I went hunting for a plugin I’d seen that allowed custom buttons, and discovered that the standard installation of WordPress actually has a keyboard command that toggles some extra goodies off and on. Obviously, mine have all been off!

Turns out, you can Show/Hide the Advanced Editor Toolbar in the standard Wordpress installation and unlock a dozen or so extra buttons, including “Paste as Plain Text” and “Paste from Word”. When the Advanced Editor Toolbar is enabled, there is a toggle button available to turn it off. However, when it is off, you must use Alt-V (IE) or Shift-Alt-V (Firefox) to toggle the advanced buttons back “on”.

Adding Buttons is something I haven’t delved into yet. I need to play with this new toy first. But I learned from the Codex that under “Rich Editor Filters” in the Plugin_API/Hooks page, you can see a simple means of adding your own buttons to TinyMCE in WordPress.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference#Rich_Text_Editor_Filters

Advanced Editing Plugins

If the Advanced Editing Toolbar buttons are not sufficient, perhaps you’re looking for a plugin to extend the functionality of the TinyMCE editor, or to add custom code snippets. Here are two you can try:

Custom TinyMCE Buttons (for WordPress 2.1)

Advanced TinyMCE Editor (for Wordpress 2.2)

It was the former that I recalled having seen, which started me on this quest, and the latter which I discovered in the process, and informed me of the advanced toggle option. Surprised that I had never heard of it in two years of hanging out on the WordPress forums, I personally added the information to the Codex. I also added links to these two amazing plugins, which I’m sure will come in handy for others.

The following instructions explain what to do, provided you are working with an Author Template file (author.php) per the instructions in the WordPress codex.

Your author.php file should begin looking something like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
   <div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
   
      <!-- This sets the $curauth variable -->
<?php
if(isset($_GET['author_name'])) :
$curauth = get_userdatabylogin($author_name);
else :
$curauth = get_userdata(intval($author));
endif;
?>

You have called the header, and you’ve set the $curauth variable. This is EXTREMELY important. Without the $curauth variable, the rest of these instructions will produce nothing.

Now, let’s say you have used Cimy User Extra Fields to create a field for the user’s favorite color, named (appropriately) “FAV_COLOR”. You want the author’s profile to display the author’s favorite color, which is “red”.

Once you have declared the $currauth variable, you can use it to retrieve the author’s ID, which is what the get_cimyFieldValue function needs to call (and display) the author’s favorite color outside the loop.

<?php $value = get_cimyFieldValue($curauth->ID, 'FAV_COLOR'); ?>
 
<?php echo $value; ?>

Note that $curath->ID replaces get_the_author_ID, because get_the_author_ID can only be used inside the Loop.

On the other hand, $curauth->ID can only be used in this example because the $curauth variable has been declared at the beginning of the file, and is now available for use in the rest of the template.

Once again, let me reiterate that you MUST have a working author.php file (with the $curauth variable declared at the outset) in order for this to function correctly.

Many thanks to Marco Cimmino developing Cimy User Extra Fields, and for his prompt and helpful support!!