I found a plugin that saved my sanity – TinyMCE Advanced plugin.
I have been using WordPress as a CMS to build a website for a client www.michaelcassidyfineart.com, using the Revolution theme which is well suited for CMS. I needed to display pictures of the various fine art paintings that Mr. Cassidy has for sale. He has an amazing talent, and paints South Pacific art, Surfing Art, and Hawaiian Art.
The goal was to display thumbs of a gallery on a page, and by clicking on the thumb, and using a thickbox or lightbox, the screen darkens and the painting expands to fill the screen over the current page. Very cool effect.
I tried using the NextGen plugin to manage the graphics. But the result was less than pleasing. The thumbs were not aligned, because the sizes and dimensions of the paintings and thus the thumbs were so different.
So next I tried using a table to align the thumbs. I created a table with 3 columns and 8 rows, and began entering the graphic thumbs. Problem was, after entering the 7th or 8th graphic thumb, and saving, the entire page would disappear.
Yes, the entire page would disappear. All the code. All the work gone.
I tried several times first using the visual mode editor in WordPress to add the thumb, going to HTML mode and saving…and losing it all.
Again and again…
I was tearing my hair out.
So I Googled the problem “problem with tables in WordPress” and found that there is a problem with WordPress’s visual editor and tables. The solution to this problem with the WordPress visual editor? After searching some more with Google I found TinyMCE Advanced plugin.
What a life saver.
It adds several important buttons such as Advanced Horizontal Line, Cut, Copy, and the all important Table buttons. You can can create a table, insert a row, delete a row, add a column, delete a column, and so on. The important part is that the WordPress editor now understands tables!
How did it work?
Installed the TinyMCE Advanced plugin, cleared my browswer cache, went to HTML mode, pasted in my saved code of the table with 6 thumbs, and began entering more thumb graphics within the table cells.
The result?
No problems. I was able to add all 24 thumbs within the table. And I didn’t lose my code.
Even better, I now had graphic editing tools for the table, and was able to add rows with the visual editor. Very cool.
My recommendation is that if you are even thinking of using tables in your WordPress website, get and install TinyMCE advanced plugin.
Highly recommended. Two thumbs way up!
I’m having exactly the same problem!
If I insert a table with few thumbnails (i.e 12 or less) it is fine, but I have a page with many screenshots and I just can’t publish it. Well, I can’t, but like youm the code keeps on disappearing.
I installed the TinyMCE plugin but it doesn’t seem to solve the problem. I’m soooo frustrated!
i see you now use WP-Table Reloaded on that site – did you learn something else after you wrote this post? or did the TinyMCE do the trick for good? having the same problems and this post was a godsend!
No, I might be wrong, but I don’t think that I am using WP-Table Reloaded…. I think that TinyMCE did the trick alright!
You’re a genius. This is by far the best response I’ve found anywhere for fixing disappearing tables in WordPress.
I’ve been having this problem on two sites where pages online would disappear after x number of rows or cells.
Found that TinyMCE was already installed but perhaps corrupted. Deleted the plugin, reinstalled, cleared my browser cache and suddenly no more disappearing tables in WordPress.
You are brilliant. Wish I could buy you a beer. Hell a case of beer. I’ll have a couple for you instead.
Just for SEO purposes let e say again : . This is by far the best response I’ve found anywhere for fixing disappearing tables in WordPress.