This editor is no longer considered standard within WordPress. Any new instances will utilize the Gutenberg editor. You can learn more about that here. As such, this documentation is not regularly updated. If you have any questions about the classic editor that are not covered in the following sections please reach out to your project manager.
Changes to Standard Text in the Classic Editor:
From the WordPress Administrator Interface, click Pages on the left navigation menu. You’ll see a list of every page on your site, organized by folder structure.
Click the page title to begin editing it. When the screen refreshes, you can choose Visual view, which looks like the screenshot below, or Text view.
Make your changes.
To preview your changes, click the Preview Changes button on the right.
When you’re happy with your changes, click the blue Update button on the right to save them and publish them to your site.
Shortcuts
WordPress comes with some great quick text editing shortcuts for you to use:
Typing * in front of a sentence will automatically create a bulleted list.
Typing - in front of a sentence will automatically create a numbered list.
Typing 1. or 1) in front of a sentence will automatically create a numbered list.
Starting your paragraph with two to six number signs # will convert that paragraph to a heading.
Starting with the greater-than symbol > will convert the paragraph to a blockquote.
Not your intention? Just press the backspace button.
Adding Links
You can turn text into a link by copying the link URL to your clipboard, highlighting the text you want to link, and then pasting to create the link. Usually, you would expect the selected text to be replaced with a link but not so in WordPress! Watch a quick video.
If that doesn’t work for you, you can also try the more traditional way of turning images and text into links to other websites, or other pages within your website:
While editing a page, or creating a new page, place your cursor in the text editor box.
Highlight the text or image you want to turn into a link.
Click the icon that looks like a chain link. Click the gear icon to see all link options.
Now you need to decide what kind of link to add:
To add a link to a different website, type the full address of the site (including the https://) in the URL field
To add a link to a different page in your site, select a page from your site at the bottom of the screen. Use the Search box to find the page quickly.
To add a link to an email address, just type the email address in the text area and then highlight it and click the link icon. WordPress will automatically turn it into an email link.
If you want to link to an email address from regular words, like “Email Us” type the text, and then click the link icon and type mailto:[email protected] in the URL field, where [email protected] is the person’s full email address.
Click Add Link. You’ll notice that the text has turned blue.
Click Preview to visit a preview of your updated page and click on your link to test it.
Inserting Images on Pages
You can insert images on any page or news item on your site. Here’s how:
While editing a page or creating a new page, place your cursor where you’d like the image to go.
Click the Add Media option above the text editor bar.
In the box that comes up, decide if you want to add an image from your computer (something you’ve never uploaded before) or use an image that is already uploaded to your site.
To upload a new image, click the Select Files button.
Locate the file on your computer and click Open. The screen will refresh once the file has been uploaded.
Give the image a Title that will mean something to you in the future.
Give the image Alternate Text that is descriptive, especially if the image has real information in it. Good Alternate Text helps your search results, so think about search terms when you add this text.
Add a Caption if you’d like any text to appear under the image on your page.
If you want the image to link to a different website or a different page on your site put that page address in the Link URL field.
Select if you’d like the image to be on the left, in the middle, or to the right using the Alignment options.
Select how large you’d like the image to be using the Size options. Most of your images are set to Medium.
Click Insert into Post.
Pro Tip: You can do some basic image editing tasks like rotating, cropping, and resizing, right in WordPress. Select an image and click on the edit image link near the image thumbnail in the details section and off you go. Watch a video. We also have some information about proper image selection and responsive images here.
Adding Videos (and other things)
You can easily embed a YouTube or Vimeo video on any page or post on your site. Simply place your cursor where you’d like the video to appear and then paste in the video’s URL (it will look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw or https://vimeo.com/31158841 [by the way, watch these videos - you won’t regret the time]).
WordPress will automatically convert the link into an embedded video. Cool, huh?
WordPress is always updating these options, so check back to https://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds for more things that you can embed this way.
Adding PDFs
You can upload and link to PDFs on any page on your site. Here’s how to add a PDF:
While editing a page or creating a new page, place your cursor where you’d like to link to the PDF.
While editing a page or news item, type a sentence like, “Download the application.”
Highlight the sentence you just wrote, and click the Add Media option above the text editor bar.
In the box that comes up, click the Select Files button.
Locate the PDF on your computer and click Open. The screen will refresh once the file has been uploaded.
Give the PDF a Title that matches what you want the sentence to say. If you type “My-Personal-Or-Internal-Document.docx” in the Title field, that’s what the link on your published page will say. Instead, type something like, “My Awesome PDF.”
Be sure to click the File URL button under the Link URL field. This will ensure that when people click the PDF link, they go directly to the PDF.
Click Insert into Post.
When you’re happy with your story, click Publish. The sentence you highlighted is now a link to the PDF. When your visitors click it, they will automatically open the PDF.