July 23, 2013

Front-end Editor Plugin

Edit content inline, without going to the admin area.

Front-end Editor is a plugin that lets you make changes to your content directly from your site. No need to load the admin backend just to correct a typo.

It makes the same capability checks, so that if a user isn’t allowed to edit something in wp-admin, they aren’t allowed to edit it in the front-end either.

You can edit posts, pages, custom post types, comments, widgets and many more elements.

Goals:

save as many trips to the backend as possible
compatible with any theme, out of the box
light and fast

Support and development:

Support is handled by the lovely designsimply.

I am not developing the plugin anymore; only applying the patches that other people send via Github.

Credits:

Aloha Editor for the fantastic WYSIWYG editing component

Links: Documentation | Plugin News | Author’s Site

Installation

See https://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins#Installing_Plugins

Screenshots

The tooltip
Editing the post title and content
Editing the categories widget
Changing a theme image
The settings page

FAQ

Error on activation: “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected…”

Make sure your host is running PHP 5. The only foolproof way to do this is to add this line to wp-config.php (after the opening <?php tag):

var_dump(PHP_VERSION);

I can’t see the edit buttons

Make sure you’re logged in and have the appropriate capabilities.
See Common Mistakes in Themes.
Check for JavaScript errors.

Can you change the wysiwyg editor to TinyMCE?

No, because TinyMCE is anything but tiny and would take a long time to load.

Also because I couldn’t get it to work.

Does it work with WP Super Cache?

To avoid problems with WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache, I recommend disabling caching for logged-in users.

Changelog

2.3.1

update to Aloha 0.23.12
add placeholder for post thumbnails
fix changing thumbnails to a newly uploaded image. props adrichey
update translations: Polish (props toszcze) and Estonian (props petskratt).
added Simplified Chinese translation (props 倡萌)

2.3

make Save/Cancel buttons hover in place of the Edit button
allow editing multiple elements simultaneously again
enhanced JavaScript API
switch from Coco to CoffeeScript
fix security exploit caused by Aloha demo file and update to Aloha 0.20.16
more info

2.2.1

update to Aloha 0.20.6
enable align buttons in Aloha
enable highlighting of elements editable by Aloha
add 'fee_rich_clean' filter
fix ‘type’ parameter for editable_option()

2.2

introduce groups of editable elements
introduced fee_insert_dummy_post() for creating posts
prevent warnings caused by faulty widgets
update to Aloha 0.20.0
switch to Coco
more info

2.1.3

fix widget warning
update translations

2.1.2

show Aloha toolbar immediately after clicking ‘Edit’
properly handle hierarchical taxonomies edited via text input
text widgets: edit title and content individually again
fix bug that prevented saving empty content via Aloha
fix bug where wpautop wasn’t applied to ‘rich’ custom fields

2.1.1

added option to disable dropdown for categories
added single_term_title field
set field name as title attribute on placeholders
use background color as base for ajax loading overlay
fixed issue with right-aligned images in content
fixed author description editing
fixed problem with oEmbeds

2.1

switched to Aloha Editor
made Edit button follow mouse vertically and removed top border
better image handling
other bugfixes
more info

2.0.1

removed right and bottom borders when hovering
fixed incorrect dimensions in Webkit browsers
fixed invalid placeholding when content is ‘0’

2.0

replaced double-click action with an ‘Edit’ overlay
added dropdown for editing terms in hierarchical taxonomies
introduced front_end_editor_wrap filter
introduced fee_cleditor_css filter
introduced fee_cleditor_height filter
more info

1.9.3

switched to CLEditor
fixed encoding issues with paragraph editing
fixed image fields handling
fixed typo which made spinner not show
check 'edit_theme_options' capability instead of 'edit_themes'
more info

1.9.2.1

disable post locking

1.9.2

nicEdit: limit height to window height
nicEdit: Google Docs like link tooltip
nicEdit: expose ‘bgcolor’ button
iPhone style tooltip
make the_tags() work no matter what args are used
apply esc_attr() to data attributes

1.9.1

re-added nicEdit to text widgets
nicEdit: img button opens WordPress media thickbox
nicEdit: translatable buttons
nicEdit: extra buttons available in the settings page
load nicEdit or suggest.js in parallel with first edit
display spinner on top of editable area
various bugfixes

1.9

full widget editing
custom post type support
new editable field: term description
more robust paragraph editing
more robust double-click handling
nicEdit: button management from the admin
removed “Reset the post date on each edit” option
more info

1.8

added tooltip
restyled save/cancel buttons
fixed widget editing
exposed JavaScript field types
more info

1.7.2

fixed narrow textarea problem
fixed IE8 error
nicEdit: included upload plugin

1.7.1

made date reset optional
better lightbox detection

1.7

new editable fields: post thumbnails & arbitrary options
nicEdit: added font-family and font-color buttons
nicEdit: made configuration filterable
dropped Growfield from textareas
load CSS only when needed
standardized CSS ids and classes
renamed hooks from 'front_ed_*' to 'front_end_editor_*'
fixed: when editing the post content, the post date isn’t updated
fixed: when editing tags, the input bounces to a new line
fixed: after editing linked post title, the title is not linked anymore
fixed: editable_post_meta() doesn’t work outside The Loop
fixed: warning when a NULL is passed to FEE_Field_Base::wrap()
more info

1.6.1

fixed escaping issues

1.6

new editable field: post categories
added editing of custom fields with multiple values
added editing of any widget title
improved script loading
added placeholder to editable_post_meta
fixed issue with comment paragraphs
fixed issues with the $post global
more info

1.5.1

fixed auto-upgrade error
added German translation

1.5

new editable field: theme images
switched to NicEdit
don’t remove blockquotes when editing a single paragraph
better handling of text widgets
compress JS & CSS
compatibility with Ajaxed WordPress plugin
added ES translation
more info

1.4

new editable fields: category title and tag title
added $echo parameter to editable_post_meta()
easier way to restrict editable content
don’t load CSS & JS if the current user can’t edit any of the fields
switched from Autogrow to Growfield (fixes IE compatibility)
added Georgian translation
more info

1.3.3

fixed duplicate header error

1.3.2

site title bugfix

1.3.1

settings page bugfix
updated translations

1.3

new editable fields: site title & site description
the rich editor respects .alignleft etc.
ability to add extra css to the rich editor via front-end-editor.css
added Polish translation
use id=”” instead of rel=””
postThumbs compatibility
more info

1.2.1

widget bugfix

1.2

made author description editable
yellow background while hovering over editable field
experimental wysiwyg autogrow
hopefully valid xHTML
HTML code is cleaned up before saving
added Portuguese translation
more info

1.1.4

fix white screen error for non-admins

1.1.3

css bugfix
added Belarusian translation
updated italian translation

1.1

new editable field: post terms
usability improvements
added Turkish translation
more info

1.0.6

fixed links with target="_blank"
inputs and textareas are focused after double-clicking
added Russian translation

1.0.5

added align buttons, fixed autogrow issue
the_title and the_tags improvements
added Swedish translation

1.0

single paragraph editing
more info

0.9

new editable field: post custom fields
more info

0.8

rich text editor (jWYSIWYG)
l10n
more info

0.7

settings page
more info

0.6

new editable field: post tags
more info

0.5

initial release
more info