Markdown Basics

Typemill is a Markdown CMS, and embracing Markdown is essential for modern authors and editors. Markdown is a simple text formatting language that has become the standard for content creation among popular tools like Slack, Reddit, and GitHub. Furthermore, AI models and platforms such as ChatGPT often default to Markdown when generating text-based outputs.

By using a handful of special characters like # and *, Markdown allows for intuitive text formatting that can be learned in less than 10 minutes. Here’s a brief example of Markdown text:

# My first level headline

This is a paragraph, and now we create an unordered list:

- Item
- Another item
- A last item

Advantages of Markdown

Markdown offers numerous advantages for writers compared to HTML editors used in most traditional CMS platforms:

• Formatting text is seamless during the writing process, eliminating the need to click format buttons and significantly speeding up your workflow.
• Avoid common pitfalls of HTML editors, such as persistent list formatting, unpredictable spacing, and challenges with copying and pasting formatted text.
• When the CMS stores content in Markdown files, like Typemill does, your content remains readable, editable, and transportable.

Typemill Markdown Editors

Typemill features two distinct Markdown editors:

• Visual Markdown Editor: This block editor provides a WYSIWYG mode (what you see is what you get), making it perfect for easy and intuitive content creation.
• Raw Markdown Editor: A straightforward editor that highlights raw Markdown syntax, ideal for copying, pasting, or reorganizing larger sections of your article.

You can easily switch between both editors with a button in the sticky publish bar and configure a default editor in the system settings.

Markdown Compatibility

Markdown is a standarized syntax but with different flavours. The Markdown syntax produced by Typemill might not be compatible with other Markdown editors in all details. For example: Notices are not a standard Markdown element, but Typemill uses a Syntax that is also used by other platforms. The shortcodes of Typemill are also no markdown compatible syntax but a way to integrate content and features more flexible into Typemill pages.

Markdown Quick Reference

This is a quick reference table with some common Markdown formatting options. For a detailed guide covering all Markdown features in Typemill, including tables, footnotes, and definition lists, please visit the Markdown reference page.