WordPress vs HTML: YouTube & Other Services

One of the things that bugs me about WordPress is this WYSIWYG editor. It’s nice, but it has a tendency to eat your code. However, I found out a few cool features.

Did you know that you can put in basic HTML code into the WYSIWYG editor and it’ll render out as HTML when you hit save or publish? You can put in bold, italic, span, link and image HTML tags all in the WYSIWYG editor. Have an image on Flickr you want to post? Put the entire raw code that Flickr gives you into the editor, and it’ll be converted into a pretty image when you post it. That’s quite handy when you don’t feel like toggling back and forth between the HTML window.

This does not work as nice though with services like YouTube that offer Flash elements. Embedding Flash is a bit more tricky. I’ve found it best to use Safari or a browser that doesn’t do the whole WYSIWYG thing. Then putting in the YouTube code works fine.

If you could turn off the WYSIWYG editor that’d help a lot too. However, for some reason, WordPress doesn’t turn it off, even when you un-check the box in the options. A work around for that is to get the User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox (and other Mozilla browsers) and say you are in IE6. It’ll then renter the basic HTML post box.

Of course you could always get a plugin. If there is a WordPress problem, there is a plugin to fix it. The Broadcast Yourself plugin looks promising and I’m installing that on another blog as we speak. The Plugin Database has a few other offerings too.

If you are a novice at blogging, the WYSIWYG editor is fantastic. But if you want to start adding in more images and videos and who knows what, you better get a plugin or revert back to the basic HTML editor.

[tags]WYSIWYG, YouTube, HTML, Flash, Broadcast Yourself, User Agent Switcher, Firefox, Flickr[/tags]