Wordpress New Post Edit Toolbar is Missing

Question

Symptom: When I start a new post on my Wordpress (example: http://website.com/wp-admin/post-new.php), I have the following problems:

1. The tinyMCE editing toolbar is missing, and
2. Text does not appear when typed in the body of the new post

Attempts: Following Wordpress' guidelines, I tried the following without success:

• Deactivate all plugins -- still no edit toolbar.
• Use other browsers -- same error in Chrome, Firefox, and IE on multiple machines.
• Enable SCRIPT_DEBUG in wp-config.php -- same error.
• Viewing browser errors in Chrome -- see below.

I opened Developer Tools ("F12") in Chrome on the new post page and found the following 3 errors:

1. Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found) -- [wordpress-website]/wp-includes/js/tinymce/tiny_mce.js?ver=349-20805
2. Uncaught ReferenceError: tinyMCE is not defined -- wp-langs-en.js:1
3. Uncaught ReferenceError: tinyMCE is not defined -- post-new.php:760

Question: What must I do to get the edit toolbar back?

Answer 1

404 errors are an indication files may be missing. Have you verified the files haven't accidentally been moved or deleted?

Answer 2

You can replace the contents of the wp-includes/ directory where TinyMCE is located. You can either do this via the admin area updater, or you can do it manually.

Automatic way

• Log into your WordPress admin area
• Navigate to Home > Updates
• Click the Re-install Now button

Manual way

• Download a copy of the version of WordPress you are currently running (if you are not running the current version you can find a copy in the release archive)
• FTP into your site
• Make a backup of your wp-content/ directory
• Delete the wp-includes/ directory from the server
• Upload the entire wp-includes/ directory from the new copy of WordPress you downloaded

You should now have a completely replaced wp-content/ directory and all of the TinyMCE files will be on your server.