Since starting to use Wordpress more and more I've allowed myself to sink deeper into its realms. Well allowed, had to is a much better way of describing it. My general opinion about WP vs other CMS systems (such as Drupal) is relatively unchanged. But Wordpress does have a more edible surface especially to those with little interest in tech. This however means something had to be taken out, like.....

TinyMCE Advanced - a plugin you might need

Or want. The standard TinyMCE editor might have all the functions most would need.. ever. I am not one of those. Coming from the Drupal world and CKEditor I almost instantly began looking for functions, configurations, ways to add or customize functionality in the editor's toolbar. Look for things that weren't there.

So I installed  TinyMCE Advanced. If you'd like to get control over basic things like font face and font size, so should you! Why this collection of IMHO crucial functions require an extra installation I don't know. The reason probably is that those who designed it considered a majority who use Wordpress never would need it or use it. They wanted to keep it simple. 

While it still does not offer important customization possibilities, for instance allow you to define exactly what values, sizes, typefaces and what have we, you'd like to be a default, and save them in a profile, TinyMCE Advanced does give the editor a pretty complete set of functions.

Ok, now you have installed and activated the plugin, the setup is in Settings>TinyMCE Advanced.

The top of the config page looks like this, you drag new functions onto the toolbar you'd like them to be (here I've done Font Family and Font Sizes).

You may easily add or remove functions at your own liking. Below on the page you will find Advanced settings. As you can see I've checked for replace of font size settings. Reason being this replacement gives me more options when it comes to selecting font sizes. 

NB! If you need more sizes to choose from in the drop down you can edit line 452 in dir/file: wp-content/plugins/tinymce-advanced/tinymce-advanced.php , and add the defaults you would like to show up.

Be prepared however, that you will have to add/modify this line when or if the plugin is being updated, and the file replaced. Take a backup of the file, replacement is a matter of seconds even if they should move the line my guess is the parameter name will not change. But who knows, maybe one day you'll find customization or profile settings in the plugin configuration, allowing you to store your preferred values. 

Finally, at the bottom of the TinyMCE Advanced configuration page you can export/import settings or restore default. Very handy for backup, use of settings elsewhere or to take you back to square one effortlessly!

And that's that!