How can I completely remove TinyMCE in Wordpress?

Question

When I say "remove," I mean "permanently remove, forever, for everybody." All I want is a plain vanilla text box to paste HTML into, which I am editing locally.

Answer 1

You may set the tinymce configuration parameter mode to none.

This means a special command is needed in order to initaialize the editor, thus your textarea will stay as it is.

Answer 2

Nothing can be really be permanent as it's part of the core and updates will likely re-enable it at some point.

You can try adding add_filter ( 'user_can_richedit' , create_function ( '$a' , 'return false;' ) , 50 ); to your functions.php file.