Posted by Rob
Posted on 06-18-2008 under Development, PHP

So, since I couldn’t find any real good documentation on the subject, and Dreamhost’s tech support didn’t know the answer, and I recently ran into this issue on a client’s site, here is how you fix the “tinyMCE visual editor not showing up” bug in Wordpress 2.5.x.  For reference, the client site in question was running in PHP5x.  These instructions only apply to Dreamhost hosting, although similar tactics may work on other hosts:

1. Make Sure your visual editor is turned on.  Duh.  Seems like a no-brainer, but I’m not afraid to admit that I’ve been stumped by dumber things.  In the Wordpress admin, up in the upper right corner, click on your user name, and then make sure “Use the visual editor when writing” is checked.
2. Open a tab or window in a browser, and go to [your site]/wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce_config.php - if your visual editor is messed up, you should get a screen full of garbage and errors here.
3. Make a backup of your entire site.  If you don’t do this, and you mess up the next step, you could possibly be screwed.
4. Go to this scary page in the dreamhost wiki:  http://www.wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/PHP.ini - if you don’t have shell access set up for your user name, go in your Dreamhost user panel to Users > Manage Users, edit your user name, and change the account type to Shell Account.  Shell type bin/bash is fine.  As part of my fix, you need to get your own install of PHP running on your account.  The Dreamhost wiki link above is step by step how to do that.  You will need to use terminal or command line access to your site.  Don’t be afraid.  Just go through the process step by step and read carefully and you will be fine. This step will also require you to make a couple of files on your server, which is probably easiest using an FTP program. One called php-copy.sh in your server root, above your domain folder, and two .htaccess files.  You may already have an .htaccess file in your main Wordpress directory, if you are running permalinks.  In that case, just add the lines of text to your existing file, don’t get rid of the mod_rewrite handlers.
5. Assuming the shell work went according to plan, you should now have a directory in your site called ‘cgi-bin’ and inside there is a file called ‘php.ini’  -  Open that file in a text editor, scroll all the way to the bottom, and add in this line of text:
   zlib.output_compression = On
6. Go back to that tab you opened up earlier with the tinyMCE config file (see step 2), and shift-reload the page a couple times.  You should now no longer have errors and garbage.  Hence, your visual editor should now be working.  Go visually edit blog posts to your little heart’s content.