Raw HTML Plugin for WordPress

Introduction

Recently I needed to put some style definitions and a JavaScript function in a post on another blog that I have. I wasted several hours trying to do this, because WordPress insisted on putting backslashes in front of my apostrophes, inserting superfluous <p> or <br /> tags in place of newlines, and generally breaking my HTML in various horrible ways.

In the end I decided to just go and write a plugin that would let me disable the automatic formatting that WordPress applies to post content. This plugin adds a set of shortcodes that you can use to “protect” specific parts of your post and prevent WP from messing with them.

Download & Installation

Requirements :

  • WordPress 2.8 or later
  • If you use the free version, I strongly recommend disabling the visual editor. It (the editor) can mess up your code even if you use this plugin.

Installation is straightforward – download the zip file, unzip, upload the raw-html folder to /wp-content/plugins and activate it in the Plugins tab.

Usage

There are two ways to use the plugin. First, to turn off “smart quotes” and other built-in filters for an entire post, use the checkboxes that Raw HTML adds to the “Edit Post” screen:

Raw HTML meta box screenshot

If you want to prevent a specific part of your post or page from being processed and “texturized” by WordPress, wrap it in ... or <!–raw–>…<!–/raw–> tags. The two versions work exactly the same, with one exception – the <!–raw–>’s won’t be visible to your visitors even if you deactivate the plugin.

Example :
<!--raw-->
This

is

a ‘test’!
<!–/raw–>

Result :
This is a 'test'!

If you view the source code of this page, you will see that the newlines are still there, and the apostrophes haven’t been converted/escaped.

Other Notes

This plugin is provided AS IS, with no guarantee that it will work on your site.

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318 Responses to “Raw HTML Plugin for WordPress”

  1. White Shadow says:

    @Aardvark – Yes, it hasn’t been extensively tested with the visual editor.

  2. nirsound says:

    Is it possible to apply the plugin to all posts and pages? (without using the [raw][/raw] every time)

  3. White Shadow says:

    @nirsound – not in this implementation, but it’s an interesting idea.

  4. Time Synchronisation says:

    This is a great plugin

  5. rap dinle says:

    I’ve been looking all over the Internet for a way to do this. Thanks for sharing and making my day even better!

  6. nirsound says:

    Thanks! I am looking forward to general setting “Apply Raw HTML to all posts and pages” in the next release…. 😉 Meanwhile, can you think of a simple change to the plugin code to force wordpress to default to Raw HTML mode? (without writing the {!–start_raw–}{!–end_raw–} every time)

  7. White Shadow says:

    When I finally get around to updating my old plugins, perhaps 😉

  8. […] HTML Update The Raw HTML plugin has been updated! In case you didn’t know, Raw HTML is my WordPress plugin that lets you use […]

  9. […] Another case if we want to put any special characters (apostrophie, quote) and any script. To enable javascript and put RAW HTML inside wp post, we must install RAW HTML […]

  10. I really love this plug in (the raw html one). I am new at wordpress blogging and it was so easy!

    Thanks!!

  11. Hikari says:

    tnx a lot, this is the most critical plugin I use

  12. Dusty says:

    Unfortunately, when I tried this, I still had the problem I was having before – with the auto-formatting, if I put line breaks in my table coding to make it manageable, there will be a huge block of space above each table, the sum of all the line breaks in the coding. on LJ, I know that turning the auto-formatting off will fix that and I was hoping that this would do the same. Unfortunately, I still got the large chunks of space, both when I checked the box and when I ran the !-start_raw codes.

  13. White Shadow says:

    Hmm, how about an example of the problematic HTML?

  14. Ironboots says:

    Was wondering, (new to WP) how one goes about disabling the Visual Editor?
    Thanks.

  15. White Shadow says:

    You can turn off the visual editor in Users -> Your profile. Tick the “Disable visual editor when writing” checkbox on that page.

  16. Ironboots says:

    OMG, I don’t know how I missed that [embarrassed]. Thank you.

  17. Ironboots says:

    Great plug-in too btw, thanks for sharing.

  18. Eric says:

    Thank, you! This is a fantablous plugin!!!

  19. Bob says:

    I’ve used this in the past and it’s worked brilliantly – however with a fresh install of WP 2.7 -> 2.71 it seems to be ignored… anyone else having this problem?

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