Tricking Wordpress

Sometimes I’m a big fan of Wordpress, sometimes I want to print out all the code and then tear that paper to shreds. Today, I realized that I enjoy it when I’m creating a theme for Wordpress, and I despise it when I have to use it. In particular, when I have to do any sort of content formatting for a page or a post.

Wordpress 2+ comes with TinyMCE packaged as a WYSIWYG editor for creating content in your blog. TinyMCE is a very impressive javascript-based rich text editor, which can be customized to a high degree. The Wordpress folks made the decision to keep tinyMCE pretty simple with the default Wordpress install. I think that’s a good idea: keep it simple stupid. As a sort of compensation, they also allow you direct editing of the HTML code generated by tinyMCE, in case you’d like to do any formatting more advanced that bolding text. This seems like an ideal setup, except for one unbelievable snafu: Wordpress modifies the code you write in the code editor.

Quite frankly, this is inexcusable, and has forced me to change my stance from a Wordpress advocate (for it’s ease of install, well put together interface, and glut of plugins) to a Wordpress skeptic. I have to fight the software to do what I want. If I’m supposed to be able to write code, let me write it. There is no faster way to frustrate a user than to arbitrarily modify input.