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When I installed WordPress 2.5 on this particular site I manually downloaded the software from WordPress.org and followed the easy-to-use instructions. Everything went smoothly and I quickly fell in love with the new 2.5 interface.

Some days later WP 2.5 was available to me on other sites via the Fantastico administration panel supplied by my web host. I was delighted and quickly updated three other websites.

Only a few days later did I notice that my Visual editor (TinyMCE) was no longer working. I was stuck in HTML mode and I could not fix the problem. Searching the forums and various help files, there were a number of sensible suggestions and some not so sensible (such as adding a plugin to fix the problem - more on that in a moment).

Here for example is a link to the WordPress.org forum on the subject of fixing tinymce

I tried all the above (and other) fixes but nothing worked. Again, I now had 3 out of 4 websites where I could not use the visual editor. However, since one site did work, I realized there had to be another solution. I FTP’ed the WP 2.5 software to a non-working site, it also didn’t help.

Finally I found that my wp-config file, created using the Fantastico interface, had a tiny problem in it. It had a line-feed where none should be.

Once I corrected that, all my sites worked fine and even with upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1, every site has continued to work perfectly (as far as my Visual editor is concerned).

The wp-config.php file (found in the root directory of your blog, often www.mysite.com/blog) should look like this:

<?php
// ** MySQL settings ** //
define(’DB_NAME’, ‘putyourdbnamehere’); // The name of the database
define(’DB_USER’, ‘usernamehere’); // Your MySQL username
define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘yourpasswordhere’); // …and password
define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value

// Change SECRET_KEY to a unique phrase. You won’t have to remember it later,
// so make it long and complicated. You can visit https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
// to get a phrase generated for you, or just make something up.
define(’SECRET_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

// Change this to localize WordPress. A corresponding MO file for the
// chosen language must be installed to wp-content/languages.
// For example, install de.mo to wp-content/languages and set WPLANG to ‘de’
// to enable German language support.
define (’WPLANG’, ”);

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

define(’ABSPATH’, dirname(__FILE__).’/');
require_once(ABSPATH.’wp-settings.php’);
?>

If however your Fantastico or other system has varied the file in anyway, even to just adding an extra line-feed, it is very possible that your blog, specifically in this case the tinyMCE which controls the visual editor, may not work properly.

PS. I add this help simply because I did not find the solution anywhere, and even doing a search now on Google I still don’t see this mentioned, at least not in an obvious way.

PPS. I think it is unwise to try to fix a WordPress release problem by adding a Plugin. If a new release has come out, then it has been tested to work in most environments without additional Plugins. It is more logical, I think, to look at the environment first unless the whole WordPress community has the same problem, which is unlikely.

Trust that helps solve your WordPress 2.5 tinyMCE visual editor problem! Ron

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