Unresponsive WYSIWYG editor

The WYSIWYG editors are great additions to the Joomla, and we have lots of them around. They make a webmaster from casual user and can speed up the work of pros. But, sometimes, you find that you cannot enter text into the HTML editor, or click on the HTML editor's toolbar buttons - you are locked out of editing your content!

What can be more annoying as being unable to edit your own site?

The problem generally is related with Java Script permissions. Java Script can only work in a single 'domain', so if resources are required from more than 1 domain to do a job, javascript applications such as HTML editors can crash. The most common reason why HTML editors in Joomla try to access resources from more than one domain is that the user tries to access the page without using "www." before the domain name (or, it could be that you are trying to access the page with the "www." but shouldn't be). For example, usually http://mydomain.com/administrator is wrong. It should be http://www.mydomain.com/administrator.

Whether or not to use "www." depends on the settings in your configuration.php file. Go to Site->Global Configuration (from the main menu in Joomla), click on the Server tab, and check the 'Live Site' setting. If the live site setting includes www. then you must use www. when accessing Joomla administrator. If live site does not include www. then you must not use www. when accessing Joomla administrator.

If this does not solve your problem, a good place to start troubleshooting is to check for javascript errors. In IE6, a little yellow icon appears in the bottom left of your browser when a javascript error occurs - double-click on it to see the error message. In Firefox, click on Tools->JavaScript Console for a list of the errors.