Ruby on Rails: Add a WYSIWYG Editor to ActiveAdmin
My Ruby on Rails 2014 Time Capsule 🎞️
Ruby on Rails: How to Add a WYSIWYG Editor to ActiveAdmin
This video is a little “time capsule” from 2014—an audition demo I recorded in the Rails 3 era. I’m sharing it for nostalgia and because the technique is still genuinely useful: adding a WYSIWYG rich text editor (TinyMCE) inside ActiveAdmin so admins can create formatted content (web pages, blog posts, manuals, product descriptions, internal docs, etc.). WYSIWYG editors show up everywhere today—even GitHub-style writing experiences—so the concepts here still translate well.
If this helped you, drop a comment—especially if you’re using ActiveAdmin today.
Shout-out to Pluralsight for considering this project back then. The Pluralsight logo appears in the original demo; shared here for historical context; no affiliation implied. Consider Pluralsight as a learning resource for you and your team. https://www.pluralsight.com/paths/rub...
Featured Technologies
Ruby on Rails https://rubyonrails.org
ActiveAdmin https://activeadmin.info
TinyMCE https://www.tiny.cloud/
Sam Pohlenz' tinyme-rails gem https://github.com/spohlenz/tinymce-r...
Arbre https://activeadmin.github.io/arbre/
Formtastic https://github.com/formtastic/formtastic
Chapters
00:00 — Intro: Why add a WYSIWYG editor
00:21 — Justification for TinyMCE
00:52 — TinyMCE docs + approach overview
01:00 — TinyMCE Rails gem
01:12 — Project integration checklist
01:42 — Add the tinymce-rails gem
02:23 — Configure TinyMCE with `config/tinymce.yml`
02:59 — TinyMCE plugins + editor features (color/styling/HTML code/etc.)
03:36 — Toolbar options (lists, formatting)
04:04 — ActiveAdmin vs standard Rails asset loading
04:41 — Register custom JS in ActiveAdmin
05:06 — Include TinyMCE in ActiveAdmin's assets pipeline
05:28 — Verify TinyMCE assets are loading
05:57 — Yahoo! YSlow best practices for adding JavaScript
06:34 — Inject JavaScript and wiring it into ActiveAdmin
07:03 — Apply TinyMCE to specific textareas
07:30 — ActiveAdmin's form engine: Formtastic
07:55 — Modify Formtastic's HTML rendering
08:13 — Styling a textarea in Arbre's DSL
08:38 — Demonstration of the fully-working rich text editor
09:10 — Recap
09:46 — Next up: Custom TinyMCE plugins to enhance ActiveAdmin
About My Work Today
Ruby on Rails is still my framework of choice for rapid software-to-market development. Whenever a management dashboard is needed, I still turn to ActiveAdmin to generate live charting, operational visualization and data management tools.
Upgrading legacy Rails applications and building a back-office admin portals is the kind of development work I enjoy. Schedule an appointment, if you need help upgrading your aging Rails applications. https://calendly.com/scarver2
Links
Website: https://www.stancarver.com
LinkedIn: / scarver2
GitHub: https://github.com/scarver2
Contact Me: https://calendly.com/scarver2