Adding a WYSIWYG Editor to Your Drupal Site

What is a WYSIWYG Editor and Why Do You Need It?

So your site users don't have to use code. Its as simple as that.

WYSIWYG stands for "What You See Is What You Get" ... if you select some text and click the "bold" button, that text will be bold. If you select some text and click the "italic" button, that text will be in italics. There's no messing around with HTML. That will be a relief to some of you and more particularly ... your clients and site visitors.

Installing the WYSIWYG Module

First of all, we're going to install a WYSIWYG module that will allow Drupal to install a range of different editors.

  • Step 1: Click here to download the latest version of "WYSIWYG". Choose the top link under "Recommended releases".
  • Step 2: Extract the files into a folder on your desktop. The folder will be called "wysiwyg"
  • Step 3: Login to your site's files via FTP and navigate to /sites/all/. If there isn't a folder called /modules/ here, create one.
  • Step 4: Upload the "wysiwyg" folder to /sites/all/modules/
  • Step 5: Go to Administer >> Site building >> Modules. Check the box next to "Wysiwyg" and click Save Configuration.
  • Step 6: Go to Administer >> Site configuration >> Wysiwyg and you should see a screen with several suggested editors. One option is TinyMCE and that is the example we will use:

Installing TinyMCE

Now we're going to install the TinyMCE editor itself:

  • Step 7: Click on the "Download" link or go directly to http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/download.php
  • Step 8: Download the latest TinyMCE to your desktop and extract the files. The folder will be called "tinymce 2". Rename this to simply "tinymce"
  • Step 9: Login to your site's files via FTP and navigate to /sites/all/. If there isn't a folder called /libraries/ here, create one.
  • Step 10: Upload the "wysiwyg" folder to /sites/all/libraries/
  • Step 11: Go back to Go to Administer >> Site configuration >> Wysiwyg and screen we saw before should now look like this:
  • Step 12: Save these settings and now when you go to edit an article, you should see a fully-fledged editor:
 

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