Markdown

Markdown:

Why markdown?

Markdown is a universal doc format that is easy to write and easy to add to a version control system.

  • Open - Anyone can submit content, fix typos & update anything via pull requests

  • Version control - Roll back & see the history of any given post

  • No CMS lock in - We can easily port to any static site generator

  • It's just simple - No user accounts to manage, no CMS software to upgrade, no plugins to install.


Markdown basics

The basics of markdown can be found here & here. Super easy!

Advanced Formatting tips

left alignment

This is the code you need to align images to the left:

<img align="left" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.fillmurray.com/100/100">

right alignment

This is the code you need to align images to the right:


center alignment example


collapse Sections

Collapsing large blocks of text can make your markdown much easier to digest

"Click to expand"

this is hidden block

Collapsing large blocks of Markdown text

To make sure markdown is rendered correctly in the collapsed section...
  1. Put an empty line after the <summary> block.

  2. Insert your markdown syntax

  3. Put an empty line before the </details> tag


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Badges

I hate them so. Don't use badges.


Nice looking file tree

For whatever reason the graphql syntax will nicely highlight file trees like below:


Useful packages

YAML front-matter is your friend. You can keep metadata in markdown files

Useful for rendering markdown in HTML/React


Useful utilities

  1. Schedule Posts - Post scheduler for static sites

Show DEMO

Show DEMO

  1. Byword & Typora - Good Editors

  2. Monodraw - Flow charts for days

  3. Kap - Make gifs

  4. Stuck on WordPress? Try easy-markdown plugin


How Serverless uses markdown

Serverless.com is comprised of 3 separate repositories

  • https://github.com/serverless/blog

  • https://github.com/serverless/serverless | Shoutout to Phenomic.io

  • https://github.com/serverless/site

Why multiple repos?

  1. We wanted documentation about the framework to live in the serverless github repo for easy access

  2. We wanted our blog content to be easily portable to any static site generator separate from the implementation (site)

  3. prebuild npm script pulls the content together & processes them for site build

A single repo is easier to manage but harder for people to find/edit/PR content.


DEMO

Other Markdown Resources

  • Verb - Documentation generator for GitHub projects

  • ACSII docs - Markdown alternative

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