This is a very simple WordPress plugin which disables the Visual Editor aka the Rich Text Editor aka TinyMCE for all users across the site.
If you also delete the “wp-includes/js/tinymce/” directory from the server, the visual editor option will disappear from all user’s profiles and it will be impossible for the visual editor to load. This step completes the removal of the visual editor.
Please note: You will need to remove this directory after every upgrade. Every time you upgrade WordPress this directory will be automatically reinstalled.
10 Comments
Very cool but will you be updating for 2.3X?
To the best of my knowledge, the plugin should continue to work with version 2.3.x without any problems. If it’s not working for you, can you supply some more info so I can look into it?
OK, I slightly misunderstood the expected behavior, my bad.
In 2.3, with the plug-in enabled, the visual editor remains active until the user next updates their profile by turning it off. Then, it remains off whether-or-not the visual editor checkbox is re-checked.
I’m assuming that by removing the appropriate directory (as suggested), the visual editor will never be ‘on’ for any user …
Thanks for the prompt reply!
The plugin disables the visual editor for all users as soon as any user updates their profile. So if you install the plugin and then update your own profile, the visual editor will be disabled for all users across the whole site.
Gotcha. Now, what about this?
I deleted the tinyMCE directory. When I returned to the weblog and my admin account, I clicked ‘Your Profile’. The visual editor checkbox was gone. Good.
Then I clicked the ‘edit’ button under Authors & Users for myself. The visual checkbox displays at the top. When I click it and try ‘update user’, I get this message:
“You cannot remove the Edit Users capability from yourself.”
When I do this for any other user, it tells me the user was updated, but the visual editor doesn’t activate - understandably ;-).
Anyway I suppose this is harmless anomalous behavior, but I thought I would report it.
Thanks just what I’ve been looking for. I’d much rather write up everything in notepad any day or failing that and editor that doesn’t mess about with my formating. I’ve not used Wordpress an awful lot so the information on how to disable the TinyMCE editor manually is also most appreciated.
Thanks again
hi. Thanks for plugin
perfect.
regards
Waah!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful this was! I integrated my board (2.3) with a forum and my sigle-user option was unavilable. In the other hand all my posts had php so there was no way I could edit them! I had to rewrite them over again! …until now!
This works like a charm AND saves a lot of time with the new users with the same problem! It saved my life.
Thanks again.
Hi, does this plugin work for the 2.6.x releases?
@Håvard: No idea! Install it and please let me know how you get on.
3 Trackbacks
[...] Disable Visual Editor [...]
[...] Disable Visual Editor WordPress Plugin von Callum Macdonald schaltet Blogweit für alle User den WYSIWYG Editor [...]
[...] Disable Visual Editor - WYSIWYG sounds great in theory, but stinks in practice. We found it quicker to disable autop and the visual editor. The visual editor caused so much grief we even gutted tinymce from the Wordpress install completely. [...]