I’m working on a custom website that isn’t built with WordPress, but I really like the TinyMCE editor that comes with WordPress. It has some great plugins and features that would be perfect for my project.
I’m wondering if anyone has experience extracting the WordPress version of TinyMCE and implementing it on a regular HTML/PHP site. Can I somehow replicate the same functionality and plugin ecosystem that WordPress uses?
What would be the best approach to achieve this? Are there any major challenges I should expect when trying to integrate WordPress TinyMCE into a non-WordPress environment? I’m particularly interested in maintaining the same user experience and plugin compatibility.
I tried this about two years ago for a client project and hit several roadblocks. WordPress heavily modifies TinyMCE with its own filters and hooks, so you can’t just copy the editor files and expect them to work. The WordPress-specific plugins like wplink and wpview depend on WordPress functions that won’t exist in your environment. I ended up using the standard TinyMCE distribution and manually recreating the WordPress features I needed. You’ll need to handle file uploads, link insertion, and media management yourself through custom PHP scripts. The styling will also be different since WordPress applies its own CSS classes. It’s doable but requires significant backend development to replicate the WordPress experience.
just go with regular TinyMCE and create your own plugins. the wordpress version is super heavy with dependencies, trust me, you’ll spend more time troubleshooting than coding. i did something like this last year and wish i chose the plain version from the start. much cleaner!
Extracting and implementing TinyMCE from WordPress on a non-WordPress site can indeed be quite challenging due to the customizations and plugins that WordPress applies. I recommend starting with the standalone version of TinyMCE. This version is more lightweight and allows you to choose plugins that meet your specific needs. The compatibility concerns can be mitigated by selecting standard TinyMCE plugins instead of the WordPress-specific ones, which rely on its backend. The official TinyMCE documentation offers great resources to help set it up correctly without unnecessary complexity.