Why does WordPress do this?

Can you replicate this problem with all plugins disable using the twenty fourteen theme?

Haven’t tried, and honestly, I’ve got to much into this theme to change over just to see.
I was just hoping someone was familiar with the problem and could give me some tips on how to handle it.

(In this thread) Can you re-post the sentence with the code that you tried to say in your first comment? Remember to wrap your code in backticks

Normal debugging requires this

• flushing any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches.
• deactivating all plugins (yes, all) to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).
  Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
• switching to the Twenty Fourteen theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.

All your theme info is stored in the database. Changing the theme momentarily should be no problem. You do it right from the dashboard, appearances.

Ok, sorry I’ll try again. I think I figured out what a “backtick” is.

I had the following code:

<ul><li>BLAH</li>
     <li>BLAH</li>
     <li>BLAH</li>
</ul>

And it changed it to:

<ul><li>BLAH</li></ul>
<ul><li>BLAH</li></ul>
<ul><li>BLAH</li></ul>

As far as the disappearing anchor text:
This is the page:
Saints Yearbooks
Where it says 1968 Seasonal Highlights
1974 Seasonal Highlights
1984 Seasonal Highlights
and so on.
Each one of those was a link to another page. When I was in text view in the editor, Everything was OK, the links were there, but when I went to visual view, it’s like it just erased all the anchor code and left it as <h2> tags.

WordPress will just arbitrarily change the code. The latest was just this morning. It wiped out a whole page of links. Just removed the anchor code.

No, WordPress does not arbitrarily do anything but plugins, theme, etc. can cause errors.

Your theme Responsive Pro, a non supported commercial theme, added its own text editor in Sep. 2013. From the change log, Added WYSIWYG editor to theme option. Are you using that option?

No I am not.
I use the text editor about 99% of the time. About the only time I use the WYSIWYG is for links.

Can you replicate the problem using the default Twenty Fourteen theme with all plugins deactivated?

The problem isn’t constant.
It’s intermittent. It has only happened a couple of times.
I could try to do the 2014 thing later, but really, I’m kinda busy at the moment.

Basically, WordPress filters the markup you put into the text editor, this can cause issues with raw markup you put in, especially when it contains line breaks.

The text editor isn’t really an HTML editor, it’s more like a .txt editor that allows you to use some tags.

The content you put in is still filtered. The text area doesn’t really behave all that differently from the tinymce editor.

You could try disabling the wpautop and wptexturize filters, but that isn’t without issues either – especially since you aren’t starting with a fresh site here; other content you previously added likely relies on those filters to look right.

To my knowledge, WordPress adds tags every now and then (such as <P> tags around paragraphs and other tags to make it valid) but it would never make a list with 3 items into 3 lists with each 1 item.

Whether it’s constant, intermittent…..it’s not WordPress, but likely a theme and/or plugin.

I’ve also noticed that switching back and forth between tinymce and the text editor can cause some things to change, because content you put into the text editor gets parsed by TinyMCE when you switch to the visual editor.

I’ve also noticed that switching back and forth between tinymce and the text editor can cause some things to change

That’s a completely different and well documented issue. We recommend that you pick a tab and stick to it.

Yup, I know – but I don’t think it’s obvious.

We’ve had clients experience similar frustrations to the OP. Text vs. TinyMCE causes issues.

Similarly, wpautop is fine if you aren’t putting markup into the editor(s), but causes a lot of grief if you expect it to be unfiltered HTML you are entering.

Looking specifically at one of the missing links, the link text isn’t within the a tag:

<a class="high" href="/1988.htm">
<br></br></a>
<p></p>
<h2>
      1988 Seasonal Highlights
    </h2>

Are you pasting in the content or entering it directly?