Wordpress visual editor and SEO

Having recently moved to Wordpress myself, I noticed something similar occurring. I posted on the Wordpress forum with the (now) expected result of being told to post it to their "jobs" section or something equally unhappy. Actually this rare time I got the answer from a poor bedraggled geek that said "are you using two editors?"

To which the answer was "no, I am only using the one editor". The Wordpress editor.

"Oh, no" came the response from the intellectually challenged Esmi "Wordpress has two editors"

"Really?" I replied "Where's the other one, I haven't found it - maybe it works better?"

"No, you have the visual editor and the text editor"

"Pardon?"

"You have the visual editor and the text editor"

"What do you mean by that? That's nonsense" (I've worked with html/css websites for decades, by the way and have used loads of different editors)

"The visual editor is different from the text editor" says Esmi decisively in a fit of intellectual pride.

"Are you telling me that they're not connected and that if you move from one to the other it scrambles your code"

"Yes, it cleans up hypertext links and so on. Just in case you made a mistake with the code"

"Are you kidding me?" I said in disbelief. "I can't believe that this is true! That goes against the principles of every WISYWYG composer I have used - and yours is the only one that has this disconnect".

"No, Wordpress have had this for years and years, and it works perfectly for us"

"It would do. Just how many people have dumped Wordpress because of this nonsensical decision that makes your interface so difficult to use?"

"If they like Wordpress they stay around"

"That's the intellectual's answer - that is to say, it isn't an answer, is it?"

Note: no Geeks were harmed in this sketch.

Does this clear things up a little - and do watch out, if you use an external WISIWYG editor you will likely find that Wordpress knows better and you will still have a heap of tidying to do.

In short, it's fughing awful. And the brain-dead wraiths that pollute the corridors of the Wordpress HQ think it's great. But then, they haven't used a proper one - and probably couldn't.

Moriarty. Astonished that such an august institution can get things quite so wrong. And still think they're right.

No it wont have a negative effect on your SEO -yep it does screw with some code but I'm pretty sure all that is easily ironed out. It really depends on what code you are inserting that it's messing up.