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Written by Tech Notes

Published: 08 January 2015

How To Activate (Enable) Additional Joomla TinyMCE Editor Functions And Not Lose Ctrl-v Pasting Ability And Still Be Able To See Past Article Images In Editor.

This article is based on tests and changes on a Joomla 3.2.3 platform.  I estimate it consumed about 30 hours of work.  It is useful for Joomla versions prior and after 3.2.3.

Note that I do not get paid to do these articles.

The Reason For This Article

The solution indicated in the article at How To Activate Additional Joomla Editor Functions had two problems:

1. It was no longer possible to copy and paste images directly into the editor.  Copying and pasting an image directly without dealing with file naming and uploading and formatting was a major benefit.  Although, I do still optimize images and everyone should.  Just poor site management and bad site design if you do not optimize, but that is not the topic of this article.
   
   
2. Images in past articles could no longer be seen, and required a back and forth switching between the Extended editor menu and the Advanced or Simple editor menu.  Too much hassle.
   
   

What You Get Once Completed

After you go through the steps below, your TinyMCE editor menu will change from something limited like this:

And Change to the below menu, and without the negative side effects.  In addition, it will display a Word Count at the bottom right corner of the editor window.  And all this while essentially using the default install of Joomla:



Once you are done with the below steps, additional functions are available.
Additional functions like image border and style entry; text coloring; background coloring; full screen editing; content search and replace; language direction control; emotions icons (smilies); advanced listing formats; anchoring; paragraph functions, media insertion; easier font formatting selections; template creation and insertion; Preview; marking text in quotation format; non-breaking space insertion; and Word Count.

STEPS for
Additional TinyMCE Editor Menu Functionality Without Negative Side Effects

1. Make a full backup of either your hosting account (easily done with Web Hosting With $1 single click backup function) or do a backup of your joomla site, and download the backup files to your computer and remove them from the hosting file system to not consume space on the server.
   
   
2. In the Joomla back end control panel, go to Plugins Manager within the Extensions menu and search for "edit", and click on "Editor - TinyMCE"
   
   
   
   
3. Change the Functionality selection to Extended and push the "Save & Close" button..
   
   
   
   
4. Access your hosting file system.  Hopefully you have a great hosting like Web Hosting With $1 (WHW1), and have all the needed tools easily from the hosting control panel.  I will be using File Manager from within WHW1's cpanel.  You will want to locate the file tinymce.php, which is most likely in the tinymce folder.  I just use WHW1's File Manager search to simply locate it.  In my case, the file name and path would be /public_html/plugins/editors/tinymce/tinymce.php.  If you need help using the File Manager, there is a tutorial for it at http://www.whw1.com/a1/tutorials/cpanel-tutorials/.  You can also use any FTP software, or direct folder access method, or whatever means you prefer to access and edit the file of tinymce.php.  There is a list of free FTP softwares and tutorials for each at http://www.whw1.com/a1/tutorials/file-transfer-tutorials/.
   
   
5. Make a copy of the file as a form of backup to allow you to easily undo things without involving a restore.
   
   
6. Next, open the file tinymce.php in a text editor.  Use either the Text Editor or Code Editor from the File manager (click on the file via right mouse button to chose text or code editor) or download the file to your computer and use a simple text editor like Notepad.  Do not use something like Word to avoid adding invisible characters to the content of the file.  If your editor asks for editing format, then know that editing as utf-8 is fine.
   
   
7. Search for plugins : \"$plugins\", and change that line to //  plugins : \"$plugins\",.  This disables (comments out) the line of code.
   
   
8. Immediately under the line you commented out, add the following long line, plugins : \"autolink lists image charmap print preview anchor pagebreak code save textcolor importcss table link searchreplace fullscreen nonbreaking media template wordcount visualchars visualblocks advlist emoticons directionality\",.  The final result should look something like this:
   
   //                    plugins : \"$plugins\",
                    plugins : \"autolink lists image charmap print preview anchor pagebreak code save textcolor importcss table link searchreplace fullscreen nonbreaking media template wordcount visualchars visualblocks advlist emoticons directionality\",


9. Save the file.  If needed, upload it to the hosting server from where you got the file from and replace the existing one with the one you modified.
   
   
10. Back in your Joomla control panel, Select "Clear Cache" from the System pull down menu.
    
    
    
    
11. Set the Filter to Administrator, and Check All the checkboxes, and click the Delete button.
    
    
    
    
12. Finally, to test, select Add New Article by going to Content menu and selecting Article Manager.
    
    
    
    

FINISHED.
The new article should be displaying the updated TinyMCE editor menu and its expanded selection of operations, as shown above prior to the listed steps.

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