Problems with users editing content

Hi, I’ve just set up a ModX site for a client and already they’re running into difficulties editing content using the awful TinyMCE system.

For a start, when they try doing their own formatting it causes clashes and messiness with regards existing styles that were already set up in CSS, and even when adding new paragraphs, one paragraph that they added changed to a larger font without any obvious reason. When I looked at the resource later using plain text I saw that TinyMCE hadn’t closed the previous paragraph but had just put some breaks in and the second paragraph was being treated as an h1.

Obviously I can’t tell the users to just use plain text, code and all, so is there something less troublesome than TinyMCE which users can use and which will do what they want without messing up styles etc.?

All in all ModX is fantastic for designers but looks increasingly like a nightmare for users / editors who just want to quickly add and edit and not find that the result looks nothing like what they created...

Whenever the user is involved, whether Tiny or some other editor, in my experience the user will @#$$%$ it up. It’s an axiom. Yes, Tiny has its issues, but clients are even worse, and if they’re slightly techie, in can be yet worse that that, because they want maximum control, such as the awful colors from their brochure. In several cases I’ve seen, engineers are the funniest of all. The web is not Microsoft Word. So part of it is education. I’ve written an article or two about this myself, because it’s a universal problem with CMS systems.

Much of this stems from the fact that your editor will NOT look exactly like what they get when they save, due to aforementioned CSS, etc. And trying to make the editor match their site is, IMO, a fool’s errand.

If they want to make a table, pfffff, forget about it, they’ll be phoning you.

So I try to make a reasonable compromise. I brew up CSS for paragraphs, various headers, bold, italic, and a few other basic things so they get something palatable without resorting to colors or other micromanagement. They just type and go, and stick in a very few extras.

I argue that if they need more graphic elements and more control, they should have the same graphic design training you have, or they need to have a geek do it. And I have arguments from clients about this, but hey, too bad, that’s reality.

All that dire stuff aside, there are other things you can do, too, like having TV’s with instructions for complex things that go into a template very precisely, or to make plain text work OK. Then it’s styled on the back end by me. Or you can try the FCK editor. Some like that better. But no easy answers to this complex a problem. And other CMS systems may have an editor you’ll like better. But Tiny is everywhere, probably due to its portability.

Quote from: galahad5 at Jul 14, 2010, 07:04 AM

...and even when adding new paragraphs, one paragraph that they added changed to a larger font without any obvious reason.

Any chance they pasted it in from Word?

If so, that might very well be the problem... Word uses different markup-ish which clogs up your code. I always tell clients to use the "Paste from Word" button to paste stuff from word.

Using general CSS ([tt]#content p { ... }[/tt]) that normally works fine for me..

Perhaps your clients used the dropdown to select a heading, and then used the different options (bold, font size etc) to make it back into what they think is a regular paragraph?

Whenever possible, I try to get users to learn some minimal HTML and turn off the RTE -- or at least turn it off and check the code when they run into problems.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll check to see if they posted from Word or another such app- and maybe offer training in basic HTML (depends on their attitude to it really... I’d be happy to offer it for next to nothing if it meant they’d then just forget about Tiny and use plain text). It’s a tough one- depends on client attitude...