WordPress Plugins: Add Quicktags

Published August 17th by Ben in WordPress Wednesdays 3

If you’re anything like me, every once in a while you find a task that just drives you nuts. It doesn’t even have to something difficult or time consuming, it’s just something you would love to never have to do again. For me, underlining text in WordPress was one of those things. I don’t do it all that often and lord knows it certainly wasn’t difficult to go into the code view and type out the <u> but it drove me absolutely crazy every time I had to do it. I think that’s mainly because I can’t understand why WP didn’t include that button along side the others up there in the left hand corner. You want to make something bold? No problem. You wanna italicize a word or two? Hey, it’s easy! Hell, even crossing out text that you’ve written is simple with the nice little ABC up there. But, if you should dare to need to underline those same couple of words? Now we’ve got issues. You have to switch views (from Visual to Code) and then you have to go in and type out the code.

That is of course, until I stumbled onto a post over at jakeldaily.com. The post itself was about getting the “magazine” look on your blog using pull quotes. It’s actually a pretty cool idea that I’ll probably try later, but that wasn’t what got me so excited. In that post, Jason linked to a plugin called Add Quicktags that allows you to create your own little quick tag buttons in the WordPress editor. The page for the plugin is in a foreign language (I think Dutch?) but the basic plugin installation steps apply. You upload the file (I actually uploaded the folder not sure if it matters) and activate the plugin. After that, you should see an Add Quicktags link under your Options tab. Simply click on that, and away you go! Here’s a screen shot of the first new tag I added (underlining of course!):

(Click for Full Image)

 

So, now when I want to underline something, I still have to click over to the code view, however, now I’ve got my own custom button to tag the text for me! This may not seem like a big deal to some of you, but if there is any type of code you find yourself entering on a regular basis, consider using this plugin to save you that extra bit of time and effort. Also, if anyone knows of a plugin that would put my beloved underline button on the Visual editor view toolbar, please let me know.

P.S. I’ve received right at 20 entries for the Complete Blogging Package contest. There’s still a couple of weeks to go but that’s pretty good odds if you ask me!

TAGS: WordPress Plugins