
Show HN: Convert a Markdown Doc to WordPress Posts and Pages - mpurham
https://scribewp.com
======
noeltock
Gutenberg (the new editor being released with WordPress 5.0 this month)
supports pasting in markdown directly — no 3rd party solution required.

~~~
mpurham
I have tested Gutenberg and while it does allow you to write markdown, the
editor still feels like a WYSIWYG editor. Also I often find myself just
wanting to write blog posts without worrying about formatting, blocks, etc
which you can do within the plugin using your favorite markdown/text editor.

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alainchabat
Is there a solution to do the other way around? I have a wordpress blog that I
don't update and cost hosting fees. I would like to move it to a free hosting
solution like github

~~~
ofrzeta
There's an exporter from Wordpress to Markdown and YAML:
[https://github.com/benbalter/wordpress-to-jekyll-
exporter](https://github.com/benbalter/wordpress-to-jekyll-exporter)

~~~
mrmondo
Yep I used this to migrate off Wordpress to Jekyll, I migrated around 3000
posts and it worked very well.

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RickS
This is a brilliant idea. Wishing you well.

I'm a .com user so I can't use this (though I'd like to), but here's a
walkthrough of all my thoughts as I interacted with your page, and some notes
about how you might improve the site given my experience.

To others reading, if you'd like a more formalized version of this type of
feedback for your own products, including split testing recommendations
designed to help validate the hypotheses, I'm available for consulting and my
email's in my profile. Cheers!

\---------

"wow, this is a great idea"

At this point, I fundamentally misunderstood what your product was.

Here's what I thought it was, that it seemingly isn't:

I maintain a local dropdown folder full of markdown files. At an interval or
when one changes, there's a hook that automatically updates the content of my
site. (similar to the way a static site can be made to rebuild and deploy on
push).

I assumed the one time pricing was because this was a desktop software that
handled that process.

I looked around the page for extra info about installation and how it works –
I wanted to avoid having to watch a fluffy howto video.

This didn't work, and I gave in and watched the video. I was happy to see it's
only :57 – you might call this out on the page, it would have made me more
likely to click, knowing it's short.

With that said, the video was illuminating but had some major issues.

It starts too slow (slides) and promptly gets WAY too fast (screencap).

"Sync your blog posts with dropbox using wordpress" is catchy but doesn't
really tell me what I'm about to watch, which left me unprepared.

First, you're in a text editor that's atop wordpress – this is a confusing
view for the uninitiated. As a guy who writes markdown in stock-theme sublime,
it took me a second to realize you were in a markdown editor, and another
moment still to realize that this markdown editor was prepopulated with what
would become a blog post. I recommend you hold the hand a little more – open a
new markdown editor window on a blank desktop, and quickly smash out a blog
post (this period of typing is one of the few places it makes sense to use the
blistering speed of the video).

Save this file, and indicate visually (with a graphic or something) that it's
synced to dropbox and now in the cloud.

NOW open the browser window, already to the posts list, and hit new post.
Spend a little more time showing navigating from the load of the new post
window to the scribeWP area of the post – this was not obvious.

One thing that might help here is _subtle_ branding of that content box. This
would be helpful for both the videos and users, I estimate.

Consider zooming in on the file browser while it's open – it was not obvious
what this was, and it's hard to read with the video at stock size.

Now that I think about it, your demo blog post should be way simpler. It's
chaotic af. I understand why you chose this – it's demoing the many supported
markdown features. But the visual input of the post doesn't reduce to a glyph
that matches my mental model of a blog post, which is roughly H1, H2, P, P, P
, H2, P, P, P. If you did that, and WP styled it automatically, and the big
headings matched what you'd put in the markdown editor, I think the effect
would be much more obvious.

When you return to the "live" version of the blog, have it show the page
without the post, and then refresh to show that the post is now there. This
would communicate what you're trying to say – it took me a sec to infer that
you were showing me the live site to show that it was posted instantly.

Same feedback about the editing – retire the browser window, bring back the
text editor, really hold the hand here.

It is good that your video shows that after syncing you still have to press
the update button. It took me 3 or 4 views to catch this, though, because it
happens so fast. And the UI makes no reminder – is it possible to have a
little info alert in your plugin area when sync completes that says "don't
forget to hit that update button in the other part of the screen!"

You might even consider having a fake button in your content area that
triggers/simulates a click of the "real" update button, if WP lets you do such
a thing.

There's a disorienting flash of black around the :14s mark.

The every.word.on.a.new.slide. at the end tried my patience more than it drove
home the point.

\---

Overall, the big piece of meta-feedback is that the demo is good but I need
more guidance about what is happening. Here are the top things that would
help:

1) Voiceover. Check out the original dropbox video. It's a little slow, but
being talked through the what and why is invaluable:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE)

2) Annotation. If you don't want to use your voice, have a persistent area of
the screen (say the top/bottom 15%?) that is describing the steps being taken
in big, readable, simple words.

3) More advanced UI highlighting. This is probably a tall ask for someone that
isn't into video editing. The MVP version of this would be to use a screencap
software that shows your mouse with a ring around it or something, and that
highlights clicks, etc automatically. IDK the name of any of these but I've
seen them, and they'd get you most of the way for free. Better still would be
to dim the screen, zoom, slow down only when needed, etc. And insert things
like graphic overlays showing that dropbox is syncing. There's room for lots
of visual aid.

\-----

Checkout: The first modal window that appears completely throws me off. The
logo is huge and I'm sold at this point, so I don't need to see it. It's
pushing away valuable stuff. There's a bio. There's more bullet points about
"why this is awesome" – what? I clicked "purchase" – we're going backwards
here, quit selling and take the money.

There is a button in a weird place that says "I want this". That scared me
that this was vaporware and your page was just pretending to be purchase-
enabled. But I clicked it anyway. Also, it has a size below the button? I
don't care, and it scares me because I think that the size is there for a good
reason that I should care about, and I don't know what it is. Nix this.

So I click the "I want this" button and now I've got a car widget with a
totally different styled modal in a totally different part of the screen. Why
on earth? You don't need a cart abstraction here. There's only one item for
sale and you can only buy one of them. I have to click a THIRD button, "pay",
to get to the screen I expected the first time.

The window with the name and card info is the modal I expected in the center
of the screen when I first clicked "purchase". Nix everything in between.

If you're not using gumroad for a good reason, use stripe. Go here and click
the "show me" button. they launch right into the window with no extra styling
or fuss whatsoever. It's perfect out of the box:
[https://stripe.com/payments/checkout](https://stripe.com/payments/checkout)

One thing I'm not seeing on your site is how the plugin will be delivered. Is
it a zip download? Will it launch automatically in my browser? Is it emailed
to me? Will I get a license code? A note about this would be nice. You don't
have to clutter checkout with it, just have a bit about it before/near the
purchase area.

\-----

edit: a technical question came to mind later – is this a two way sync? EG,
let's say I have available categories A B C D E. If I instantiate a post from
markdown with tags ABC, publish, edit in wordpress to be ABD, does the
markdown file in dropbox update to reflect those tag changes?

If not, what happens on w/r/t conflict resolution on future markdown syncs?

~~~
dmerfield
The product you describe (“I maintain a local dropdown folder full of markdown
files. At an interval or when one changes, there's a hook that automatically
updates the content of my site.“) is something I’ve built:

[https://blot.im](https://blot.im)

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chiefalchemist
Interesting. I think the ideal use case might be as a glorified - but light
weight - blog post idea store.

That is, thoughts for a new blog post come at the most inconvenient times. If
there was a way to capture that via the device in my hand and have that end up
a non-published CPT that would be great. Let me flesh flesh that out (outside
WP) and eventually login, look it over and decide to move from CPT to post,
page or other CPT.

I can see that being helpful in a number of cases.

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bausshf
Your price is absolutely ridiculous for what it does.

~~~
graeme
I run a business on Wordpress, and $29 is nothing. This is pretty much instant
purchase territory.

Edit: it looks like the price was higher than $40 before. That’s still insta-
purchase. OP, the parent commentor isn’t your audience.

~~~
RickS
Yeah, it was 45 or 49 last night. Agreed – as a one-time purchase, in the "lol
are you kidding we spend that on lacroix before lunch" territory for marketing
depts.

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r_singh
Another (free) alternative for those looking to host a markdown based blog—is
a combination of Gatsby.js + Netlify CMS.

This link should help anyone get started: [https://github.com/netlify-
templates/gatsby-starter-netlify-...](https://github.com/netlify-
templates/gatsby-starter-netlify-cms)

------
lewisjoe
Good job with this one. We need more blogging systems that don't lock content
within their data-stores.

HexoPress is another such tool. If google docs is your go-to editor, you can
blog from gdocs using [http://hexopress.com](http://hexopress.com)

It's free. FYI: I made HexoPress.

