Posted by Simon Goodchild  at November 25th, 2011

Change to language file locations

Okay, not as sexy but important!

From v11.11.26 if you are using .mo language files (see here for more info), you should save the .mo files into your plugins folder, probably in /wp-content/plugins, although you may have moved your wp-content folder somewhere special on your server.

Why? So that upgrading WPS doesn’t impact on the language files. Some admin’s find they have to re-upload the .mo files after each upgrade, and with weekly upgrades this can be a pain.

WYSIWYG editor

Okay, what a lot of users have been waiting for – a WYSIWYG editor with a toolbar full of icons. Or maybe a few if you prefer the minimal look.

First, to be clear, this is a Bronze/Silver member feature. Really sorry, I know this will disappoint many free users, but WPS has to be funded somehow. Hopefully, $39 a year for all the extras will still be considered value for money.

Configuring the editor

Once you have upgraded, as a Bronze member, ensure you have at least one Bronze plugin activated. You don’t need to actually use it, so for example, activate Alerts and if you don’t want Alerts just done use it. This “tells” WPS that you have bronze/silver membership. You will then have, on your forum settings page, a checkbox to enable the WYSIWYG editor. You may recognise it, it’s TinyMCE.

Once you’ve checked it, and saved, you will have a further set of options as follows.

Editor Toolbars

You can have up to four rows of toolbar buttons, depending on how you want to set up your editor. On the WPS site, for example, only the first row is used to keep it fairly minimal.

For each row you list, separated by commas, the buttons that you want to appear. If you want a gap, put in a horizontal bar.

So as an example, the WPS top row of buttons has the following:

Note the links that allow you to reset the toolbars to minimal or full. Also a link to a list of all the buttons and controls that you can add.

To avoid showing a toolbar row, simply clear the contents.

Editor CSS

You can change the style of the editor – by default it will link to a stylesheet for WP Symposium. But if you want red text on a green background, change the path to your own stylesheet. Don’t make changes in the existing file as it will be over-written every time WPS is updated.

Be sure to clear your cache after changing your stylesheet to see the changes.

Skin Folder

TinyMCE, as an editor, can be “skinned” to show different toolbar icons. WP Symposium includes three: default, cirkuit and o2k7. I personally like cirkuit best so that’s what the default value is, as opposed to TinyMCE’s “default” skin.

If you make your own skins, or find others that you like, you put them into the /wp-content/plugins/wp-symposium/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/skins folder and put the folder name in this field.

Width and Height

Simply sets the width and height of the editor.

Full set of bug fixes and enhancements

Can be seen on Trac.

Discuss on the forum...