Category Archives: Documentation

Visual Editor vs Text Editor

When you are using WordPress, you are probably used to seeing this by default:

visual editor

The Visual Editor

This is called the Visual editor. Notice how there are two tabs at the top right of the text box and the one labeled “Visual” is selected. The Visual editor is called that because it shows you an approximation of what the page will actually look like on the website. Headings look like headings, you can see each image and its size, etc. You use this to do most of your editing on the site. But there is another option Continue reading →

How to Copy and Paste properly

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

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 →

Changing your display name

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 →

Getting around in the new theme

If you have been using the website for a while, you should have no trouble managing your website in the new template. Most things are the same, but a couple of things are different. Here’s a video to help you navigate it. I will write out full instructions later and link to those.