Using The WordPress Visual Editor
WordPress makes publishing and formatting content online easy by providing users with the option of using a rich, visual editor that does not require knowledge or experience of code (e.g. HTML) to create professional-looking web pages with embedded images, media, etc …
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to use the Visual Editor – what the menu buttons do, how to format text, how to resize the text editor, and more!
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial in this section to learn how to use the Visual Editor …
A Simple Guide To Formatting Text In WordPress
WordPress comes with a simple and easy-to-use feature-rich WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) visual content editor that lets you format text, create hyperlinks, add images and media to your posts and pages, and so much more, just by clicking a few buttons …
Visual Editor Buttons Explained
If you have used a text editor like MS Word before, then the visual editor interface should seem quite familiar to you…
Here is a brief description of the function of each of the WordPress Visual Editor buttons shown in the screenshot above:
1. Title Field – Here’s where you enter the title of your post or page.
2. Permalink – Click on the “edit” button to change the permalink text of your post or page. This is useful if you want to shorten or change the URL of your post or page.
3. Media Manager – Click this button to upload, manage and insert media into your post (e.g. pictures, videos, audio, etc) from your computer, an external URL, or from your site’s own media library.
4. WordPress Visual Editor Tab – Click this tab to access the WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
5. Text Editor Tab – Click this tab to view and work with the code behind your content. Switching between these two tabs allows you to add content in the WYSIWIG mode, and then make changes to the underlying code.
6. Bold – Highlight text and click this button to make the words bold.
7. Italics – Highlight text and click this button to make the words italicized.
8. Strikethrough – Formats selected text as strikethrough
9. Unordered list – Use this button to create an unordered list like the example below:
- List item 1
- List item 2
- List item 3
- etc …
10. Ordered list – Use this button to create an ordered list like the example below:
- List item 1
- List item 2
- List item 3
- etc …
11. Block Quote. Use this function to create a block quote. Simply select the text you want to display in the block quote and click the button.
To exit the quote press the “Enter” key to create a line of space and then click the block quote button again and this will end the command and return your text to normal.
12, 13 & 14. Alignment buttons – Use these buttons to align text and objects inserted into your posts or pages:
12. Align Left
13. Align Center
14. Align Right
Press the “Enter” key and leave a line of space to end the alignment command
15. Insert/Edit Link. Use this button to insert a hyperlink into your text (See “How To Link Content Internally In WordPress Posts And Pages” tutorial for useful tips on using the hyperlink function).
16. Unlink. Select and highlight any text you want to unlink and click this button to remove the hyperlink.
17. Insert More Tag. Clicking this button will insert a “read more” link wherever you have placed your cursor. All text added to a post prior to inserting this tag will display as normal on your post when published, but all content added to the post after this tag will only be displayed to visitors after they click on the “read more” link …
Important: The “Read More” tag does not work on WordPress “Pages”. It is only used on the Home page that shows your latest posts (i.e. your Blog Page).
18. Spell Checker. Use this button to check the spelling of your content. Use the drop-down menu to select a different language …
19. Toggle Full Screen Mode. Clicking this button will toggle your screen between full screen & editor normal screen. This is useful for checking placement of items on the page and for working on your content free of other page element distractions …
20. Show/Hide Kitchen Sink. Click this button to toggle the WordPress visual editor between minimal mode (one row of buttons) and enhanced mode (two rows of buttons).
21. Format Style. Use this feature to format text. When you create a new post or page and start typing into the content area, the text is formatted as “paragraph” (i.e. normal) by default.
To create headings for your content, highlight an area of text and select different format styles from the drop down menu (e.g. heading sizes ranging from h1 to h6) …
22. Underline. Select an area of text and click this button to underline text.
23. Align Full. Use this button to justify your content and display your text neater on your page. This button will adjust the spacing in your text to try and square up every line of text so that the line ends are not “ragged” (as is the case when text is aligned left by default).
24. Select Text Color. Select an area of text, then click on this button and select from the color options in the dropdown menu to change the color of your selected text area …
Note: You can expand the selection of colors available in the color palette by clicking on the More colors button …
You will then have access to an almost limitless choice of colors.
Useful Tip: If you are familiar with the Hexadecimal (HEX) color system, you can just type in the code for the specific color you want into the Color field.
The example below shows the HEX color codes for some of the most commonly used “web safe” colors (i.e. colors that display correctly across most browsers and monitors) …
25. Paste as Plain Text. Click the button marked with a “T” to paste the content of your clipboard into your content editor area as plain text.
26. Paste from Word. Click the button marked with a “W” to paste in text from MS Word.
Note: Pasting text directly from MS Word into your WordPress content editor can introduce unnecessary code into your content and result in errors. MS Word and some other text editors store code that is not directly visible when copying text from a document into the clipboard …
27. Remove formatting. If you notice unwanted formatting code in your text (or your content isn’t displaying as you intended after your post or page has been published), then select all text and click this button to clear all formatting on the page.
Tip: Here is a quick and useful way to test and remove any errors that you suspect may be caused by poor formatting tags without losing your original content.
Before using the “Remove formatting” function, switch to the “Text” tab, then select and copy all of your text to the clipboard …
Paste the content from your clipboard into a new plain text file, then go back to your content and go through the “Remove formatting” process. Now, if something goes wrong, at least you have a backup copy of your content with all the original formatting preserved.
28. Insert custom character. Click this button to insert special characters like © ® ™ a whole bunch of other special characters (e.g. characters for non-English text).
29. Outdent – Click this button to remove indented text & return text to left alignment on the page.
30. Indent – Click this button to indent one or more lines of text to the right.
Here’s a line of indented text (indented by pressing “enter” button).
This line has been indented further to the right by pressing the indent button one more time.
31. Undo. Click this button to undo your previous commands. This is useful if you have accidentally deleted a section of text, or formatted text wrongly and need to backtrack.
32. Redo. Click this button to reinstate a change or deletion that you have undone.
33. Rich Editor Help. Click this button to bring up the WordPress Editor Help feature …
Tip #1: WordPress Content Editor – Power User Shortcuts
As well as using the menu buttons in your Visual Editor toolbar to insert and format content, you can also use the key combinations below as you type. This can help you create and format content faster …
Tip #2 – How To Resize The WordPress Visual Editor Text Box
WordPress provides a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) Visual Editor for creating and editing your posts and pages.
By default, WordPress normally displays around a dozen lines of text in its WYSIWYG Editor …
Depending on your content writing or editing needs, this may not be enough.
So, how can we make the text editor larger?
Well … before the WordPress 3.5 version upgrade, one of the options for increasing the size of the WordPress text editor, was to go into your Writing Settings area and specify the number of lines you wanted to display in the post box …
Although the above option no longer seems to be available post WordPress version 3.5, it’s still quite easy to resize your text editor.
All you have to do, is log into your WordPress admin, then go into your Post or Page area (create new or edit), and click and drag the bottom right-hand corner of your post box to resize it …
Your Text Editor Box is now resized …
Another useful way to enlarge your working space, is to click on the Distraction Free Writing mode button (Alt + Shift + W) in your WYSIWYG toolbar menu …
This gives you a “full screen” mode to work with when editing or reviewing your content …
To return to your previous setup, just click on the Exit fullscreen link at the top of your screen …
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
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