The standard WordPress post editor
The standard editor is perfectly adequate for, like it says, standard postings. No problem. But 
Like many of us we would like our code tidy, valid and as a whole more suitable for search engines to follow, i.e. thus creating more hits or traffic. Lorelle, again Lorelle, has written many postings on all subjects. That is a good thing too. But unfortunately our standard editor lacks quite a bit of extra functionality to help us with that. There are WordPress plugins who can help us with just that. Here is one from a dutch guy Roel Meurders. He made it quite simple for you to add buttons to the quicktags bar in the post editor. Ofcourse you can also use the advanced WordPress editor. Activate the advanced post editor (or TinyMCE) logged in as the site’s administrator under ‘My Account’. It’s is all the way down on your left, a checkbox. There is only one thing with the TinyMCE editor. It can be a nuisance to use when it comes to, there it is again 
, validation and tidying up your code. Okay, I have mentioned a few things about the post editor in general. How about getting our hands dirty?
Let’s go and hack some code
The post editor from WordPress is actually nothing more then a rather extended javascript. You can find it in your WordPress directories under the directory /root/wordpress/wp-includes/js/. The javascript file “quicktags.js” is your target for today!
Just open it up with your “home garden and kitchen” text editor. Looks intimidating 
…naah just a little bit. It has structure, so a bit of reading should help you understand it quite fast. I have modified mine with quite a few extra’s. Here is a screenie of it.
Notice the red circles? The extra’s
Okay, first you can download my quicktags from here. That will certainly get you started in a jiffy. Remember to upload it to the previously mentioned directory or it will not work at all. That is one way to do it. The other, that is right, is “do your own coding“. First things first. Question What extra’s do you want? Write them down or just put a knot in a handkerchief For example. Standard, the editor comes with the button look-up. It redirects you to a dictionary site. Fine if you are, like me, a bl..dy foreigner, and wants to write in english. I use it frequently to look things up for it’s grammar. But what if you want to give your visitors some more explanation but you don’t want that in your posting? Well, Wikipedia ofcourse:!: There is an bonus to it aswell. More links in your postings the more likely it becomes that, for instance, a Google sniffer, gets hold of your site and traffic will boom in no time at all. Well, that is the general idea anyway. So I added an extra button on the editor named “Wiki”. Now I just select a word that needs extra explanation and click on my Wiki button. Presto, a search for the selected word is done automatically for your readers. Ain’t that sweet?
Coding recommendations
As I wrote above, adding relevant links to other resources in your postings will get your blog noticed, no doubt. That’s the whole point isn’t it? I will not get in the details in how to increase your traffic. This is done for us in a very extensive and learning way already by Lorelle. So I will leave at that. One thing I will pinpoint is how to modify your WordPress installation with some minor hacks here and there. Mind you I am not responsible for any damage. Do this on your own account. Don’t worry you can always upload the originals if necessary. Back to our subject. Links in your postings and how to add them in a relaxed manner. One thing I mentioned was the ‘Wiki’ button. Others are the <acronym> and the <p> html-tags. Both contribute to more up to standards [x]html. Especially the <acronym> tag is a good example. It is a way of giving a description about certain subjects and or words that you use in your postings. You can even give them a bit of extra CSS adornments, like I did. I will write a posting on that one later on. Paragraphs <p> and <H> tags (mind the lower case for valid XHTML!) are also noticable for search robots like the ones from Google for instance. They search for these tags, that is to say, the contents they have.
Last bit of advice
Use up to standard code. I believe I have mentioned this already somewhere haven’t I? It is of vital interest for your site’s readability, accessibility and validity. And so will increase, given time, your site’s traffic. I am still trying anyway. But fear not, I have my share of validation errors almost everyday too. Ofcourse I always correct them. So can you:!: it’s not difficult. One step at a time they say isn’t it? Till next post, bye.
