Widen WordPress Content Writing Area

I was using WordPress 2.3.x fine but I upgraded to WordPress 2.5.1 today and despite the nice interface I found that the writing area is a tad narrow for my preference.

So here’s what I did….

Firstly, you need to find the correct CSS file to edit. And that CSS file is named global.css, it’s found in the \wp-admin\css directory

Use whatever text editor that you’re familiar with, look for the CSS portion that looks like,

.wrap, .updated, .error {
	margin: 0;
	margin-left: 15px;
	margin-right: 15px;
	padding: 0;
	max-width: 980px;
}

It should be around line #154, all you need to do is remove the line

	max-width: 980px;

It will then look like this

.wrap, .updated, .error {
	margin: 0;
	margin-left: 15px;
	margin-right: 15px;
	padding: 0;
}

So there ya have it. It’ll now expand according to your screen size.

Ok, so maybe you find that it looks a bit too wide on your wide-screen display unit. Fine, just put back the line above and edit the pixel width to whatever that floats your boat.

Say, 1280px perhaps?

.wrap, .updated, .error {
	margin: 0;
	margin-left: 15px;
	margin-right: 15px;
	padding: 0;
	max-width: 1280px;
}

If you feel creative (and have too much free time on your hands), feel free to edit the rest of the WordPress CSS to suit your liking. 🙂

*Note – being a SIMPLE (and yes, FASTEST) solution, this modification WILL widen the rest of the WP-Admin interface. Ideally, you could configure it in such a way that it only applies to a particular function or 2 but this would require a lot more work. 🙂