The WordPress Editor

Learn everything about the functions of the editor in WordPress - More info in the WordPress Tutorial from checkdomain.net

We have already shown you in this blog how easy it is to format and structure your blog articles as a WordPress user. This is made possible by the visual text editor of WordPress, which works according to the WYSIWYG system: What You See Is What You Get. In this article we go into detail and introduce you to the visual text editor in detail.

The text editor allows a largely intuitive design and editing of your texts. This text provides you with information and instructions:

  • to the Toolbar
  • formatting and alignment
  • keyboard shortcuts for even faster operation

Rich Editing/WYSIWYG - What you get out of it

WYSIWYG is also called Rich Editing. Simply put, it means that your text is formatted by the rich editor as you type it. The rich editor creates HTML code in the background (HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language - a programming language that can be used to create documents for the web). For you, this means that you can concentrate fully on writing and don't have to worry about technology.

Tip: If you want to know what's going on in the background, change your editor from "Visual" to "Text" (the corresponding buttons can be found at the top right of the text box).

The Toolbar

The toolbar is located above the text input box and comprises two lines. If you only see one line, click on the keyboard-like icon, Hide Toolbar/Indicate Toolbar - the second line folds out.

The unfolded toolbar in the text editor screenshot: WordPress Backend
The unfolded toolbar in the text editor screenshot: WordPress Backend

The toolbar under the magnifying glass

Which icon stands for which function? With our overview all questions will be answered:

Screenshot: WordPress Backend
Screenshot: WordPress Backend
  1. Insert paragraphs (intertitles in different sizes etc.)
  2. Bold
  3. Italic
  4. Enumeration with Bulletpoints
  5. Enumeration in numerical order
  6. Quote (a quote is indented and highlighted in the text - also a possibility for the optical loosening of a blog article)
  7. Alignment to the left
  8. Centered alignment
  9. Alignment to the right
  10. Insert / change link (e.g. if a new window should be opened when clicking)
  11. Remove link
  12. Set read more link
  13. Expand / hide detailed toolbar
  14. Strike through text
  15. Insert horizontal line under the text
  16. Change text color
  17. Insert text (should not be activated when inserting texts from Microsoft Word)
  18. Remove formatting
  19. Insert special characters
  20. Indent text to the left
  21. Indent text to the right
  22. Undo
  23. Repeat step
  24. Keyboard shortcuts for formatting

Enumerations - for all list friends

You will probably use the two enumeration icons relatively often. Because lists are an important stylistic tool for web texts. They help you to structure a text clearly and make it easy for quick readers to grasp.

As with a word processing program, you should also use the icons provided in WordPress - if you use dashes instead, it might look okay in the editor. At the latest, however, when you publish, you will notice that text passages can slip

Alignment and Justification

With version 4.7, the formatting symbol for the popular justification has disappeared. Of course, the function hasn't. There are currently several ways to format paragraphs in justification:

  1. You mark the paragraph and use the key combination "Shift+ALT+j".
  2. You switch to the text editor and use <p style="text-align: justify;">
  3. You extend your visual editor e.g. with the plugin TinyMCE Advanced

If you decide to use justification, you have to watch out for one thing: There is no hyphenation available in WordPress. In justification there can therefore be very large gaps between the individual words, which doesn't really look good and can be at the expense of legibility.

Embed videos

Moving images are becoming an increasingly important element for blogs. As a WordPress user you have the possibility to embed videos from different platforms in your blog. For example, you can go to YouTube, find the video you want and then click the "Share" button:

After you have clicked on share, a new window will open. Here you have to select embed. Screenshot: S. Cantzler
After you have clicked on "share", a new window will open. Here you have to select "embed". Screenshot: S. Cantzler

If you insert this link into your text editor, the video will automatically be included.

Quick access: Keyboard shortcuts

With keyboard shortcuts, formatting often works faster than with the mouse - at least as soon as you have memorized the shortcuts completely. Also for all functions of the visual editor there are such fast handles.

For example, you can create headlines with the combinations ctrl or cmd (for Macs) plus 1, 2 or 3.

With strg/cmd plus c you copy, with plus b you bold, with plus z you revoke. You can get a complete overview of all abbreviations via the help icon in the editor under the question mark.

So you have got to know the visual text editor and its most important functions. I hope the information will help you and make writing easier. If you still have questions, feel free to contact us - we are looking forward to your suggestions!

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Further articles:

We are pleased if we could arouse your interest in WordPress. The following list contains some links to get started with your WordPress page:

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