

  • TinyMCE Advanced
  • Dean’s FCKEditor
  • How to disable the visual editor

If you’re fed up with the default WordPress visual editor, I suggest you read on.

Make sure before reading on you know how to install a WordPress plugin. Installing with OneClick will also work with both of these plugins.

TinyMCE Advanced

TinyMCE Advanced is a plugin which will add on to the current functionality of the WordPress visual editor. You’ll be able to add and remove items from the write menu. You can get the plugin here.

WordPress TinyMCE Advanced

You’ll be able to add items such as font size and face, tables, smilies, among other things. It can also disable the automatic adding of paragraph and line break tags.

Dean’s FCKEditor

Now, if you want something completely different than the WordPress default editor. Try FCKEditor for WordPress. What this does is replace WordPress’ default editor with FCKEditor, a powerful editing software - similar to MS Word, except for the web.

FCKeditor for WordPress

The picture explains it all, complete transformation of the editor. Convinced yet? Download the plugin here.

Disabling the Visual Editor

If you’re comfortable with HTML code, and would rather just get rid of the visual editor altogether - there’s a quick way to do this. In your WordPress admin panel, simply navigate to Users -> Your Profile.

WordPress Disable Visual Editor

Uncheck the box that says: Use the visual editor when writing. And that’s that, no more visual editor. You’ll be stuck with the code editor from now on - unless you check off that box again.

Conclusion

Hope you found some good alternatives to the WordPress visual editor after reading this post. Thankfully with WordPress, if there’s functionality you don’t like, there’s usually a plugin to fix it.

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By: Leland on May. 17

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9 Comments »

Comment by Ben Swift
2008-05-17 08:55:26

Wow, how easy is that?

Thanks Leland :)

 
Comment by Autononomouse
2008-05-17 09:01:29

My favourite editor has to be the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, which I now have on my website.

As I said before, thanks Leland! :D

 
Comment by RevolucionPC
2008-05-17 11:20:11

THXs fot the tip, I was looking for something like that, really good stuff…

 
Comment by BANAGO
2008-05-17 11:47:07

And why bother to? :)

 
Comment by Sue
2008-05-25 14:00:37

I too switched to Tiny MCE Advanced. I had issues with an earlier version of it, but it works so great now, I can’t live without it.

I feel it’s better than Dean’s FCKEditor because I can still switch to code mode when I want/need. Can’t do that with FCKEditor.

 
Comment by Justin Tadlock
2008-05-29 08:37:25

Good post. I think this would definitely be helpful for people looking for more functionality, or less, from the WordPress post editor.

What I’d be interested in seeing is some kind of stats on how people use the WordPress editor. I remember turning it off about a week after I started using WordPress three years ago. I’m not even sure how much more advanced it has become. What percentage of WordPress users do you think use the visual editor versus the HTML editor?

 
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