Copy/Paste Into Editor

It's common to use Microsoft Word or Open Office to pen down notes on one's website. However, it's not a good idea to copy and paste directly from these editors into the WYSIWYG editor of your website.

Why to Never Copy/Paste From External Editors?

The admin contains 2 editors: the WYSIWYG and the Source editor. The Source editor used to be the only way to edit websites and therefore required programming language. The arrival of the WYSIWYG editor made it possible to edit the content on websites without any programming background. Although in many ways, the WYSIWYG editor functions like Microsoft Word, it is quite different. The code language used in Microsoft Word is very different than what is used on websites and can conflict with the templates and styles used on your site. 

Also Word adds its own junk HTML to the text. It creates a very bloated source code, full of irrelevant and superfluous HTML, causing your pages to have much larger file sizes than necessary and thus, increasing page loading time.

So, whenever you need to paste some text from into the editor, make sure it is plain text so it doesn't cause unintended mingling with the site's code. Then edit the styling of the text using the tools availale in the WYSIWYG editor.

Why Doesn't the WYSIWYG Editor Show the Actual Size and Styles of the Font?

Generally, the WYSIWYG editor is close but does not entirely apply all the styles on the website when viewing in the admin. The admin uses a completely different layout and styling than the frontend, so it can not show the fonts and styles that you would see on your website in their entirety. You can have the admin open in one window and the frontend in another to check on your changes. 

Best Practices

• Copy the text from Word and then paste it into Notepad. Notepad automatically strips any of the Word formatting that would have otherwise clogged up the files. From Notepad, you can then copy the text and paste it in the desired location on your web page, using the WYSIWYG editor.
• If  you don't want to copy/paste using Notepad, you can instead paste the text as plain text into the editor.
• It's best to stick to a uniform style, like h3, h4, h5, etc...for the title and bullet points to show a listing. The links will always be in your site's pink/red color so it's clear to users every time that they are links.
• Do not try to force colors and different font styles in to the editor by copy/pasting from any other program like Dreamweaver. 
• Less is more. Each website has its own look and feel. By adding inumerous styles and colors, the site does not look consistent and may result in the users being confused about what to look at first and whether something is a link or not.