markdown.md

that's awesome, i mean all of it :-) before i get to specific issues there are few things i would like you to be aware of.

i am running on a tight schedule and have a conference this week so might need to do as much as possible for sd@ldf2015 this weekend.

that means i might need to be talking at you during the weekend :-) but not to worry just ignore me until you have some time later (i presume during the week) and then just engage with the stuff in the way you would normally do.

this applies to the text below

there is one thing i would like to dish out straight away as it might speed up writing/documenting/developing whatever it is that we chose to develop.

here goes (my promise: if you pay attention to the following text for 30 seconds you'll make one big step towards digital enlightenment ;-))

here goes:

have you heard about markdown? look at this:

[lior smith](https://twitter.com/liorsmith)

this text is written in markdown and is rendered as lior smith which is a simple clickable link.

simple right? now, look what happens when i add ! <- exclamation mark in front of [] while inside () i put a link to an image, like this:

![](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3306503191/1aed9dbd193530a92ae8bdda50514378_400x400.jpeg)

what we get is:

easy right? now see this:

- [lior smith](https://twitter.com/liorsmith)
- ![](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3306503191/1aed9dbd193530a92ae8bdda50514378_400x400.jpeg)
- [rafal szulczewski](https://twitter.com/rafszul)
- ![](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/633659030658007040/AvTPrtnT_400x400.png)
- whatever you want

which renders as:

lior smith
rafal szulczewski
whatever you want

an unordered list and all you needed doing is adding- and space in front of the line of text.

that's it. markdown is very simple, takes 30 seconds to get general idea how it works and after 2 min of using it you will be a markdown pro. seriously!

you might be asking why this is important, in the end you can do the same things in wordpress editor window

by clicking on the icons and adding links, images, videos or whatever you want and also format the text however you want. which is the same as you would usually do in word processing software like microsoft office or whatever else you are using.

the crux of the issue lies in the word "formatting". word processors and wordpress editor "format�s" the text adding shit loads of stuff in between the actual text even though you can't see this stuff. have you ever had problems with text formatting while writing your posts? in the editor everything seems okay but then once published some stuff goes to one side the other goes to other, images seem randomly all over the place, video doesn't show at all and instead you have the embed text with all the <iframe>...</iframe> mess?

markdown on the other hand doesn't do anything of the kind and it is written in so called "plain text". so apart from the few additions like the ones you already know !, [], () and few others which you might learn later it can be manipulated programatically with ease.

in fact it parses into html which is a huge benefit if we want the text to be easily accessible on mobile devices with limited bandwidth and power.

did i scare you already? ;-)

all the documents which would be of interest to you and which will be hosted on github are written and will be written in markdown (file extension for markdown documents is .md or .markdown). which means that a lot of the stuff you will be writing or already wrote for wordpress blog could be simply copied and pasted into .markdown documents and used immediately with no edits necessary as documentation for the projects i will be working on.

this has a benefit in making development and projects more approachable for programmers and techies like myself who are then more likely to contribute to the initiatives we will be pursuing.

we want this! we really do! you want this.

so what i am saying is this: make your text and documentation accessible to open source programmers and your initiatives are more likely to gain support and involvement of incredibly knowledgable and skilled individuals and hopefully by this end up being catapulted into a stratosphere of web tech and tech in general.

there is a wordpress plugin that will allow you to write in markdown your posts on wordpress if you insist and are committed to using this platform.

in any case writing in markdown will not make things too much difficult and different from what and how you are doing things already while at the same time assist my efforts in providing documentation on github in wiki section of each repo for the projects hosted there.

sorry this was long. have a monkey

I've set up a GitHub repo with few md files which contain lists, check lists related to some ideas/prototypes I would be inclined to try build for your initiative.

these mini-projects have varying degree of complexity and range from simple README files containing links to forms on google and other form services which I thought you might be or want to be using to whole web applications integrating with social media and using some gameficitaion features like quizzes, badges, etc.

I've already created one such app using stamplay which is a free platform making development of fairly complex apps much easier and quick.

service-design-ldf-2015-suggestion-box with authentication and some gamification added with main features being:

Allow users to login with Google
When they login, send them a welcome email
Let users add suggestions
When their suggestion gets 5 up-votes, email them congratulations

the whole app is a clone of an app created by guys at scotch.io and was created by me following simple step by step tutorial on their site.

you will find there info about the platform as well as instructions.

you can access the app by going to https://suggestionboxsdldf2015.stamplayapp.com/ or clicking on the graphic below

as you can see the app has very basic styling and this is something I would like to change as a first step in customising it for our purposes.

I'll be updating on significant changes in respect of the app but by all means I implore you to try and use it. I've been working with stamplay for quite few months now and I am rather impressed on how powerful it is and what awesome stuff can be easily built with it. I need your input though if I am to create quickly something awesome for your users. you know the drill :-)

rafszul/markdown.md

adacable commented Sep 1, 2015