Improving the Joomla Editing Experience

Can we make the editing experience in Joomla better? Yes we can. We are trying to make the editing experience for content editors in various content management systems just a little bit better.

Today I want to focus on Joomla and the out of the box experience with TinyMCE, the out of the box experience with JCE, and then what I think is a much better experience using a different profile in JCE.

Let’s take a look and I’ll show you what I mean. Shown below is the default editing experience with TinyMCE in Joomla 3.

Here it is in Joomla 4:

And then here is the default with JCE:

None of those are what I would like to hand off to a client who may or may not be great with html. Thankfully there is a better method! and it is in the JCE profile.

I’m here on a Joomla 4 site, I’m going to click on Editor Profiles.

Instead of using the Default profile I’m going to use the Mobile profile for everyone.

I really like this because it is easy to update. Let’s take a look and see how it is formatted right out of the box.

Just click on Content and add an Article.

Now you get a much cleaner look with a drop down to the most used icons. You already have advanced image manager and advanced file manager built in.

You still have the Joomla menu (shown below) to insert anything you want and this menu is completely editable.

If I go back, click Components, Hover over JCE Editor Pro, and click on Profiles I can edit the mobile profile and add back in any of the buttons I might want.

To me giving an end user a really simple interface where you can add what they need versus all the buttons is a much simpler way to go.

Now if you don’t have JCE then the new TinyMCE in Joomla 4 is actually decent. The problem with TinyMce is I might still be giving editors way too much, like the ability to change fonts. Typically when I hand off a site to clients it is with a pretty strict style guide so I usually remove a lot of options like system font and the ability to change the size or the color of the font in an article. These options are all up to you and your client but to me this built-in JCE mobile template is the best. Plus it works on every device.

If you are a Joomla site developer I am almost sure you have used JCE through the years. However, you might have gone with the Default profile, handed that off to the client, and the client asks: what am I supposed to do with all this? The Mobile profile as a starting point is a fantastic option. It is what I use every single time on the hundreds of Joomla sites that I have built through the years.

Author

  • Rod Martin

    Rod holds two masters degrees and has been training people how to do "things" for over 25 years. Originally from Australia, he grew up in Canada and now resides just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. He has worked in both the non-profit and for-profit worlds, in small companies and large corporations. His extensive open source experience includes WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and he really knows how to help you get the most out of the system you chose. Rod plays ice hockey a couple of times a week and rides his Goldwing motorcycle pretty much everywhere he can.

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