In the past couple of months I have started to install JCE editor as a standard on all my Joomla websites. In my opinion this is the best free WYSIWYG editor available for Joomla at the moment.

Of course, if you have another editor that you would like to punt - feel free to bring it under my attention.

I also haven't tried any commercial editors yet, so I cannot really say how they compare.

But for a free editor, JCE Editor is great value for money!

So what makes it so great?

The editor itself comes packed with all the standard features that you would expect from a good WYSIWYG editor: Redo and Undo buttons, bullets, numbering,  indent, outdent, cut, copy, paste, align right, left and justified and table formatting.

And then the little extras: A paste button to paste from MsWord. For you that have ever pasted text directly from Word you will know that you get the most horrific formatting thrown in as a little present from Mr Gates. With this nifty button, it pastes clean HTML but retain your style formatting (e.g. Heading 1 becomes an <h1> tag) if you had any. Wonderful!

A paste button to paste plain text, without formatting. Again, if you are pasting from somewhere where you might unwittingly carry formatting along that you might not want, this button will save the day.

But the creme de la creme are the available plugins (please note, some of these plugins are not free and requires a subscirption):

Firstly, the image manager. The image manager was the reason why I originally decided to use the editor and I have to admit shamefacedly that I do not actually use { mosimage } any more. The image editor allows you to upload an image on the fly from your local drive AND resize and optimize it while you are doing it. You have control over where to place your image. You can also create a thumbnail on the fly of your image.

Secondly, there is an advanced linking manager available. If you have ever tried to link to an internal article you will what a pain it is. The link manager brings up your articles as well as a search box to search for articles. You can link directly to any of your articles through this facility.

Frankly, there are a couple of other utilities available as well (such as the ability to have a Lightbox type popup for your images) that I haven't even tried yet.

Support for this editor is very active (and in fact, the author is a fellow South African - Ryan from www.joomlacontenteditor.net - thanks Ryan!).

How do you get use the editor?

Some basic steps:

Step 1: Download the latest version of the JCE Component here:

Download the JCE Editor Component for Joomla 1.5

and the plugin here:
Download the JCE Editor Plugin for Joomla 1.5

and install both the Component and the Plugin. This installation of the editor also automatically installs the plugins for the Image manager and the Advanced Link manager.

Remember to publish the plugin!

Remember to make JCE Editor your default editor!

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Comments (17)

The Editor IS Free
written by Christine, January 23, 2010

I have updated all the links in my article to go to the latest location of the editor, it IS still free. There are plugins available that you have to pay a subscription fee for, but the main component and plugin are free.

BAD
written by JellyBelly, January 23, 2010

This editor is not free!!!!! :|

PS
written by Warren, January 12, 2010

Download here
http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net/downloads/editor/joomla15x/201-comjce157156package

Finally
written by Warren, January 12, 2010

Finally an editor that doesnt alter my OCD W3C compliant XHTML 1.0... now i can sit back after 300 extra grey hairs and know that invalid HTML is more sloppy content management's fault ;D

Error
written by Fule, May 19, 2008

Warning: getpluginparams(/home/Domainname/public_html//administrator/components/com_jce/plugins/plugins.class.php) [function.getpluginparams]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/domainname/public_html/mambots/editors/jce/jscripts/tiny_mce/libraries/classes/jce.class.php on line 186

Fatal error: getpluginparams() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home/domainname/public_html//administrator/components/com_jce/plugins/plugins.class.php' (include_path='.:/usr/php4/lib/php:/usr/local/php4/lib/php') in /home/domainname/public_html/mambots/editors/jce/jscripts/tiny_mce/libraries/classes/jce.class.php on line 186

Love JCE but
written by Bart, April 24, 2008

Keep getting javascript errors in back-end when I try to edit static content for example. Would like to known more about this.

PHP in JCE Editor
written by Christine, January 24, 2008

You cannot actually embed PHP code in the Wysywig editor, it will strip out any PHP code. If you do want to use PHP code in your content, you need something like kl_php (that I refer to somewhere on my blog) or one of the more recent mambots that allow you to insert php code in your content - but in all these cases the WYSYWIG editor must be switched off since it strips out any tags that are not standard html (and form related tags as well)

To get the downloading link & how to install WYSIWYG editor
written by Jibi, January 24, 2008

Hi,

I want to practise Php in WYSIWYG editor.If anyone can plz help me.If i write a code in php with this editor how to get the result...........

Joomla with PHPMySql info/knowle.
written by Mohammad Salim, January 19, 2008

Hello Sir,

I want to web site knowledg i have already 1 year Ex. in IT Field. I know PHP and other give me suggestion. What I Do.

To OldCol
written by jguemez, December 12, 2007

OldCol:

Check directory permissions in your server. I solved this changing the user owner en each directory.

Correction
written by OldCol, December 04, 2007

In the warning the word "sting" should have been string. Sorry, typed too fast, edited too little.
OldCol

Over came trouble
written by OldCol, December 04, 2007

I downloaded JCE and it failed to install the zipped folder with the message MA DB function failed with error number 2006.
Also
Warning asort() expects parameter 1 to be array, sting given
in ...joomla/includes/joomla.php on line 5288
So
I unzipped the file and did a manual upload
To do this:

1) Unzip the JCE Editor Mambot package to a location on your local hard drive, making sure all the folders are preserved.

2) Log into your server using ftp.

3) Go to the Joomla! mambots/editors directory.

4) Copy all the files in the unzipped package into this directory(, overwriting all existing files and folders. since JCE hadn't been installed there was nothing to overwrite.

I installed the administrator package.

Found the JCE editor for Joomla and made it the primary editor. The editor now works. The only glitch is:

Warning: file_get_contents(/home/content/o/l/d/oldcol/html/joomla/mambots/editors/jce.xml): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/content/o/l/d/oldcol/html/joomla/includes/domit/xml_domit_lite_parser.php on line 1079
I get this warning when I attempt to configure the editor.
I have only had Joomla installed for about 5 days so I don't know where to go to get rid of this message. However the editor is working.

Still can't install
written by Alan, November 30, 2007

I've tried adding the www, and of course have the JCE admin module installed. But still can't get it to install.

It does work....
written by Christine, September 16, 2007

I have installed the JCE editor on numerous Joomla websites and both the installation and the editor itself works fine.

Please remember that there are certain folders that must be writeable in order for the component to install.

DOESN'T WORK
written by jl, September 16, 2007

I've got the same problem here. The install failed. Obviously needs to get fixed.

What?
written by Christine, May 29, 2007

Well, it is not my editor, I didn't write it, so I can't really look at the code.

Apart from that, you don't state WHY it is not working. I suggest you look elsewhere on this blog for guidelines on what to do when your wysiwyg editor doesn't want to work - it is often related to the fact that you are accessing the backend of your site with or without the 'www' in the url, where the 'live site' setting in your configuration.php is the opposite (in other words, you are trying to use the url without the www and the configuration.php setting for 'live site' is with it, or vice versa)

Christine

didnt work
written by Guest, May 28, 2007

Your WYSIWYG editor for Joomla did not install when I tryed it. something is wrong in the code. please look into the problem