WordPress comes equipped with some great features to allow you to easily format your blog posts and pages without knowing or even seeing the underlying HTML coding. While die-hard coders and advanced users may tell you to get rid of the editor I think it’s more valuable to learn to use the editor effectively, especially if the thought of learning HTML gives you hives.  This article will cover the features and options included in the Visual Editor toolbar as it comes with WordPress and break down the function of each button along with how and when to use them!  Many of the options are self-explanatory but some are not.

The Visual Editor, sometimes refereed to as the, Rich Editor or WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) Editor, is comprised of a sub-set of features from the much more extensive TinyMCE – Javascript WYSIWYG Editor.   TinyMCE has a mind boggling number of options available.  WordPress has, wisely, chosen to include only the most relevant functions to include in the WordPress edit post/page screens.

Here is the Toolbar as it looks when you start.

See that button at the end, with all the colored dots in rows? Click on it and the toolbar will expand to display more formatting options.

It should now look like this:

A whole new world of formatting options are now open to you! Hover over each of the buttons in the toolbar has a tool tip that will give a hint as to it’s function when you hover over for a moment to get a general idea of what each one does.  Some plugins will add buttons to the visual editor toolbar. We will be covering the buttons available in a basic installation of WordPress.

We’ll continue this series by looking at each of the buttons and their functions individually.