Maybe If I Learn Markdown I'll Blog More
It's been more than three years since I was regularly updating my web sites. Part of the reason for this silence is that I've moved about 10 times, including between countries, but the main reason is that I've been in search of new tools. I think, maybe, I've found a key tool for the next incarnation of my web presence: [Markdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown) markup language. ## **My History Of Web Publishing** For years I've used [vim](http://www.vim.org/ "Vi IMproved"), [Dreamweaver](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Dreamweaver), sftp, and ssh to write & update web pages. From [2003](http://deflexion.com/2003/10/trying-out-blogger "My first Blogger post") to [2010](http://deflexion.com/2010/02/mucommander "My last Blogger post") I also blogged[^deflexion] using Blogger, vim, and [Windows Live Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Writer). That system was OK, but editing the Blogger template was torture. I stuck with Blogger because[^ev] I could use my own domain and because I could [set up Blogger to automatically ftp my blog posts to my own web-hosting provider](http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/ "Blogger FTP Info"). When [Google announced that they were turning off Blogger's ftp-publishing capability](http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/01/important-note-to-ftp-users.html "Blogger Buzz: Important Note to FTP Users (2010 January 22)"), I quit using Blogger. I've been trying to figure out a new system for publishing on the web since then. I keep thinking Tumblr might be it, but I don't like using Tumblr's "rich text editor" or their "plain text/HTML" editor, and I haven't found a good app that works with Tumblr and works on all the platforms that I use. I like WL Writer, but it doesn't work with Tumblr, it's not cross-platform, and it seems to be abandonware. ## **My Discovery Of Markdown** A couple weeks ago I signed up for [meta.discourse.org](http://meta.discourse.org/), posted some comments[^n_m], and discovered the joy of Markdown. Discourse[^discourse] uses a rich text editor that automatically displays both a WYSIWYG and a Markdown view of your post while you're composing it. This was a revelation to me because I never realized how easy & elegant Markdown is. I've known about it for years, but never felt compelled to learn it, probably because I wanted the control that I get when I directly edit HTML. ## **Learning Markdown** Here are some of the pages I used to learn Markdown: * [www.tuaw.com/markdown-primer/](http://www.tuaw.com/markdown-primer/) * [onethingwell.org/post/1680780219/tumblr-markdown](http://onethingwell.org/post/1680780219/tumblr-markdown) * [michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/](http://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/) * [johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown) Here are the searches I did to find the above, and lots more, pages about Markdown and MultiMarkdown[^multimarkdown], which is the version of Markdown that Tumblr uses: * [Use DuckDuckGo to search for ***tumblr markdown***](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tumblr+markdown) * [www.tumblr.com/tagged/markdown](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/markdown) * [www.tumblr.com/tagged/multimarkdown](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/multimarkdown>) * [twitter.com/search?q=markdown](http://twitter.com/search?q=markdown) * [twitter.com/search?q=multimarkdown](http://twitter.com/search?q=multimarkdown) ## **I Think I ♥ Markdown** This post is my first time tumblelogging in Markdown and I'm optimistic that I will indeed post more now that I have a pleasant (maybe even fun!) way to create HTML. And now the footnotes[^footnotes] . . . [^deflexion]: My old blog is titled [Deflexion.com: deflexion & reflexion from nancy mcgough](http://deflexion.com/). [^ev]: Another reason I stuck with Blogger was because I trusted [@ev](http://twitter.com/ev), thanks to his [Evhead blog](http://evhead.com/), which used to be one of my regular reads. [^n_m]: I'm [@n_m](http://meta.discourse.org/users/n_m) on meta.discourse.org. If you care about the future of online discussion groups, I recommend you join me in the meta Discourse discussions. [^discourse]: [Discourse](http://www.discourse.org/) is FLOSS forum software created by Jeff Atwood ([@codinghorror](http://twitter.com/codinghorror)) and others. I've read Jeff's [Coding Horror](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/) blog for years. [^multimarkdown]: Actually, the version of Markdown used at Tumblr is a superset of MultiMarkdown. [^footnotes]: I'm a big fan of footnotes and I already ♥ MultiMarkdown's footnoting feature! *[sftp]: secure ftp, also known as ssh ftp *[ftp]: file transfer protocol *[FLOSS]: free/libre open source software *[WYSIWYG]: what you see is what you get
