How Writers Can Use Markdown in WordPress to Improve Blogging Experience?

In this article, we’ll go over what Markdown is all about and how you can start using it with WordPress. This article is originally from instantshift.com. InstantShift is leading design and inspiration related community for web designers and developers daily resource, inspiration and premium web design and development. Image courtesy of romankosolapov via Bigstockphoto. 

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If you’re a WordPress user, you must have come across the term Markdown. In case you’re wondering What is Markdown? How to get started with it? You have landed on the right page.

Everything that you need to know about Markdown is right here. We’ll briefly discuss the benefits and working of Markdown after covering all the basic aspects.

So, without any further delay, let’s jump into the first question.

What is Markdown?

It is a markup language that uses simple and unobtrusive syntax for formatting. Markdown uses simple punctuations for the purpose of formatting. It’s used for writing on the web. Normally web pages are written via HTML, which uses heavy syntax for formatting. Markup language does the exact same formatting job in a simplified manner. The main goal for Markdown’s syntax is to make it as readable as possible. It’s not a substitute, but a subset of HTML.

What makes Markdown a fine choice?

Listed are the main reasons to write in Markdown:

• Formatting doesn’t get spoiled: When you format something in a word processor and then try to place it in a web application, your formatting often gets ruined. When you write in Markdown the formatting stays intact.
• Fast to type and format: Everything can be handled via a keyboard. So, you don’t need to use a mouse in order to do the formatting.
• Readability: The most important factor that was taken into consideration while making Markdown was its readability. Markdown puts the work of editors at ease, as editing HTML articles demands quite a bit time to get used to the process because content gets somewhat lost between the HTML codes.
• Easy to write: It’s near to writing plain text. So, that makes it quite easy to write in Markdown.

How to Get Started with Markdown into WordPress?

We all know that WordPress is the best platform for newbie as well as experienced writers to become professional blogger. Although WordPress doesn’t support the Markdown by default, but it does allow the users to add additional functionalities by installing plugins. Every plugin handles Markdown in its own way. So, make a choice that consists the features that you need the most, in accordance to your workflow.

There is a Markdown cheat sheet, that consists all the formatting tags that are used while writing in Markdown system. Getting used to Markdown could take a while, but once you get familiar with all the formatting tags, you won’t have to take your fingers off the keyboard to do the formatting. It’ll not just pace-up the content generating process, but will also improve the all over blogging experience for the writer.

However, not all the plugins that work with Markdown in WordPress provide the same set of functionalities. Irrespective of which WordPress theme you are using, you need to add any of the following plugins to use Markdown efficiently:

Following are some well-recognized plugins:

Jetpack

Starting from the free version, there are three more versions provided: Personal, Premium, and Professional. Additional features like extra themes are provided in the paid versions.

• Personal: $3.06 Monthly or $30.62 Yearly
• Premium: $6.43 Monthly or $64.29 Yearly
• Professional: $14.70 Monthly or $140.83 Yearly

It’s recognized widely that jetpack works best with Markdown in WordPress. Jetpack provides, along with basic features, some additional tools like code blocks and tables.

Prettypress

Along with supporting Markdown it allows gives a live view of the post while you’re still writing it. This plugin gives a choice between free and $10 premium version. It creates a concentrated environment around the writer, and everything is placed in one place.

How to Write in Markdown?

Markdown cheat sheet explained:

Heading:

To make a heading you need to tag “#” in front of the text that you’re intending to turn into a heading. The size of the text depends on the number of “#” tags in front of the text. One tag results the largest text size and six tags result the smallest.

Listing:

There are several ways of making lists while writing in Markdown depending on the type of list you’re aiming to make. In order to make an ordered list, simply number the items in the list as shown in the figure above. As you’ll number the first item, it’ll automatically number the next item in progression. While making an unordered list, you can use “-” “*” or “+,” and it’ll be turned into the bullet as illustrated in the picture above.

Links:

Depending on the type of the link, you have to go by different approaches. If you want to link an email address, you simply need to start from a “smaller than” symbol (<), put the email address, and end it with a “greater than” symbol (>). Inline links are added in the same manner; you just need to put the URL between symbols instead of email address.

To embed link you have to close the text, you want to attach the hyperlink to, between two square brackets ( [hyperlink] ) and then give space before putting the needed link between parentheses.

The picture above illustrates how Markdown is used for formatting.

Along with the basic text formatting, you can also insert pictures, blockquotes, tables, etc.

Inline Image:

To embed an inline image in the document follow the guidelines shown in the picture below:

In order to embed an inline image, you need the URL of the image. You need to start with an exclamation mark, put the name of the image between square brackets, and then to continue without space put the link of the image between parentheses.

Blockquote:

Just start the line with “>” this sign and the text written after that will go into a blockquote.

These tags are extremely easy to remember and give the same results as HTML. So, that makes Markdown quick, easy, and efficient for the writers. In the era where urgent writing has become a norm, writers seek the quick and efficient ways to get the job down, and markdown provides that kind of feasibility to the users.

Markdown is extremely easy to get started with. The tags that we use while writing in Markdown are quite simple to remember. Plugins provided by WordPress marks the formatting work even simpler. If you want to improve your blogging experience on wordpress, you have all the information that you need to get started.