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Looking for a Simple WYSIWYG Editor for my Blog
I'm going to be building a simple blog for myself.
Partially I just want something really simple and customizable, and also it will be a fun little programming project.
I'll be using PHP and mySQL for the backend. I won't be using any sort of framework as it shouldn't be necessary for a very simple blog. I'm fairly comfortable with JavaScript.
What I'm imagining is some sort of JavaScript library I can just download, link to my html and then turn a textarea into a simple wysiwyg editor. It could be as simple as a markdown editor or something with a little more features.
It has to be free. Open source would be a plus.
If anyone has any recommendations or advice I would be very grateful. Thanks!
I saw that one, but moved on when it asked me to set up an account to download it. It definitely looks like the type of thing I'm looking for though. I may have to try it out, I just hate creating new accounts for things all the time.
ahh, thank you for that. This is exactly the kind of thing I am looking for.
As @bauke said I think that's only for their cloud version - I believe their source is on GitHub if you'd prefer and it can be installed in a variety of other ways.
Yeah, I was being a little too impatient and dismissive. Thanks for the GitHub link.
No problem. And I think bauke and I are both underselling it - this is very likely what you need. I wouldn't quite call it "industry standard" but it is quite close, and is very full featured.
The other solution might be a Markdown editor like SimpleMDE but I haven't used that one and am not endorsing it.
I've actually used SimpleMDE before on another project. It was great, but I think I want a bit more functionality for this project.
I've looked a bit through the docs now and I agree, tinyMCE is exactly what I need. Cheers.
I don't know if it's the simplest, but I would look at ProseMirror because I have a lot of respect for its author as an expert web developer. Marijn Haverbeke is the author of CodeMirror, a well-known JavaScript library for displaying and editing source code.
Having used Prosemirror professionally, it’s perhaps the least simple option out there. I’d look for a solution that’s based on a single content-editable div.
I think TinyMCE is pretty good and simple to use, with lots of options for customization and fairly good documentation. It's free and open source, although there are also paid components and services geared for business users. It's been around for something like 20 years. I think WordPress uses (or used?) it for their wysiwyg needs.
Edit: Sorry, for some reason I didn't see Bauke's reply before I posted mine. I saw just ThatFanficGuy's reply at the time, so I guess I didn't refresh before posting.
Yeah, I've been looking through the documentation and it seems like a great option. Simple to implement and customizable. I think the basic code example they have on their docs is really all I need.
Thanks.
I'm assuming you're meaning to implement a JS front-end to write your blog in.
However, may I suggest HTML Notepad? It's a desktop app that renders HTML in the WYSIWYG fashion, while also allowing you to insert any amount of custom HTML into the source, which would then render as WYSIWYG. Note that it only renders HTML: you will have to apply CSS and JS after the fact.
This would not fit a more complex project, such as interactive-code pages, but it would fit a static blog nicely.
Oh wow, this is an awesome project! Seems like a great tool for teaching HTML, which I used to do back in the day.
Thanks for the recommendation, though it's not really what I'm looking for. I want to be able to write posts directly on the site through a textarea.
I understand your query.
However, having looked at maybe a dozen different options, I've concluded that there's nothing for someone like you within arm's reach. Most of such implementations are aimed at techies who are already fine dealing with overhead like
npm: they require you to run complex set-up or install massive libraries.I'd found none that worked for me back when I was looking. This isn't to discourage you: what I'm saying is, it may take a while to find, if, indeed, someone has implemented it.
Most truly simple blog engines are static-site generators, or SSGs: they take raw content (Markdown, Textile etc.) and turn it into viable HTML, with all the bells and whistles you either have modules for or are eager to implement yourself. Instead of creating an interface with the blog directly (so that, for example, the blog post you'd drafted could be published directly from the Web page you're accessing), SSGs run a script once and turn the entirety of your content into the entirety of your blog, which then you would have to publish.
Some platforms allow you to automate the process to a large degree. For example, Netlify lets you use a Git repository as a host (for your content), and when you make any change to the files, it automatically runs the script (thus rendering your blog in all its HTML+CSS+JS glory) and publishes the result onto the desired site.
In other words, if you want simple and free, SSGs are your best bet.
Alternatively, you could try something like Ghost: a powerful and modern engine for blogging, by the looks of it. There is an open-source version you can self-host if you rent a server space, and on their main site there's an option to pay for a professional hosting service with all the bells and whistles you might want to have with a blog that's aimed for increasing its audience.
You said "free" is a requirement, but I'm throwing it out there just in case.
Wanting something simple and bare bones is part of what I'm after. But it's also a programming project so i want to build it myself. That's actually the more important part. I already have a blog which runs on WordPress. This is for a side project I'm brainstorming.
I'm not a non-techie. I can handle most of the programming, I just don't want to build my own wysiwyg editor from the ground up.
Thanks for the well thought out suggestions, it's just not what I'm looking to do. I probably should have explained it better in my post.
No, I'm just being a little pushy in my explaney manner.
What you might enjoy is Metalsmith. It's a highly-modular SSG, to a point where you can implement it into anything. You might be able to use it as a foundation for your own blog engine.
Not sure this is quite what you're looking for, but there's also Github Pages. Also: I suppose things like Wordpress and Medium are not what you had in mind.
WordPress says hi.
I'm familiar with WordPress and use it for my main blog. I'm building a simple blog platform from scratch and that would be overkill.
TinyMCE as others have mentioned was exactly what I was looking for. I have since implemented it and it's working perfectly.
Thanks for the recommendation though.
Fair enough. Now that you mentioned it you had a reason not to use it.