How to Disable Visual Editor in The Text Widget

It seems you have found a solution to the problem. If I understand the issue correctly you wanted to disable the visual editor.

This plugin https://www.callum-macdonald.com/code/disable-visual-editor/ does that. The only catch I found was it don’t disable the visual editor for current users. For the current users I did a sql UPDATE to set the current users to false

“UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_value=’false’ WHERE meta_key=’rich_editing'”

After that the plugin makes it impossible to change the setting in the user profile form. Plus all new users are set to false by the plugin.

Might not be of help to you but maybe it will be of some help to some poor googler (like me) later on haha.

Update….. i must not have tested the plugin enough. A look at the plugins code shows it should update all users every time it runs.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by dontaskme.

At least you should make this optional. You have broken many sites. Please care to test this kind of changes before releasing new WP versions.

The callum macdonald plugin seems a little overly complex with having to update the database, when there is a perfectly working plugin in the WordPress repository that reverts the visual editor and text widget back to pre 4.8 which is simple to use. Turn on and go.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/add-paragraphs-option-to-text-widget/

Note that WordPress 4.8.1 where there will be ‘intelligent’ legacy support for the text widget ( proper backwards compatibility ), so an option is not to upgrade yet. But if you do want to upgrade now use my plugin above to get you out of trouble;e with the visual editor.

When there is a stable development 4.8.1 text widget I will test my plugin and adjust for compatibility.

at the bottom of my post i updated it two minutes later with this

“Update….. i must not have tested the plugin enough. A look at the plugins code shows it should update all users every time it runs.”

in other words, the callum macdonald plugin does not require any database updates. It does not even require one to turn it on. Activate it and it runs. It is impossible to get any more simple. It was written five years ago and still works perfectly.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/disable-visual-editor/

Same problem here. I hope they will completely disabled Visual editor in Widgets in the next update. T__T

It does appear that WordPress 4.8.1 release, coming out sometime in the first week of August, will include a “Legacy mode” which retains our old code, without blowing up our widgets visual editor wise. Don’t get me going – again…

That said, the new 4.8.1 (in beta now btw, in case you’d like to try it: [https://www.ads-software.com/download/release-archive/#beta-and-rc]) includes a new “Custom HTML” widget—much akin to the venerated ‘Classic Text Widget’ [https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/classic-text-widget/] many of us have had to resort to since the WordPress 4.8 release.

For me a symptom was that unwanted p-tags were added to text widgets (and pushing my mobile logo down, overlapping the top content). I fixed it by adding the line of code remove_filter(‘widget_text_content’, ‘wpautop’); to the functions.php file of the theme. Now my mobile logo is back in its old place where it always was before WP4.8.

@yerio: “you can also use this filter in functions.php, although I did not tested that.
remove_filter(‘widget_text_content’, ‘wpautop’);”

No, that doesn’t work, I tested it.
These permanent wp “improvements” that makes everything MUCH WORSE are such a nightmare! ??
Why can’t the programmers spend their time on what really matters? Ironing out all the errors I have listed over the years. And that STILL exist. Because the wp programmers can’t get their priorities right. ??

In WP 4.8.1 they have done two things
1. made the text widget understand ‘legacy’ html when it was used prior to 4.8
2. created an html only widget ( for new html only code )

This, in theory, resolves all the issues from 4.8 regarding the text widget changes.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by fullworks.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by fullworks.

@yerio: Also, sadly, your script suggestion here does nothing to stop wp ruining our widget code:
add_filter( ‘widget_display_callback’, ‘clean_widget_display_callback’, 10, 3 );
function clean_widget_display_callback( $instance, $widget, $args ) {
$instance[‘filter’] = false;
return $instance;
}

It is shocking that some wp programmer children dare to interfere with user code! For example now they stubbornly add nonsense like rel=”noopener” into our OWN site links (where it makes no sense anyway), instead of LEAVING USER CODE FRICKING ALONE!!

Arrogance like this (“hey, we are programmers, we know it all”) drives me up the wall and back down.
Kindergarden, wp, really.

The release of 4.8.1 does appear to remedy much of the WordPress core developers errors in the 4.8 release. Though did take nearly 2 agonizing months to do so.

@yerio’s code is somewhat superfluous at this point. Moving on…

@yerio:
remove_filter(‘widget_text_content’, ‘wpautop’);
No, that doesn’t help an inch, we always had that.

I +1
no plus 50 million! what @nowordneeded says! We need to stop this idiocracy of wp “programmers” to CHANGE any code that site admins enter anywhere! That’s none of wp programmers’ business. It’s site owners’ business!

With every new release you RUIN established behavior we had in place on OUR site. That’s insulting. It wastes our lifetime. Stop it.

I confirm, there is STILL NO WAY to keep text widget code the way we enter it. We always STAY in text mode, never use stupid visual mode, and yet after saving wp has messed up what we entered with love.
:-((((