I am going mad. I have spent countless hours trying to work this out. If anyone can help me, I would be so grateful.

I used to be able to change the text color in my posts by highlighting the text in question and clicking the "select text color" drop down menu with the colored squares in the visual tab of "edit post" - this would change my text to the color I select (and when I clicked on the HTML tab I would see the corresponding HTML code such as <span style="color: #33cccc;"> for the color blue for example)

Now, for some bizarre reason, when I select the text I want to color and click the "select text color" on the visual tab, it is actually my text font that changes instead and the code I see in the HTM tab is this:
<span style="font-family: mceinline;">...</span> instead of <span style="color: #33cccc;"
this happens no matter what color I choose!

And to make things even more confusing, sometimes (but not always), a random part of my post which is NOT the text I highlighted gets colored in the color I selected.

So now, I have to manually color the desired text in my post using the HTML tab instead of the visual tab...which is such a nightmare because I am so incompetent at that sort of stuff!

Is this making sense to anyone? please help me!

Do I have a bug somewhere?
thanks - Dee

Mine works as you say it should. Maybe you have a plugin issue.

Hi Larry, what is a "plugin issue" (sorry, am not that technical)? and how can I find out if this is the problem and how to resolve it?
thank you
Dee

What I do is disable all the plugins and see if the problem remains. If it doesn't I reactivate the plugins one at a time to see when the problem comes back.

Hi Larry,
I don't seem to have any plugins because when I go to "manage plugins", there aren't any being displayed there apart from 2 which are inactive (it's called akismet)
so if I have no plugins, they can't be causing the problem right?

That's correct. What version of WordPress and Atahualpa?

have you been making any changes in the stylesheet? Because that can have a pretty profound effect like your describing. Do you have a copy of the stylesheet that you've been using that you can try to reload after making a copy of your current style sheet? Larry is correct, though you need to change one thing at a time and see if that fixes it. Something has changed in the code. Do you know all the changes you've been making?

Hi, I am using WP 2.7.1 and Atahualpa 3.2

Is the style sheet you refer to the tab called "post/page styling" found in ATO?
or is there a style sheet elsewhere?

It's hard to know what to tell you as you have older version of WP and Atahualpa. Is there a reason you haven't upgraded?

If you do decide to upgrade make sure you only do one thing at a time and DON'T use the auto upgrade option for Atahualpa. Look through these forums for suggested upgrade procedures.

Do you mean hitting "reset settings" on the "post/page styling" page?
I could copy that page, reset it, and reload it all over again. Would that work?

Any other thoughts? the "select color" is one of the features I use the most in the visual editor and it is such a nightmare not having it. I appreciate any feedback from you guys!

Hey Larry,
I haven't upgraded because I am not sore how to do it.
I tried finding some information on the best way to upgrade WP and the theme I am using (and which I should upgrade first) but I got very intimidated with the information out there and was worried of messing up my blogs.

You don't have to "Reset Settings". Just check what you have in CSS Inserts.

I don't have anything in CSS inserts.
all the boxes are set to default: blank.

Please try the following and let us know what happens.

• Start creating a new page
• Type in some text
• Highlight the text
• Select a color with the button
• Check the HTML code

Hi Larry,

Steps A:

• I created a new page
• I wrote in the visual editor "I am a British Artist"
• I highlighted the text and selected the color red from the drop down menu
• in the visual editor, the font changed but the color remained black
• I clicked on the HTM editor and here is what I found: <span style="font-family: mceinline;">I am a British artist</span>

Steps B:

• This is the more baffling thing: One time out of 10 tries, this is what happens:
• I click the space bar in the visual editor right after the word "artist"
• I then selected the color red again
• and before I started writing again, my text "I am a british artist" changed to red
• the HTM now reads: <span style="color: #ff0000;">I am a British artist </span> (it has replaced <span style="font-family: mceinline;">I am a British artist</span> without me deleting it)

I really cannot explain that.
Any idea why this is happening?

I think upgrading is the best next step but one thing that just occurred to me is that you said when you looked at manage plugins you only say two inactive one. In WordPress 2.7 I'm not sure if the choice is there but see if you have a way of selecting only inactive plugins. If you do then switch to all or active plugins. Maybe there are plugins there but you only view inactive. By the way what is the URL to this site as I might be able to figure out something from viewing it.

Hi Larry,

I am reading up on all the upgrades documentation and attempting to work out how to back up my files and database (it must be the easiest thing to you but it is such a daunting process for me

In the meantime, any help is so much appreciated.

My 2 URLs that are experiencing the same problems are:
http://www.coolmummy.co.uk/theblog
http://www.coolmummy.co.uk/bigandlittleartist

thank you
Dee

The only thing I can figure is that there is something messed up with your editor. Can you remember if there was anything you did just before this problem started occurring?

No nothing. I didn't change anything to the editor or to any of my style-sheets.

I do however get a ridiculous amount of spam but why should that mess with the visual editor?

Something else just occurred to me. Have you tried using a different browser?

Hey Larry,
yes, I tried both firefox and chrome and nothing worked
I despair!

Ugh... I still think upgrading is your best bet. Unfortunately there are seldom guarantees that an upgrade will fix a problem but that is what I would do. I would upgrade WordPress first and test and then do an upgrade of Atahualpa. I would do a manual upgrade of Atahualpa into a different folder as mentioned in these forums. To help calm your fears you should of course do a backup first. There are people who will do this for you as well.

Hi Larry,
ok, I need to do the upgrade but I simply cannot find the time to read up on that stuff and do it. I don't want to use a Web-design / IT agency in London (from experience I know that they charge a fortune) - so any recommendation on who could do this for me is really appreciated. I am assuming this can be done remotely? any thoughts?

I will PM you with info.