In 2015, educators around the world were deeply shaken when Oxford Dictionaries declared the word of the year to be an emoji. The choice caused quite a stir for several reasons, including the fact that emojis aren’t exactly words. And it didn’t matter Announcement from Oxford University Press made it clear that they were well aware of the status of the emojis – the news was met with both the choice’s endorsements and its denunciations.
But the one thing no one can deny is that emojis are useful and widely used. These small images are able to give context to forms of communication that lack non-verbal cues and are known for their speed and brevity. This may be the reason why every day around a billion emojis are sent through Facebook Messenger alone. This is also at least one of the reasons why you are looking for ways to add emojis to WordPress.
The good news is that since the 2015 Bud Powell update (WordPress version 4.2), WordPress natively supports emojis. This means that WordPress can display a variety of emojis without any additional plugin support. However, that doesn’t mean that emoji plugins can’t make it easier to input ideograms into pages or posts, even though they might not be your first choice. If you’re wondering how to add emojis to WordPress, here are your options.
Copy emojis from a third-party source
The easiest way to add emoji to your WordPress website is to copy them from an emoji library. Emojipedia is as good as source – it even comes with its own “copy” button to make copying emoji as convenient as possible.
It also shows you useful information such as how the emoji is displayed in various devices and browsers, and what its codepoint and shortcode are. All this information can be useful. But to add the emoji to your website, all you need is this “copy” button – after tapping on it, just right-click anywhere in WordPress where you want to paste it, and choose the “paste” option. It works in both Gutenberg and the Classic editor.
Let your operating system help you
If you were editing your website from a smartphone, you would have no problem adding emoji to WordPress because most software keyboards today offer emoji support. But even if the physical keyboard you’re using with your desktop or laptop computer doesn’t offer emoji input capabilities, don’t worry, your operating system probably does.
If you’re using Windows, for example, you have two options for enabling emoji input in WordPress. The first is to enable the touch keyboard. To do this, just right-click anywhere in the taskbar and check the option “Show touch keyboard button”. You will notice that a new keyboard-shaped icon appears in the taskbar.
Click on it to bring up the touch keyboard and notice the smiley icon to the left of the spacebar. Clicking it will open all sorts of options for entering emoji — most of which will be recognized by WordPress.
The other method is even simpler. By pressing the “windows” and “. » the keys will bring up the panel to add emojis.
If you’re using a Mac, you’ll be able to do something similar, as long as you’re using at least Mac OS X version 10.7. After accessing the edit menu and selecting “special characters”, you will notice the appearance of a small pop-up keyboard that allows you to enter emojis. You can bring up the keyboard by pressing “command-control-space”.
Find a useful plugin
If you’re thinking “hey, it’s WordPress – there must be a plugin that helps add emojis”, you should be happy to know that you’re actually right. There are plugins you can use to easily insert emojis into your WordPress site copy.
The problem with WordPress emoji plugins is that they are, at best, a mixed bag. You’ll find plugins that seemed to work great when they were released, but then went un-updated for years. Additionally, you should also be careful not to download a plugin that helps you remove emojis from WordPress.
Between online emoji lists and software keyboards, you’ll have plenty of ways to add emojis to your website. Ways that, it’s important to note, won’t clutter or weigh down your website like plugins do. But if you expect heavy use of emojis and prefer the Gutenberg editor, the Emoji Autocomplete Gutenberg is just the kind of plugin for you.
It does its magic by showing an emoji menu whenever you tap a colon. If you start typing a word right after the colon, you’ll get a choice of emojis containing that word.
Click on the emoji you want and it will appear in your text. Too bad you can’t use it the classic editor though, but don’t worry, there are enough ways to add emojis to WordPress if you really need to.
Let’s get it over with!
Finding an easy way to add emojis to pages and posts in WordPress might not be the most important item on your to-do list that will keep your website running, having a better look and feel better. It is certainly not as important as determining which SEO tools to choose to improve rankings.
But emojis are still important because of how they allow you and your website visitors to expand everyday vocabulary. They’re economical, fun, and popular enough to be a welcome addition to many websites. Many, but not all — if you find yourself looking for professional WordPress themes, chances are you want a serious and stylish website. Emojis may not belong there, so remember to use them only when appropriate.
