UPDATED March, 8 2023. The instructions below are for those using the WordPress Classic Editor. Although WordPress has re-envisioned their Editor Interface with Gutenberg, I and many people like me still prefer the Classic Editor for a number of reasons. This article provides instructions for absolute beginners.
This is one part of a series of articles providing basic instructions for using WordPress. To start at the beginning, or view the full index of articles in this series, go to A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners. Or if you prefer to watch videos, you may prefer to watch these WordPress Video Tutorials.
Table of Contents
- Getting There: Getting to the Post or Page Editor
- Add Media
- Two Editors: Visual Editor & Text Editor
- The Visual Editor
- The Text Editor
- Special Tip – How to Copy and Paste into WordPress
- Using The Visual Editor
- The Visual Editor Toolbars
- Visual Editor Editing Tips
- Publish Options: Save Draft, Preview or Publish
Step One – Getting There: Getting to the Post or Page Editor
Login to your WordPress admin area and click on either “Posts” (if you want to edit a post), or “Pages” (if you want to edit a page) in the menu options on the left. If you are adding a new post or page,rather than editing an existing one, you may want read How to Add a New Post or Page before continuing below.
This will provide a list of your website’s posts or pages to choose from. You can either click on the title of the post or page, or hover your cursor over the bottom of the title and options will appear, including “edit”. Click “edit”.
This will bring you to the “Edit Post” or “Edit Page” area for the post or page you want to edit. The content editor is the same whether you are editing a post or page, so the information below pertains to both.
Add Media
The “Add Media” button at top left of the editor allows you to add and edit images, video, audio and other media. We will be focusing on editing text in this article. You can learn about uploading and inserting media in the article titled How to Add Images and other Media in WordPress. In the image below you will also see a button to “Add Form”. This is a feature added via a premium plugin called Gravity Forms which I use extensively and is very powerful and easy to use.
TWO EDITORS: Visual Editor & Text Editor
There are two content editor modes, the “Visual” editor and the “Text” editor. You can select which editor you want to use using the buttons at top right of the content editor. The image below shows the Visual editor.
The Visual Editor.
The Visual editor will display your text and images in relationship to each other, similar to how they will appear on your website. I say similar because, according to the unique design of your website, the font-size, color, spacing, etc. will likely look different on your website than it will in the editor. What you will see in the editor is the text, images, video, and other media in relationship to each (above, below, next to, indented, …) as you have specified.
The coding of your website will then modify this according to your unique design, but will generally adhere to the standard formatting rules applied within the text editor, (for example if you bold some text, it will show in bold in the text editor, but your website may be coded to indicate a bold state by also enlarging the size of the font or giving it a more prominent color). You will get to know the unique styling of your website as you work with it. See below for more details on using the Visual Editor.
The Text Editor.
The Text editor will display your text along with the code, mostly HTML code. If you only enter text, then the Text editor will only show text. If you add an image, then instead of seeing the actual image, you will see some code that will specify where the image is located, how it is to be displayed, and so on. Code is very specific. If you do not understand it or do not have specific instructions on how to edit it, then you are better off not using the Text editor.
Special Tip – How to Copy and Paste into WordPress
Often times it is convenient to type your content in another program like Microsoft Word, off-line, and then copy and paste your finished version into your WordPress program. Unknown to beginners (and why would you know), when you copy and paste text or other content from Microsoft Word (most commonly used) and some other text editing programs, you will end up pasting code along with your content. Although you cannot see it when you copy text from Word, it is there, and it will end up in your post or page. You will want to be careful with this as that extra code may not act the way you want and may cause problems now or later with formatting your content. If you want to do this, below are a few options:
Pasting Text Options » You have a few options.
- Type in a plain text editor. One option is to use a plain text editor to type your content on your computer, one that does not add code to your text. On a PC you can use Notebook (usually the default plain text editor found in your applications folder). On a Mac, you can use Text Edit, (again, usually the default plain text editor found in your applications folder).
- Convert your text before you copy and paste into WordPress, by first copy and pasting from Word (or whatever program you are using) into a simple text editor such as Notebook or TextEdit, and then copy pasting into WordPress.
- Using the “Paste in Plain Text” button. You would copy from Word (or other program), then put your cursor in your WordPress Editor where you want the text, and then click on the “Paste as Plain Text” button. This will open a plain text editor which will strip the code from your text.
You certainly can simply copy and paste from a Word document into your WordPress editor, if your desired result is to retain the formatting from your Word document. However you may not end up with what you want, and your results may not harmonize with the rest of your website as your website’s design will have a specific look and feel built into it’s automatic styling.
Adding Image and Other Media » The best way to add images and other media to your post or page is to use the buttons on your editor for doing so. You can read about them here: Add Images, Video, Audio and other Media.
Using The Visual Editor
To enter text in the visual editor, simply place your cursor inside the white box and start typing, just as you would in any word processing program. When you use the return button on your keyboard, a new paragraph starts, just is it would in any other word processing program. To format text, you would either:
- Highlight the word or phrase you want to format, (i.e. if you wanted to make the text bold or italics), and click the appropriate function button (i.e. B for bold, I for italics); or
- Place your cursor before or in the paragraph you want to format, (i.e. format the paragraph into an unordered list or make it centered aligned) and again, click on the appropriate function button.
Some functions will simply format the text immediately, and others will require additional information, such as if you want to create a “hyper-link”. For example, to make a phrase link to another webpage, you would highlight the text you want linked, click on the link icon, and enter the URL address of your desired link into the pop-up window.
And some buttons will toggle back and forth. For example, if you format a paragraph into an unordered list (bulleted list), then when you use the return key on your keyboard, you will automatically be prompted to enter the next item in the list. When you are done entering your list items, you would click on the same “unordered list” button to return back to the default paragraph formatting. This is important as some people miss this and don’t understand how to exit one of these functions. If you are entering or editing styled text that is an ordered or unordered list, or blockquote, or indented, or other similarly formatted text, and you are done with that formatting, or want to change it back, use the same formatting button to return to editing without that formatting – it toggles back and forth.
The Visual Editor Toolbars
The Visual editor provides two rows of functions, or “toolbars”. The top toolbar provides the most common editing functions along with a toggle to display or hide the second or lower toolbar (called the “kitchen sink”). Below is a quick reference guide to both toolbars. You don’t have to memorize them. Passing your cursor over any icon when viewing them in your admin panel will display its name.
You can learn more about the functions of each of these tools in this article on Formatting Text Content in WordPress. Although the article was created for an older version of WordPress, the formatting controls are the same and the information is clearly presented.
Editing Tips
- Single Spacing – When you use the carriage return (Return or Enter key), generally the formatting of your website will create spacing to exist between your paragraphs. But what if you want to have several rows of text under each other without the spacing, such as with an address. In order to drop down a line without starting a new paragraph, you would use the following keys together: Shift + Enter (or Return). So you would hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and hit the Enter button ( or Return button).
- Advanced Editor – WordPress comes with a good base of content editing tools built in, but if you want to expand that, you can install and customize your admin panel with the TinyMCE Advanced plugin. (On the left side of your admin panel at the main navigation bar, there is an option for “Plugins” where you can add them. Once this plugin is installed, you would then look under the “Settings” tab for a link to a page to customize it for you.)
- Use the Indent Tool. It is a great tool for formatting by separating out sections of content with ease.
- Nested Bullet Lists – If you want to create a nested bullet list, such as an outline with 1, 2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4, 5, etc. You would first
- create your bullet list (see buttons above for ordered list and unordered list – place cursor where you want it, and click the corresponding button);
- then to create your next level, use the “Indent” button (see buttons above) to create your next level (from 1, 2, 3 to 1, 2, 3.1);
- when you are ready to move back out to your top level (ie, from 1, 2, 3.1, 3.2 to 4), hit your Return (or Enter) key twice;
- and when you are done with your list, you can again hit your return key twice.
Save Draft, Preview or Publish
SAVE YOUR CHANGES.
Although your WordPress program will automatically save your work on a regular basis, and you will be offered the option to use that version if you like (top of the edit screen for any individual post or page), it is best to use the Save Draft or Publish button once your are done with your edits. You will also always have the option to revert back to a previously saved version by choosing one of the saved versions listed at the very bottom of your Edit Post or Edit Page admin screen.
Publish Options
Once you are done editing your post or page, if you have not already “published” it, then you will have the option to save it or publish it. (If you have already published your post or page, then the “Save Drat” option is no longer available.)
The following options are displayed at the top right of your screen, if you have not yet hit the “Publish” button. (See below for changes once you have clicked on the “Publish” button.)
- Save Draft – Once you create a post or page, it will not automatically display on your website, until you use the Publish button for that specific post or page. If you want to simply save your work, either for continued editing or to publish on a later date, then you can use the Save Draft button. This will save your work. You will be able to access this post or page at any time just as you would a published post or page. In the admin screen that displays your current posts or pages, the word Draft will be displayed next to the title of any article that is not yet published.
- Preview – Preview is not a saving option, just an option displayed under the Publish box along with the others. Preview opens a separate browser window and displays your post or page in the context of your website, so you can see exactly what it will look like once published. This is useful since, as stated above, what you see in your visual editor is not exactly what you will see on your website, based on the unique design of your website.
- Publish – When you hit the Publish button, your article is “published” to your website. That is, it will now show up on your website. Until you use the Publish button, it will still be in a draft mode.
- Move to Trash – You can delete your post or page from this screen using the Move to Trash button. Moving it to the virtual trash is a new feature to WordPress 2.9 that allows you to recover something if you change your mind after wanting to get rid of it.
- Status, Visibility, Publish immediately – These are further options that allow you to change the status of your article (Draft, Pending Review, Published); specify who can view your article (Publish, Password Protected or Private); and specify a specific date and time to publish your article rather than have it publish immediately once hitting the Publish button.
If your article has already been published, then the following changes will appear:
- There will no longer be a “Save Draft” option;
- The “Preview” button will change to a “Preview Changes” button;
- The Publish button will change to an “Update” button.
That’s it. You can read more topics in this series by selecting the WordPress Guide category or by selecting a topic listed here: A Simple WordPress User Guide for Beginners. Or if you prefer to watch videos, you may prefer to watch these WordPress Video Tutorials.
Do you still have questions? If so, leave a comment below.
126 thoughts on “How to Add, Edit & Format Text in a WordPress Post or Page Using the Classic Editor”
Hi I have updated a page before it was ready to update and have lost the original page! how do i recover the original text on the page that I was editing?
WordPress saves your past work on any page or post which can be recovered. Look for Revisions on the Edit Page panel for your page. It is in the same Publish box at the top right of the admin page for editing the page. But be careful not to make too many revisions after your last change because only a few may be saved. How many Revisions are saved depends on the the unique configuration of your site and is sometimes limited by your host to 5 or something like that.
Dear WordPress,
I want to upload a book written in MS Word to my WordPress website. When I upload it using Add Media, and then click on its link, to open it and read it, it is editable by anyone. I checked this on another computer of mine. So how to upload an MS Word file that contains links to videos on YouTube etc, that is NOT editable by other people?
Hello Dr. Hugo. My apologies for the delayed response. I have been traveling and approve all comments before they are posted to the website. As you realized, if you upload something in Word then it will be editable. I do not know if it is possible with Word to password protect it but if that is possible than you can do that to prevent editing. But really the solution to what you want I believe is to convert your Word document to a PDF file. The PDF format is what is most commonly shared for such a thing and is not editable (unless you go to extra length to make it so). Also PDF if more commonly readable on all devices. Let me know if that answers your need.
hi,
i’ve been going back in forth with fixing the appearance of my posts on my homepage. I write poetry on my blog, and whenever i publish a post, the lines in a stanza appears in one single line on my homepage. for example i wanted it to look like this
“it was midnight
yes
no”
but instead it appears like this
“it was midnight yes no” but of course when you click the post the format is fixed, but i wanted it to like the actual format on the excerpt and cant figure it out.
Yes, I find that frustrating also. Unfortunately that is the standard WordPress excerpt behavior – to reduce your excerpt to just one string of words rather than to retain its formatting. So you would need to either modify the code of your theme or use a plugin like this one (which I have never tried, just looked it for you, but looks like it is well used and reviewed) https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-excerpt/
Good luck.
Hi David,
I also have the same problem in my website regarding the text layout which is getting changed while copying from source . its get changed like fonts color style etc.Please suggest , how to overcome to it ?
When you copy from another source into WordPress you also copy the code that comes from the source you are copying from and mostly that source is not using the same code format, so it ends up different on your website.
There is a text editor button that allows you to paste in plain text which strips out the code from your original document, or another button that removes formatting. Then you format the text the way you want using the WordPress editor tools.
Another approach you can try, see if it works better for you, is when you are on the Edit Page screen for your content, look for the two tabs at top right of your content for Visual and Text. Click Text, then paste your content, then switch back to Visual and format as you like in the WordPress editor. This is another way to paste in your content without the code from your source.
David,
How would I edit text in the banner of Pages and all the sub pages under the page. I have a date that I need to update and can’t figure out how
Hi Laura,
WordPress has become more complicated over the past few years with much more customizations in themes and with page builders. Hence the answer to your question lies in your theme or page builder.
David,
What a great article! So here is what I am dealing with. I am wanting to add a introductory paragraph to my blog landing page. The page that lists out all of your blog posts. I would like to have a paragraph on top, then it lists out all of the blog postings, this would be the only page the introduction would show up. I’ve been looking for a plug-in that will accomplish this, any advice?
Not sure if there is a plugin specifically for that but what you could do is install the free version of the popular and well built page builder plugin Elementor and use that to build your home page the way you want.
Hi! I’m learning about how to use WordPress but someone else already pre-design the website. My question is, How I can change the text type in a product page?
Basically, I don’t find this on the page, It’s in the products section.
You would go to that product page and enter the information in the Description and Short Description areas. When you are logged into the website and are on the product page there is a link at the top of the page to Edit Page. Click that. The short description is up top on the page and the long one is farther down on the page with the Additional Information and Reviews. You are using WooCommerce to power your store so you might some documentation on their website. You are also welcome to contact me using my contact page and set up a training. We can connect via the computer and via screenshare I can guide you around your website, answer your questions, and record it for you to review later if you like.
I am new to wordpress and i am finding it extremely difficult to edit a section of my website the ¨what are you looking for in the homepage text, i just can´t seem to find the page, that includes this text that came with the theme, ready to go crazy any help would be greatly appreciated.
That is theme specific. You can give me a call if you want at (707) 965-9727 and I can offer to help perhaps. I am in California so Pacific Time.
Have used the Shoreditch theme but when an administrator changed the copy the font has defaulted on the paragraph. How can we revert to the chosen font and size without upgrading to business?
I am not familiar with that particular theme and that type of question is more than likely a theme specific one. I could not tell for sure because I do not know what you mean by the “chosen” font or size – if that was chosen through the theme options or via the post editor or because you copied some text from a document that had a different font and size and you wanted / thought it would look the same when pasted into the website and a bunch of other clarifying questions. If you are really stumped and dont mind paying a little you can contact me via my contact page and we can screen share and I can likely figure it out with you live with a 20 to 30 minute timeframe, God willing.
Thanks so much for getting back to me. We have managed to resolve the issue.
Hi David, I have edited some texts in my website, But I dont see the changes whenever I try to launch the website using a mobile phone. Can you help? Thanks!
Hi Emmanuel,
I would need to know more to help. You say you do not see changed using a mobile phone. Do you see the changes on another device? If so, then I would think either your website has different text for the mobile version in some fashion, or your mobile phone has “cached” your web page and you would either need to find out how to empty the cache on that device or just wait a few days. Caching is a way that a browser, like Chrome, keeps a local copy of the website page and gives that to you rather than goes to where your website is stored and retrieves the latest version, which is what you changed.
Hi David,
I am in the process of constructing a Twenty Seventeen WordPress site, (never done this before) and I cannot figure out how to get my text to appear over the full width of any of the pages. The site is not live as yet because I still need to do a lot of work, but it’s coming on slowly but surely! I’m referring to the text on the black page that sits on the right hand or left hand side of the page (below the image of the Vault) to explain the various menu functions at the top of the image? I have other issues also, but I’ll discuss those later if you don’t mind? Can you help me out with the pages please.
Kind Regards
Hi Kristen,
I honestly could not follow what you were asking. I do not have a copy of Twenty Seventeen installed right now to look at but typically you can display content full width by changing the page template to a Full Width page template. If that is an option on this theme then you would look on your Edit Page screen under Page Attributes for Template and see if there is one there.
I want to have an indented list, with several levels of indent, WITHOUT bullet points. Is this possible and if so how do I do that? Thank you.
What I can think of is simply to use the indent button on the Text Editor toolbar to get your indents, and then hold down the shift key to go to the next “bullet point”.
Otherwise from what you said, if your theme inserts bullet points for bullet lists, then you would need to add some CSS changes to accomplish what you want.
Hi David!
I don’t know how to code but would like to change the width of the type paragraphs in my posts.
So that there isn’t like 20 words per line but rather something like 10 (so it’s easier to read). I like the size of the font as it is, the size of my pictures and the size of margins all around the post as well.
To specify, I only wish to add side margins within the post, for the type only. Hope it makes sense and that you are able to help me!
Best
Molly
Hi Molly. Hard to say specifically without a link to the post page you are referencing and every theme is different. Depending on your theme you might either be able to do that within the theme settings or more than likely may have to add a snippet of CSS code to your theme, (often themes have a place for custom CSS). So you might adding something like, .post-content {margin-left: 15%;margin-right:15%;} however the specifics would be based on your theme and the percentage that you liked. And if your site is responsive / mobile friendly, then you may need to add another rule or two.
If you want to schedule a screen sharing video training, I suspect I could give the CSS to add and how to identify it in case you want to change something similar in the future – likely about 30 minutes after all the connecting and discussion about your needs and specifying what to change.
how can i change the font of the text in the testimonial page without coding?
You can use a WordPress plugin like TinyMCE Advanced and add a font editor to your editor.
Hi David,
My visual editor toolbars don’t have all the same features as you show in the post above. Specifically, my kitchen sink does not have the paste as plain text and paste as word options. How can I enable these features?
Thanks,
Elisha
Hmm. I think they removed the wPast as Word one and now just have Past as Text. If you do not have that then that is a mystery to me. However you can use the TinyMCE Advanced plugin I just linked in the comment above (or below) yours to customize the editor if that helps.
he hello… i have one website in which i posted one post but contain of that post is not select …means if i want to copy the some text from post but i am not able to select it …how to so this problem help me please
I am not clear on your question vijay.
Hi David, I need guidance. In my Posts page I have the number of pages with posts, but it fails showing special characters. Is in spanish and the “next” word “próximo” fail to show the accent… any idea how to fix that?
Hi Orlando,
That would be in the language translation of the theme file you have. Contact your theme developer to ask them to fix it.
Anyway I can I see my text in a book format with numbered pages?
I suppose if you used a plugin like this one https://wordpress.org/plugins/embed-any-document/
Great. Thanks for the user guide
Nice Article,
I always use TEXT mode to write in WordPress.. 😀 and I think we need to encourage non coders to write HTML text because we know they will be able to more effectively communicate their content.
Thanks for your thoughts Emily. I believe non-coders are however more often than not that way for a reason. Not everyone can grasp the concept of coding without great struggle and even then it is never pleasant or easy – just like many coders are not able to grasp the ability to design or create. Some people are idea people, others are creative people, others are logical, and so on. Some people can do all sorts of things easily, but many cannot. So WordPress was made to allow different people to use the tools that are most convenient them and their needs.
Absolutely Correct
i need html code highlight(or change the background color of) the title of my post
You should be able to do so with the WrodPress text editor. If not, try this plugin. https://wordpress.org/plugins/tinymce-advanced/
thanks for your reply brother
happy to help. salams.
Hi
I used the plain HTML option in GetResponse to create a simple form containing email field and signup command button. GetResponse preview code is good. Next I pasted the code(from notepad) in my WordPress.org text editor. My WordPress version is 4.8 and i dont have any editor plugins. Noticed there is are a 4-5 lines gap between the fields and the command button in the visual editor. Tried deleting the spaces in WordPress page using the visual editor but somehow the HTML code got deleted too. Would appreciate if anyone could inform me how to delete the spaces between the email field and form command button
Hard to offer a response without looking at it. You say the gap is in the Visual Editor, but what I would think really matters is how it looks on the frontend where you customers see it. The visual editor will not always look the same. With that in mind, it may just be a CSS issue or something that could be adjusted via CSS.
I am assuming with all of this that you did not add the HTML to the Visual Editor but to the Text editor, which is how you would add the html. Seems like that is what you did or you would have other problems as well.
Hi David
Thanks for your swift response. To be clear, the problem is also in the wordpress preview. The code itself is good as without my deleting the spaces using the visual editor, it does what it is supposed to do.
The web page is https://blog.dogsunlimitedguide.com/potty-training for you to see that the empty spaces would not be good from a customer experience.
Yes i pasted the code directly into the text editor via notepad. You mentioned this would cause issue. If i do not paste the html code, how do i capture email contacts to GetResponse from Wordpres
Yes I can see looking at the website that you have assessed your problem correctly, that the reason there is all of that space is because there are break tags “br” between the last input and the submit button because the form has a bunch of hidden fields.
So I would suggest you switch to the Text view, not visual editor, and remove the extra spaces there. You would have to know that when you see brackets, that these are surrounding code and you do not want to alter them or anything really, you just want to make:
something
like
this into
something like this
Hi David
Thanks for your response. Using the text editor, I joined the codes sentences together. The code is a bit hard to read now but more importantly I have managed to get rid of the spaces between the field and the submit button. Best of all, the form works the way it supposed too. Btw I also tried to put a paragraph tag before and after the code to see if i could improve the code readability but it didn’t work. Also deleted the GetResponse code comments which slightly improved the code readability.
Anyway I am pretty happy as the solution worked. Again thanks a bunch David.
cool. glad to help. If you want to give back and have a google account you can search for “Designs by Tierney” and in the sidebar of the Google search results showing my profile leave a review for me. Either way, good luck with your work.
Very useful tips on post formatting in wordpress. i have just moved to wordpress from blogger and it text editor is somewhat difficult to understand when we just want to keep things simple.
Great tips. Thanks for sharing with us
how do i add the editor mode option to my site in order to show the visual editor. The visual editor options and button is not showing and i dont have an idea on how to use html. please help
Look in your user profile for a setting. In your admin area go to Users>Your Profile
Thank you very much. it was helpful.
Hi there,
curious as to how to change the text in my ‘quick quote box’ the code is read as [sc:cta ] not sure how to edit within that code, cant seem to find an opening.
Karl
Hi Karl,
That is something specific to your theme or a plugin you are using. You would want to look at the instructions for whichever provides that feature.
Where would it be that i find that, i’m having quite a few problems with underlying issues, i’m ammending the original website which had been made so it’s up to scratch, don’t specifically know where certain things are as i didn’t add plugins or design the theme,
Thanks,
Karl
Hi Karl,
there is no reference to your website in the comment you left, nor the theme used. Additionally as this is a theme or plugin specific issue it would require me to look into your theme and plugin to figure out your answer which is beyond what I would provide in this comment thread. (I will typically answer quick and easy questions specific to WordPress that I know off the top of my head or related to something specific that I said in my post).
If you wish you to hire me for support, that would be more appropriate in this case. You can use my contact form. I charge in 5 minute increments with a 15 minute minimum and can both help you and teach you at the same time.
Hi
When im edit my page, the “bold” button xxx
is not showing on my page as BOLD, it just normal.
How to fix…???
Best Regards
Denmark
Hard to say with such little information but I would simply guess that there is another CSS style that is over-riding it’s boldness. You can use a tool like Chrome Developer tools to identify what CSS styles are affecting any part of your page so you can then create a new style to over-ride that one.
Hi David
My website has simple editor and not visual editor, what I should I do to have visual editor
Go to Users>Your Profile in the admin and untick the box “Disable the visual editor when writing”.
Hello there.
I´m wondering if it possible for the title of a page NOT to show at the top of the text/content area? I have my menu bar just above and it looks silly that the title fx ‘Blog’ shows both in the menu bar and right below as title of the page. But if I delete the title in the Edit Page it also dissappears from my menu bar.
Is there a way to solve this?
Best regards, Dea
I am not sure EXACTLY what you are after. I went to your site and do not see it. Roughly, you can accomplish what you are after using CSS if not through the admin interface. You can use a free tool like Chrome Developer tools to identify the exact part of a page you want to not be there and give it a CSS rule display: none;. And you can even do this on a page by page basis because each page has a specific page identifier such as page-id-65. Feel free to use my contact form to contact me and I can provide more specifics if you like.
Thank you very much for your reply David. I actually managed to find another solution myself probably before you had a look at my site. I installed a plugin to hide titles and it works perfectly. I´m sorry for the inconvenience, but very pleased with your quick response and suggestions. Thank you!
Have a great day, Dea
perfect Dea. Enjoy your travels.
Hello, thank you for this article. However I am having problem with my headings and letters in bold. When I formate it in text editor while writing a post, it looks OK and says heading 2 etc. But on my blog nothing changes! No bold letters nor headings. 🙁 Any suggestions?
E.g. here: http://lifeinstrangersbody.com/hi-fear-calling/
Hi Ali,
So the problem you are having is this. Let’s be specific for an example. The words, Happy New Year you have styled as a Header 2 but it is showing up as 16 pixels instead of 30 pixels. 16 pixels is also the same as your paragraph text, so they are now the same size.
However if you remove that rule that you put in there that makes it black, it should change to the 30 pixels you want it to be.
The reason is, in the CSS styling for your website, it has a rule that says if you have a header 2 with what is called a “span” tag after it, to make it 16 pixels. And when you change the color of text, in the code it uses a span tag to do this, so that rule applies.
More simply, the way your theme was coded was not well thought through, and is causing the problem. Someone who knows CSS can add a new rule to override that rule and you should have it more like you want. You can use my contact form if you want to contact me if you want help from me. Hope that helps.
Mr Tierney
I was wondering wether the following is possible:
Customize – Contact information – Header : –email –phone number.
In the field of ‘phone number’ I would like to have two different numbers displayed on top of each other.
The office number and my mobile number. Matter of being available at all times but by preference to be contacted on the office number. In case the call remains unanswered clients can consult my mobile phone.
Hi Jean-Christopher,
I could not actually offer any support because the url your provided to your site was google, which is obviously not your website. A question such as yours is a theme specific question with regards to how to do something like that in the WordPress admin. I suspect with some CSS changes one might be able to accomplish your need if it is not possible in the themes customizer (likely not without some CSS changes). If you would like help with that from me as a paid service, please feel free to contact me via my contact form.
How do you make multiple columns in the text editor? I’m trying to show a grid of pictures with captions under, but the best I can do is each on top of the other, which looks too awkward on the site.
WordPress by default does not provide a way to create columns. That is a feature provided within a specific theme if it exists.
However, you can accomplish your task by creating an image gallery in WordPress. Check out the steps on the WordPress website, (although their screenshots are a bit dated).
Thank you Dav.
i David, am new here, i have a site i can’t seem to find the word content for edition of the Contact us. you can look up the site on http://www.mafuta-energy.com. pls can you assist me i like to make some corrections on the Contact pages. thank you
I am not clear what you are asking but you have a theme made by RT Themes (number 18). Best to use their support portal for your questions since they created that specific theme and I do not know what it looks like in the admin. http://rtthemes.com/
hello i just want to know how to edit the contact number on the front page of the wordpress website which is included in template
That type of change to your website is theme specific. If you cannot change it by going to Edit Page for the home page, then it is likely in your WordPress Theme settings, either through the Theme Customizer or other special Theme settings.
Hey David,
I was wondering how to edit text in the Divi Builder Template. I can usually just click on the text box to edit the text, but when I try to edit text in a sidebar module, the text doesn’t show up. Can you help me?
– Kristin
Hi Karen,
The function of the sidebar module is to place a widget area into your page layout. The content of the Widget area is determined by what widgets are in that Widget area, which you can see by going to Appearance>Widgets in your admin. If you add a sidebar module and it is showing a widget area “Sidebar” for example, and in that widget area there is a text widget – then you would edit the text widget contents. You specify in the module settings of the Sidebar Module just which widget area you want to show.
Hi david !!
I getting an error in easing slider pro.When I click new slider and after adding the images to the new slider then while saving the slider it showing that Failed to save slideshow. An error has occurred. Please try again or contact support.
Can you help me please…
I do not know what easing slider pro is. I suspect a plugin. You would want to go to the plugin page and click Support to ask a question of the plugin developer.
Hi David,
I am facing a problem in worpress I will explain here,
I am using a theme which was given by client. but in that theme in the header part I have given call us and email fields as in edit text field. But when I write html tags in the edit text field it showing along with html tags also. How can I overcome this problem??
Hi Ajay,
Those fields must be programmed as such. The best place to ask such a question is actually to whomever created your theme. Go to Appearnace>Themes and see what the theme is there. If it is a Child theme, then it should say what the parent theme is.
Another option is to install a WYSIWYG editor that will apply its WYSIWYG editor to that field as well. I just don’t know if that is possible. So I would start with the theme developer.
Hi Tommy,
This is the sort of thing you would normally submit through a contact form to me as a web developer. I will send you an email about it. If you do not hear from me, contact me via my contact form and provide a phone number.
cheers,
Hello David!!!
Thank you so much for your reply !! And I am very happy to get reply from you. The problem solved which I have asked you…If I have any doubts…I would like to ask you in the future…
Regards,
Ajay
In the late 1990s I developed my first website of 350 pages using “HTML Goodies.” As rules changed I tried to keep up with them, but it was difficult with that many pages. Of course, CSS helps but now Google no longer lists my website, which is http://www.villageprints.com. I am planning to keep the Village Prints website at least until I can get my new site with WordPress, http://www.hometowndrawings.com, up and running. I also have many thousands of art prints all over the nation with the Village Prints website printed on them.
I would like to keep the Hometown Drawings site with the same look that I have on the Village Prints site, but that probably is not possible. I am using Twenty-Ten CHILD THEME, and I am trying to develop a template page that includes 4 columns without the sidebar. I need to develop a group of 12 pages to take the place of those found when you click on each state in the Village Prints site at this link: http://www.villageprints.com/states.html. I have produced a 4-column page without the sidebar, but the page has as much negative area on each side of the columns as the columns take up. I need the columns to take up most of the width of the page. The link to that page is: http://www.hometowndrawings.com/drawings/alabama-towns/
The edit page has a preview button, but I cannot find a publish or update button. I will also need the template page without sidebar for more than 300 pages to take the place of pages similar to http://www.villageprints.com/lexington-tn.html. I would appreciate your help in setting the border on the template pages and determining how to save the template page. Thanks for your help.
I have a problem with my editor which just showed up. When I try to edit a page or post, the content is shown normally for a moment and then it shows on the left hand side as a list of single words. How can I get back to the normal wysiwyg format
My first instinct is to check the CSS associated with that text. What changes were made to the site after it was working fine? There could be something that is specifying in the CSS to adjust the width of the content area of our text editor.
Hard to say without having access to actually look at it. You can use Chrome developer tools if you know how to use it. And you can hire me to take a look. Shoot me an email. Would take 15 minutes of time with access to your site admin panel and telling me where exactly to look if it is specific to only one post or page, (which would also be diagnostic information).
Thank you for your post… I am trying to edit existing text on my website, but when I select edit page, nothing is showing up. Any assistance?
That sounds worrisome. Watch the first video on this page providing an overview of the WordPress Admin and then use the menu icon at top left of the video player to show the list of videos and watch the one about editing video. That should give you an idea how it should look and work so you can tell more specifically where yours is off. It could be that you have a problem with your WordPress install or you have a theme that is doing something very unique.
Also if you want to hire me for half an hour you could email me login credentials and I could take a look for you. Just let me know.
Si consigues un backlink desde una web potente, entonces usa tu palabra clave primordial.
You would have to write in English if you were wanting a response from me.
In creating the new website in Enfold Theme, I’m trying to build an outline with 3 levels in an accordion text box. I’ve had some html classes in years past, but haven’t used it much in the interim. Just now learning Enfold & the WordPress features since my initial intro 6 years ago. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks! Joy
Hi Joy,
You would need to go to the creators of that specific WordPress theme for questions specific to it, or to whatever documentation they have for it. Most of the premium WordPress themes have their own features and menus that are unique to that theme or that companies set of themes. Good luck Joy.
Very good information. Lucky me I came across your website by
chance (stumbleupon). I’ve saved it for later!
hi David! Good day!
Just want to know how I can edit my font style and size on my post
second question. If you can see my home page: I want my recent posts to show just featured pic and title in tiles of 4 per lines
How do I remove the link for the “CATEGORIES” Coz if you hover your cursor and click on CATEGORIES instead of choosing the sub categories, it will lead to a no page found.
Hope you can help me with this
More power!
Hi Anne,
To change the font size you would need to install a WordPress plugin like WP Edit or Advanced TinyMCE. Not sure what styles you want to change. You can use the italic and bold button in the standard WordPress editor list of buttons to style text that way. Other features you want might also be found using one of the plugins I mentioned above.
I do not understand your second question.
As for getting rid of the Categories, I am not sure how you created that menu item but you can create a custom menu via Appearance>Menus and use that menu for your main menu (for most themes); and to create a top level link that is not active (have “Categories” not go to another page) you could use a # sign for the URL.
Thank you, helpful information.
Hi there
Thanks for your post. However, I don’t seem to be able to do things like bold my text, especially headings. I type the post online and highlight the text that I want bold but when it gets published, the formatting does not show 🙁 Why is this so? How can I fix this? Your help will be very much appreciated.
Can you share a link to a specific page of your WordPress website where you made such a change and tell me specifically what you did to what words, (ie bolded the title… I could take a quick look at the published code and let you know.
Your info is good and helpful, but could not find anywhere how to do simple tasks like font size, font selection (Times, Helvetica, etc) line spacing, font color and all the simple font formatting we do in word and other apps.
Why is something so hard to find in WP?
Thx Much
Jack
Great questions.
The WordPress editor does only provide a basic set of editor tools. The reason I believe is that a website’s theme is supposed to define a set of conventions that result in a consistent look. So on the simplest level one would use the Paragraph selector to select different headers for example for different effects.
Although many people do want more control over the type of font characteristics you mentioned, so in that case you would want to install an advanced tinymce plugin (type this into google: tinymce wordpress plugins). Tinymce is the functionality that provides the editor tool options. With one of those plugins you would have the extended functionality to do all of the things you mentioned, except line spacing.
Can’t think of many options there without having to customize the code, unless you are wanting to do what I described in this post as the first of my “Editing Tips” titled “Single Spacing”.
I pray that gets you closer to your needs. Thanks for sharing what you were looking for.
Oh and you can control the font color with the default WordPress tools. Try the editor button with the capital A with the line under it.
Great post.
Hi Dave
I first came across your support when searching for how to divide up a long post using link categories. Your Youtube tutorial was very useful; many thanks for the assistance.
Now something different.Using the visual editor in WordPress, and using shift-enter to remove the white space between, say, a heading and the text below, this causes text to take the style characteristics of the heading, in fact becoming part of the heading! is there a way to separate the styles, whilst keeping the heading and text in close order?
Is there a simple way to overcome this (without delving into the html, or css aspects?)
Thanks, and again, many thanks for the resources you offer to the “web students” amongst us.
Johnny
Hi Johnny,
Thanks for the feeback on my posts.
When you use shift-enter to drop down a line, you are technically still within the same HTML style tags. This is why that text takes on the same style characteristics.
This is a header
and this is some text that was dropped down a line using the shift-enter command. Notice that it is still inside the same "h1" tags which define its characteristics.
How can you overcome this? You would have to use an “inline” tag such as a span tag which allows you to specify the characteristics of copy within a block tag like a header. So in the example above, you might have something like this:
This is a header
and this is some text that was dropped down a line using the shift-enter command. Notice that it is still inside the same "h1" tags which define its characteristics.
Although one question is, how is the space created between the header and line below? Often the spacing below the header is created as a margin or padding below the header, so you may have to use the span tag on the top part:
This is a header
and this is some text that was dropped down a line using the shift-enter command. Notice that it is still inside the same "h1" tags which define its characteristics.
or something like that.
Now, how do you do this in WP? That is tricky because you don’t have the ability to use a span tag using the visual editor, (although you could using the Text editor – just not sure if those will not be wiped out once you save and toggle back and forth between the Visual and Text editor, you could try it out). There are some common inline elements you could use such as bold and italics, but these have their specific characteristics applied, ie. making Bold text bold, etc.
I do not think there is a way to do what you want through the WP visual editor, (unless there is some plugin that would help with this), but you could use the WP Text editor as I have indicated above. Try inserting the span code in as indicated above and seeing if it sticks. You can also use the Visual Editor to make the text bold, so it looks like this:
This is a header
and this is some text that was dropped down a line using the shift-enter command. Notice that it is still inside the same "h1" tags which define its characteristics.
and then modify that inline tag as I did the span tag as such, (and change the font weight so that it does not go bold if not wanted):
This is a header
and this is some text that was dropped down a line using the shift-enter command. Notice that it is still inside the same "h1" tags which define its characteristics.
Those are some ideas for you. Good luck.
Hi Dave
Thanks for the very detailed response. I really appreciate your attention.
May I extend your patience a bit more? I am using the WP Twenty Thirteen theme and would like to use some of the excessive white space by introducing a second sidebar on the left hand side of the page. I found discussion on the web about this, but the thread was terminated before the correspondent confirmed that the solution worked. See https://wordpress.org/support/topic/adding-a-second-sidebar-on-the-left-of-twenty-thirteen
Is there a reasonably simple way to achieve this.
Many thanks
Johnny
Hi Johnny,
On this question I will pass. Swamped right now. You could just create a WordPress child theme and try it out and see if it works. Good luck.
Nice Sharing
Thanks For Sharing
I really like your site. I have found some great info.
Thank you!
You appear to be a WordPress guru, and I also appreciate your frank response to that fellow in April where you basically said “I’ll help you with that, but it’s not a ‘quick question.’ So here’s a quick question: I’m an old guy, who managed earlier this year to put together a couple of pages with WordPress, but now something’s changed (or I’ve gotten really dumb) as I’m having great difficulty getting things imported (all I want to do is either “grab it” or use Text Edit to pick up text from other sources and then “paste” it into the site, preferably with a box or border or some such around it, and also (which at some point I stumbled around and was able to do) ‘crop’ pictures using the image edit feature that I now can’t seem to find and, finally, change the frigging text font from time to time in what I type in (i.e., is there more available from the WP dashboard than bold, italic?
For this, I am willing to pay, so I can post something to the website. Maybe it’s beyond the capability of a yo-yo like me, or WordPress is the wrong program for me (given my competence)
Use the Paste as Plain Text button in your post/page editor to paste text from other sources, this strips out the code from the other source when you paste it just pastes the text. Then format from there, within the WordPress text editor.
Instal a WordPress plugin called TinyMCE Advanced Or TinyMCE Ultimate to add additional formatting options.
As for the photo cropping, they changed the interface and I cannot recall how to do it and don’t have access to look at right now. You can email me if you want help with that and I will take a little time to review and charge half an hour for my time.
Hi. Great advice. Here’s my problem. I’m using the Genesis theme and went into my Home Page to edit the content. While working on the content I saw spaces between all of the paragraphs yet when I hit Update and viewed my site, some of the paragraphs run into each other, without the proper spacing. Any easy way to correct this.
Also, some of my text comes out Bold as I entered it but again, further down the home page, some of the text is not presenting as Bold as it did in draft form.
Any and all help is appreciated!
I would have to look at something like that specifically to troubleshoot what is going on. Specifically, I would need access to your WordPress website and we could login together over the phone, and you could walk me through what is happening. From there I could either identify something you are doing in the edit panel that I notice is causing the issue for you, or I could look at the code in my browser (if you know a little about code you can use chrome developer tools or firebug on firefox) and see what is being generated, and why you are having the problems you are.
That kind of support I would want to be compensated for with regard to my time, given that is what I do for a living (designing, developing and maintaining websites). Feel free to contact me via my email address or phone if you want to do that. Both are on my contact page.
I’m a WordPress beginner and very leery of what I’ve encountered so far.
What about revising the format of a home page?
Not a word about home page formatting in this lesson.
I get the impression that, at least with the theme I’m using (Responsive), I cannot do simple revisions to the text formatting.
Currently all home page text is centered. I want it left-aligned.
But unlike the regular pages, there is no straightforward way to do this.
Or am I missing something?
I have not used Responsive, so I cannot comment on that specific theme. Each theme can have their own unique features that are customized beyond the WordPress core. If you know how to left align text on other pages and cannot on the home page, I suspect there is something unique about the home page outside of the rest of the page – unique to the theme. That is, on any page, using the text editor, you should be able to highlight any text and simply click the left align button in the text editor. If that does not work or is not an option, then indeed that is a bummer.
HI..i need help..in my blog there is no “Visual” editor and the “HTML”
there is “Visual” editor and the “Text” ,
PLz tell me how i can change this..means text to HTML..PLZ i need help.Thanks.
The only reason I can think of that you are not seeing the option for HTML is if your browser window is too narrow.
Otherwise, I am not clear on your question. If you want to edit the HTML of your page or post content, you would use the HTML tab at top right of the Text editor, as is shown in the image on this blog post. If you want to email me access to your blog and call me, I can take a look and walk you through it.
Hi David
Boy, am I glad I found your User Guide. I am new to WordPress, having designed a bunch of websites using html and CSS. I’ve been asked to take over managing a site built with WordPress and I am finding it very slow going. I am sure your Guide will be very helpful to me.
There is a task that I am currently stuck on, that I thought might be addressed in this chapter, but it isn’t. Client wants me to ad an introductory paragraph at the top of the Store page.
When I go into Edit Page for the Store page, I drop the paragraph of text into the upload/insert box. When I publish the page, I see that the new text shows up at the BOTTOM of the page, not at the top. How do I get it to show up at top, right under the page title? I don’t see this addressed in the WordPress user forum. Can you help?
Here is the page URL:
http://dedhamhistorical.org/products-page/
Thank you.
Hi Phil,
It is a little different when you are wanting to modify a page that is created as part of a shopping cart program. Looking at the code of your site, you have the wp e-commerce plugin installed on your site. I suspect that possibly if you clicked on the HTML tab, (at the top right of the content editor in the Edit Page screen of the page you want to edit), you may see some “short code” that specifies to import content to that page from the e-commerce plugin. If that is the case, then you can put some text before all of the at in HTML mode. (That code will not show up in Visual mode).
Once you add some content before that code, then you can switch back to Visual mode and you should see it, and then you can edit it as you like. This way you can position the text before the cart content.
If that is not the case, then you will have to investigate how the plugin works. Go to the plugin section of your WP admin area and track down the ecommerce plugin and then from there instructions.
Good luck.
Hi David
Well — this worked fine, and I certainly would have not been able to figure it out for myself. So, thank you for reaching out and providing guidance and a solution to my problem.
Phil
No sweat. Ask anytime.