Understanding the Kitchen Sink in WordPress

In my previous post on how to create a WordPress post, I covered the basics only. Specifically, I covered the basic visual formatting bar and the publish box. Today’s post goes a little deeper; here you will learn how to use the kitchen sink. As a reminder, you’ll find the kitchen sink as an extra row of buttons when you click the kitchen sink button. When you no longer wish to view the kitchen sink, simply press the button again to make these disappear.

• Format Text – Using the drop down list here, you can select from a list of formatted text options. Your blog likely has a uniform look and feel to its text, by modifying it using predefined options, it is easy to maintain that look.
• Underline – Unlike the more popular bold and itallics, underline is relegated to the kitchen sink.
• Align Full – You may know this button by its more popular name, “justify.” Simply a way of making the text use all the space from one margin to the other.
• Select Text Color – Use the drop down to select custom text colors for your post.
• Paste as Plain Text – Pasting text into WordPress can be tricky. In today’s software, text almost always has formatting code with which it is associated, and pasting directly into WordPress can have unintended results with your post’s appearance. If you have copied text from another program, you can paste it as plain text into your blog post by pressing this button.
• Paste from Word – The makers of WordPress did simplify pasting text that has been created in Word, and you can use this button to make its insertion relatively pain free.
• Remove Formatting – Your fastest method for removing formatting code that doesn’t quite seem right… a sort of get out of jail free card.
• Insert/Edit Embedded Media – Unless your blog’s administrator has added a plug-in to make media insertion easier, this button is intended to help in the task. Flash, Quicktime, Shockwave, Windows Media, and RealTime formats are all supported.
• Insert Custom Character – Whether you have need for an áccent over a letter or a © symbol, this button gives you access to non-ASCII characters.
• Outdent – In Word, this button is called “Decrease Indent.” It is only available if you have already indented your text, and may be used to reverse that decision.
• Indent – Used to indent the text you are entering by about five spaces.
• Undo – Reverse your most recent changes to your post.
• Redo – Undo’s undo. If you decide you didn’t want to undo something after all, click here.
• Help – When all else fails, you can try the help file to search for more pearls of wisdom for use in your WordPress text editing.

This concludes our tour of the Kitchen Sink. If you have any questions, or would like to learn more, please drop me a note.