How to Add Emojis to WordPress

Back in 2015, language pedants worldwide were shaken to their core when Oxford Dictionaries declared the word of the year to be — an emoji. The choice raised quite a ruckus for several reasons, including the fact that emojis aren’t exactly words. And it didn’t matter that Oxford University Press’ announcement made it clear that they were well aware of the status of emojis — the news was met with both approvals of the choice and its denouncements.

But the one thing that no one can deny is that emojis are useful and widely used. These small pictures are capable of giving context to forms of communication that lack non-verbal cues and are known for speed and brevity. That might be the reason why every day, roughly a billion of emojis are sent through Facebook messenger alone. It’s also at least one of the reasons why you’re looking for ways to add emojis to WordPress.

The good news is that, ever since the 2015 Bud Powell update (WordPress version 4.2), WordPress has been supporting emojis natively. That means that WordPress can display a variety of emojis without any additional support from plugins. However, that doesn’t mean that emoji plugins can’t make entering the ideograms into pages or posts easier, even though they might not be your first choice. If you’re wondering about the ways 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 as any — it even comes with its own “copy” button to make copying the emoji as convenient as possible.

It also shows you some useful information such as how the emoji is displayed in various devices and browsers, and what its code point and shortcode are. All of this information can come in handy. But to add the emoji to your website you only need that “copy” button — after you press it, simply right click anywhere in WordPress where you want to paste it, and choose the “paste” option. It works in Gutenberg and the Classic editor alike.

Let Your Operating System Help

If you were editing your website from a smartphone, you wouldn’t have any problems adding emoji to WordPress because most of the software keyboards nowadays offer support for emoji. But even if the physical keyboard you use with your desktop or laptop computer doesn’t offer emoji-typing functionalities, don’t worry — your operating system probably does.

If you’re using Windows, for example, you have two options to enable the input of emoji in WordPress. The first is by enabling the touch keyboard. To do that, simply right click anywhere on the taskbar, and check the “Show touch keyboard button” option. You’ll notice a new keyboard-like icon appear in the taskbar.

Click on it to bring up the touch keyboard, and notice the smiley icon on the left of the space bar. Clicking on it will open up all kinds of options for entering emoji — most of which will be recognized by WordPress.

The other method is even easier. Pressing the “windows” and “.” keys will bring up the panel for adding emojis.

If you’re using a Mac, you’ll be able to do something similar, as long as you’re using at least the 10.7 version of Mac OS X. After accessing the edit menu and selecting “special characters,” you’ll notice a small popup keyboard appear that lets you type in emojis. You can bring the keyboard up by pressing “command-control-space.”

Find a Helpful Plugin

If you’re thinking “hey, it’s WordPress — there has to be a plugin that helps with adding emojis,” you should be happy to know that you are indeed correct. There are plugins you can use to easily insert emojis into your WordPress website’s 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 published but were then left without an update for years. Plus, 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 notice, won’t clutter or weight down your website as plugins do. But If you expect heavy usage of emojis and you happen to prefer the Gutenberg editor, the Emoji Autocomplete Gutenberg is just the kind of plugin for you.

It does its magic by bringing up an emoji menu every time you type in a colon. If you start typing a word right after the colon, you’ll get a choice of emojis that contain that word.

Click on the emoji you want, and it will appear in your text. Shame 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 them.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

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 of things that will make your website work, look, and feel better. It’s certainly not nearly as important as is figuring out which ranking-boosting SEO tools to choose.

But emojis are still important because of the way they let you — and your website visitors — expand the 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 business WordPress themes, chances are you want a serious and stylish website. Emojis might be out of place there, so remember to use them only when they’re appropriate.