Title: Markdown support, sort of Last modified: May 24, 2018 --- # Markdown support, sort of * [Glenn Zucman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gzucman/) * (@gzucman) * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/) * I know Gutenberg is, and is not, many things to many people. For a long time, my personal quest has been for a better way to write. And for me, that better way is Markdown. * If my test was correct: 1. You CAN paste Markdown into the editor and all is good 2. but you CANNOT write in Markdown (not even with the Jetpack MD editor activated) * At current, if you want to write in Markdown, Gutenberg forces you to write somewhere else and just paste into WP. That’s definitely not my dream come true. It seems to me that Gutenberg isn’t really a new “editor”, it’s more like a Container Pasting System. That may be very useful for some, but it doesn’t seem to let me write any better. * So far, I’d still say the best Blog/CMS platform for me to write in is Ghost. And the best dedicated editor is Typora. In the past these have been better writing experiences than the WP editor, and it seems like they will continue to be better writing experiences than Gutenberg. - This topic was modified 8 years ago by [Glenn Zucman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gzucman/). Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) * Plugin Author [Tammie Lister](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karmatosed/) * (@karmatosed) * [8 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-10390739) * Thanks for taking the time to test and leave aa review [@gzucman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gzucman/). As you rightly say right now you can’t write in markdown but that will be something potentially resolved in the future, maybe with a markdown block. This is absolutely planned to be for phase one. * [hrw](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hrw/) * (@hrw) * [7 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-10902100) * Any update? Wordpress 5.0 is next week and it looks like it makes Gutenberg mandatory. * My blog is 13.5 years old and I use “Markdown Extra” since nearly beginning. If I have Gutenberg enabled that all my old posts gets mangled. All links are not parsed etc. * [url description](url) format is what I use for years. * [mnorin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mnorin/) * (@mnorin) * [7 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-11049824) * Hi there. Any news on this? * Thread Starter [Glenn Zucman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gzucman/) * (@gzucman) * [7 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-11050024) * Hello [@mnorin](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mnorin/), and also [@hrw](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hrw/)– Happy 2019! * Here’s what I understand of Gutenberg/Markdown at this time – and none of this comes from an official source, it’s just trial and error by me, but it seems to be correct: * ONE It’s true that you cannot natively write in Markdown in Gutenberg. But in a way that’s the wrong way of thinking about it, since this is a BLOCKS editor. As [@karmatosed](https://wordpress.org/support/users/karmatosed/) stated above, what we actually want is a Markdown Block. * TWO – MD 4 WP History Once upon a time, there was something like 20 different Markdown plugins for WP. I tried a lot of them and they all seemed to have issues. Perhaps they were out of date. Then Jetpack added a Markdown module. The good news is that it worked better than any other Markdown plugin I’d tried. The bad news is that it seems like having a large player like Automattic/Jetpack in the game led to the demise of all the smaller plugins. Other than one that ports the Jetpack Markdown Module out of Jetpack (for stand-alone use) I don’t think there are any MD Plugins in the repository anymore. * THREE Jetpack has updated with a Markdown Block. The good news is that if you install JP and turn MD on, you’ll have a new MD block type. It will work just as you’d expect. * MD will not work in a Paragraph block, or in an HTML block, but it will work in any MD blocks that you place. * The bad news is that when Jetpack updated to Gutenberg, it added Markdown blocks, and took out MD for the Classic editor. So if you install Classic Editor for WP 5+, you won’t be able to write in Markdown at all. * The other bad news is that all of your old posts will have all of their MD converted to HTML. If you tried to have clean, easy to read content, it’ll be messier now. * BTW, if you have a page in HTML and you want to convert it to, or back to, MD,“ Turndown” by Dom Christie is pretty cool: [http://domchristie.github.io/turndown/](http://domchristie.github.io/turndown/) * The other-other bad news is that if you like to use internal links for things like in-page TOCs, it’s semi-broken. * As far as I can tell, any ID=”name” * links inside Markdown Blocks won’t work. In traditional Markdown, you can always use HTML, but I think in the new Gutenberg/Jetpack/Markdown you can ONLY use MD and NOT HTML in an MD Block. * You can still get this functionality, but it’s messier than it used to be. The way I’d do it now is to have: * HTML TOC Block Any number of HTML Header Blocks w ID tags Markdown content blocks interleaved with the header blocks. * Your HTML TOC Block will correctly link down to any of your HTML Header blocks with ID tags. * I don’t think there is any way to use ID=”name” in an MD Block. Not to jump within the block nor to jump to the block. So what would have simply been one page of mixed MD & HTML in the past will now be a page of many interleaved HTLM & MD blocks. * The new way seems clumsier but really isn’t bad. It does offer a chance to insert header banners (a rectangle with a colored background for a bit more graphic emphasis) for major headings and using either Reusable Blocks, or the Block Duplicate, it can be kind of handy for formatting. * That’s what I know so far! Happy writing! * ~ Glenn * [hrw](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hrw/) * (@hrw) * [7 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-11050091) * On [my website](https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/) I have [“Markdown Extra”](https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/classic/) installed for ages (blog is nearly 14 years old). Jetpack is installed but it’s Markdown plugin is disabled. * Checked my old posts and in database they are still Markdown as I wrote them. I do not edit them (even if their grammar could be improved) so converting to html would not be an issue. * The problem is that Gutenberg editor fails to show Markdown code properly even in ‘code editor’. Listed lists for example are flatten to one list. After installing‘ Classic Editor’ plugin they are presented properly. * Probably will give a chance to one of plugins which allow to select classic/gutenberg( like [‘Disable Gutenberg’](https://perishablepress.com/disable-gutenberg/) one) to be able to use both Markdown in old posts and Gutenberg in new ones. * [Jeffrey Carandang](https://wordpress.org/support/users/phpbits/) * (@phpbits) * [7 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-11604593) * [@gzucman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/gzucman/) It’s time to revisit markdown. I’ve recently release Markdown support for Gutenberg on my EditorsKit plugin : [https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-options/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-options/). It’s integrated directly on RichText so you don’t have to use custom block. Here’s the preview on how markdowns were implemented : * > EditorsKit 1.6 is now available 🚀 Comes with Gutenberg Editor Markdown Support, > Clear Formatting, Subscript & Superscript Formats, Toggle Title and more. Here's > a quick preview on how these features were integrated on WordPress Gutenberg > block editor 🎬 [pic.twitter.com/apB4uMjuqg](https://t.co/apB4uMjuqg) > — Jeffrey Carandang (@jeffreycarandng) [June 4, 2019](https://twitter.com/jeffreycarandng/status/1135895882216329216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total) The topic ‘Markdown support, sort of’ is closed to new replies. * ![](https://ps.w.org/gutenberg/assets/icon-256x256.jpg?rev=1776042) * [Gutenberg](https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/) * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/#faq) * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/) * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/active/) * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/unresolved/) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/gutenberg/reviews/) * 6 replies * 5 participants * Last reply from: [Jeffrey Carandang](https://wordpress.org/support/users/phpbits/) * Last activity: [7 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/markdown-support-sort-of/#post-11604593)