If you’re having problems with the text editor in WordPress and you’re using Internet Explorer, try using a different web browser, such as “Google Chrome” or “Firefox“. The new version of Internet Explorer, version 9, has some javascript problems with text editing it seems. Firefox also works better for dragging widgets in the Widget area of the Dashboard of WordPress.
Using Windows Live Writer to Blog
You can use Microsoft’s “Windows Live Writer” to create posts on your WordPress website. Here’s the link to install Live Writer:
http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer?os=other
Install and start up the Writer. Select the upper tab, “Blog Account“, then “Blog Options“.
In the Blog options menu, enter: Blog Service: WordPress
Website address: Your WordPress website URL.
Enter your username and password for the WordPress dashboard.
Enter a title and some blog content. Then select the large “Publish” button in the Home tab. Go to the blog page of your website and find your new post.
To create another blog account, go to the Home tab and click on the WordPress icon and select “Add Blog Account”.
Using PHP code in WordPress
You can use PHP code in WordPress without turning off the friendly text editor, which tends to scramble code. The scrambling is the problem with the PHP plugins that allow entering PHP code in the edit window. Using the “php-code-widget” plugin, on the other hand, allows you to move the code to new PHP widgets that are like text widgets. These custom widgets can then be dragged to the sidebar. Using another plugin, “widgets-on-pages“, allows you to insert your widget anywhere on a page using the “[widgets-on-pages ID=myLabel]” mechanism.
On the sidebar, use the PHP function is_page() to determine if it should appear on a certain page.
Here’s an example of including HTML code on the server side using PHP include. Drag a PHP Text Widget to the sidebar Widgets-on-Pages container, open it, and enter the code. The example page then just contains the “[widgets-on-pages ID=myLabel]” statement. See the results in the Example page.
?php
include (ABSPATH.'SampleTable.html');
?>
Problem Dragging Widgets on WordPress
If you can’t drag widgets to their destination in the “Widgets” page, try using a different web browser, such as “Firefox”. The new version of Internet Explorer, version 9, has some javascript problems with widget dragging it seems. Firefox also works better for editing page and blog text in WordPress.