admin | 2025-08-23 1009.2 | 2025 | 0-General | tags:
the Classic Editor
• In this guide
• How to Access the Classic Editor
• Sites Without Plugins
• Sites With Plugins
• About the Classic Editor
• Explanation of the Classic Editor Buttons
• First Row of Editing Buttons
• Second Row of Editing Buttons
• Alignment
• Styles
• Text Color
• Pasting Text
• Clear Formatting
• Special Characters
• Outdent / Indent
• Spacing
• Keyboard Shortcuts
About the Classic Editor
You can use the Classic Editor to create, edit, and format your content in a view similar to that of a word processor. You can also use the modern WordPress Editor to create anything the Classic Editor can do, from simple blog posts and articles to media-rich, mobile-responsive, and unique websites. The Classic Editor has two views: Visual and HTML. Unless you are comfortable editing in HTML, ensure you have selected the Visual tab in the top-right corner of the editor area:
Text Color To change text color, you must first highlight a section of text:
Pasting Text If you copy and paste text from somewhere else, you may discover that it does not always appear exactly as expected. This is because pasting from another program (such as an email or Word document) can bring with it some unwanted formatting.
If you use the “Paste as text” button, a special cleanup process will run to remove any special formatting and HTML tags that may otherwise change your text's formatting.
Below is how the Toolbar looks in “Plain Text off” mode. Note that there's no box around it:
image of paste as text button when not active Below is how the Toolbar looks in “Plain Text on” mode. Notice the icon now has a box around it, and the button is shaded black:
The clear formatting button removes all formatting (bold, italic, colors, etc.) from a highlighted section of text. First, select your text:
Special Characters You can insert special characters into your post or page. Position your cursor to where you want to insert a character and click the insert custom character button. A popup window will appear:
Outdent / Indent
Outdent / Indent The indent button will move text in by one level, and the outdent button will take away one level.
Spacing
Hitting the Enter (Return) key will end the paragraph you are writing and start a new one. If you want to start a new line without creating a new paragraph, hold the Shift key while hitting Enter. _ph0_
Keyboard Shortcuts
The classic editor has several keyboard shortcuts, or hotkeys, built in.
To see a list of all available shortcuts, click the toolbar toggle to show the second row of icons, and then click the “Keyboard Shortcuts” (question mark) icon at the end of the second row.
A window will show a list of keyboard shortcuts available in the editor.