openswitch

If you’re a WordPress user then you’re familiar with the Compose screen, a.k.a. the “Write Post” screen. For the past year of blogging I have been using it, and functionally it’s top-notch. I enjoy the spartan interface and the nice blue hues (blue is my favorite color.) However, as sweet as the Compose screen in WordPress is, I’ve grown in my WordPress abilities and as a result I’ve grown to desire a customized WordPress writing experience. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can get maximum efficiency and flexibility from your Compose screen as well.

Note: this tutorial was written with WordPress 2.0.5 in mind.

Disable the rich text editor

It was with the best intentions that the rich text editor was added in to the latest WordPress release, currently 2.0.5. Unfortunately many people, especially long-time WordPress users, have found it to be lacking. They missed the “lean, mean, admin machine” that WP was. The rich text editor disallows easy insertion of YouTube videos and other embedded media. It also tends to be slow loading even on fast Internet connections and fast computers. Additionally, superfluous code can slide under the radar and make it into your live posts and pages really really easily. In short, it’s much easier, faster and infinitely more useful to disable the rich text editor in WordPress.

To do this go to your WP-admin screen and click “Users.” Scroll to the bottom of the page and deselect the option which says, “Use the visual rich editor when writing.” Granted, you’ll now have to learn basic HTML to make your posts look pretty but if you want to get serious about your blogging you really should make an effort to learn it. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

Get rid of the clutter

The next thing we’ll do is remove some of the options in the sidebar of your Compose screen as well as some of the clutter near the bottom. In a stock WordPress installation you can manually change almost everything about your posts. You can control discussion options, password-protecting options, the post slug (permalink), categories, post status, post timestamp, post author, excerpt, custom fields, trackbacks, and at the very bottom of your Compose screen you even have a little bookmarklet displayed there which you can drag into your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. But, if you’re like me, you never use half of these features. Yet they load each and every time you want to write a new post or edit an old one. STOP THE INSANITY!

Display only those Compose options you actually use with this god-send of a plugin: Clutter Free. Install it, activate it and then go to the “Users” screen, scroll to the bottom and check the boxes next to those features you want to appear on your Compose screen. Mine only displays the Slug, Categories, Trackbacks, Image Upload, Quicktags (you DEFINITELY want this box checked) and Custom Fields. You don’t have to use the same options as me, but do remove those functions you never utilize.

Hack your quick tags

UPDATE: after writing this entry Mac Stansbury pointed out that instead of actually hacking your quicktags.js file you can use the WP-AddQuicktag plugin to accomplish the same thing much more easily. The plugin makes it super easy to add quicktags. If, however, you want to remove quicktags you’ll still have to hack your quicktags.js file.

I learned how to do this from my buddy, Tim Schmoyer.

Note:this step requires that you hack a core WordPress file. This is not advisable unless you understand that you may totally break your blog. Have a backup quicktags.js file on hand in case you cause irreparable damage. Oh, and backup your WordPress database. I’m not responsible for anything you break, ever, anywhere.

A straight spiffy thing you can do is hack your quicktags.js file. You’ll find it in your WordPress installation under wp-includes/js/quicktags.js. Open it in your favorite text editor and scroll down a little. You’ll notice a bunch of code that looks like this:

edButtons[edButtons.length] =
new edButton('ed_strong'
,'b'
,'<strong>'
,'</strong>'
,'b'
);

That’s the code which produces the “strong” quicktag that now exists in your Compose screen —remember, you should have turned off your rich-text editor already—. Using the above code as a sort of template you can create any manner of quicktags you desire. On my blog I use a piece of code to highlight certain portions of text. The code would look like this: <span class=“highlight”>This text is highlighted</span>. But instead of manually typing that code before and after the highlighted text I wanted to make a quicktag which produced it automatically. This is what the quicktag looks like:

edButtons[edButtons.length] =
new edButton('ed_hilite'
,'hilite'
,'<span class="highlight">'
,'</span>'
,''
);

In the same way you can edit your quicktags to automatically produce any kind of code you use all the time. Similarly you can also remove any quicktags that you never use. I removed the “Close Tags” quicktag because in the year I’ve been blogging I never used it even once. The choice is up to you.

Get WP Tiger Admin 3.0

Last but not least you should do something to beautify your admin screen. The backend of WordPress, while useful, is also very utilitarian. Frankly, it’s not too fun to look at. Get the Tiger Admin 3.0 plugin and enjoy looking at your admin screen. This plugin is worth its weight in gold.

If you’ve gotten this far and your blog still works and you’re still able to write posts then CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve successfully enhanced your WordPress writing experience. I hope it serves you well in your future blogging.

If, however, you broke something along the way, you have my condolences. But breaking stuff is part of learning. Don’t let it get you down! You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? ;). At any rate, if worse comes to worse you can always reinstall WordPress afresh and you’ll be back up and running in no time.