Creating a modern blog editor sounds simple at first — add a text box, add formatting buttons, and save content. But once you start building one for real users, the complexity increases fast.
This article walks through the practical challenges, design decisions, and technical trade-offs involved in building a production-ready blog editor.
Why Blog Editors Are Harder Than They Look
At a glance, writing text online seems trivial. But a good editor must handle:
Rich text formatting
Multiple fonts and sizes
Images and media
Clean HTML output
Live preview
SEO-friendly structure
Cross-browser consistency
Most problems don’t show up on day one — they appear after users start writing real content.
Core Features Every Editor Needs
Before choosing any tool, define what your editor must support.
1. Text Formatting
Users expect:
Bold, italic, underline
Text color & background highlight
Headings (H1, H2, H3)
Lists (ordered & unordered)
If any of these feel clunky, users lose trust immediately.
2. Fonts Without Pain
Font handling is one of the biggest traps.
Bad approach ❌:
Manually adding fonts in CSS
Mapping font classes everywhere
Syncing editor + preview + export manually
Good approach ✅:
Let the editor handle font rendering
Load fonts once (Google Fonts / CDN)
Avoid font-specific logic in your app code
This is why editors like TinyMCE and CKEditor exist.
Handling Images the Right Way
Images should be easy — but only if done correctly.
What users expect
Paste an image URL → it works
Upload image → it appears instantly
Resize and align images visually
Common mistakes
Using webpage URLs instead of image URLs
Relying on third-party sites that block hotlinking
Not validating image sources
Rule:
If the link doesn’t end in .jpg, .png, .webp, it’s probably not an image.