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 [...]
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.
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For excellent acronyms, try the Huddled Masses Acronym WordPress Plugin which, once installed, automatically puts the
<acronym>tags in any initials in your post – no thinking. The only problem is that it is brainless, which means that if you say “pop goes the weasel”, you will get “<acronym title=”Post Office Protocol”>POP</acronym> goes the weasel”. I changed it to POP3 in the plugin to make it not turn my “POP” aka “father” into something he isn’t. So there are limits to this.You can add your own, too, so I added the acronyms for photography abbreviations.
Thanks Lorelle. I remember having seen this one somewhere. It is an interesting plugin no doubt. Though I have my reservations about it. Because, like you said, it is kind of brainless. Furthermore, like in the above posting I always like to add my own acronyms. Acronyms, for me anyway, do noet always refer to abbreviations. They can shed some light on personal sentences. Like the “home garden and kitchen” one
I will give it test run though. Always the curious one. :thanks: again. I will give it a report in one of my future posts. BTW (acronym), do you know of any impact in performance plugins have 
In the meanwhile I have quite a few of them running already. Just wondering.
Plugins, for the most part, do not impact a WordPress blog’s performance, which I believe you to mean the speed at which it loads and responds to a user. However, there are some plugins that are depending upon gathering information from the database and those can have an impact, but they are usually statistics type plugins which are only seen by you from within the Administration Panels, not the user.
I’ve only found javascripts, in general, that are not plugins or included with plugins, can sometimes slow things down, or links to images on external sites. That always slows things down if those have to load before the page content loads. Hate those.
On my main site I’m using at least 25 plugins, maybe more. It loads fine though slow on the pages with lots of images, of course.
Ah, one more thing, I really hate it when I get subscribed to things in my email without knowing it. Your notification for follow-up comments via email is below your “Say It” button, which means that I won’t see it unless I scroll down that far. When email started coming in, I was really puzzled, and not happy. I had to go in and unsubscribe. Please either leave the check box blank so people will subscribe if they want to, and either way, move it up above the name and below the post so we see it before we click the submit. Thanks!
Hi Lorelle, sorry to cause you some aggrevation. Certainly not my intention. You being my sole (@ the moment) commentator
Idea was I thought it would be a nice addition for readers to follow their own comments. When I comment on a post it’s sometimes a real search to find that specific post. But. I removed the standard checked to unchecked.
Your explanation on the performance load is clear to me now. Thanks. Makes good sense too really.
I was @ it last night with ‘narchives.php’. Well known to you I gather from your postings on the WordPress forum. I have almost got it up and running. You can see a link in my sidebar to the sitemap. What causes me trouble is to get the selection of categories right. I am not the only one I saw on the forum
Tonight I will give it another go.
Thanks for the comment
I want more commentators