Whenever you copy and paste content from a website or a document (Word doc, Google Doc, etc,) into a web page in WordPress, you’re also inadvertently copying code that you do not see. WordPress has gotten better over time at filtering out this code, but it doesn’t catch everything. While the page may look fine to you, there could be all sorts of problematic things happening in the code. Here’s an example of what it can look like:

This can have terrible implications for your page. It may cause unwanted yet minor issues, such as changing some colors and fonts on your page, but it can also cause more major damage, such as putting <div> tags on the page that can ultimately wreak havoc with the page layout.

The solution: paste your text in the Text tab (see above) and then format the text as needed in the Visual tab. You can use the Visual tab, but be aware that you may have to go back later and fix problem spots.

Linking to an email address is done almost the same way as creating any other text link. So if you don’t know how to create a text link, read my post about how to create a text link.

The Easy Way: Shortcode

If you are editing a page on www.augsburg.edu, you can use this handy shortcode. Just replace the email address with the one you want to use. It will display your email address and properly hyperlink it. Continue reading →

If you have a blog, you may have noticed that when you write a post it displays your name as the author of the post like this:

You can change what is displayed there. It will be your username by default, but that doesn’t look great. What if you want it to say “Kim Stone” instead of “stonek”? Here’s how you change it.

Continue reading →

Embed HTML code

You may find yourself needing to embed something on your page. You have a chunk of HTML code. This could be for a variety of purposes: Continue reading →