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.
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
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
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
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?
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:
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.
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.
Non-technical enough that they can't develop or debug a solution themselves. There's a large-ish category of Wordpress user who can basic PHP to tweak a template if they have to and do basic admin tasks, but not much more and rather not waste time on things like that, are first-and-foremost writers and want a writing workflow that's nicer than the WYSIWYG editor in the WP backend.
It's rather stupid to compare this to an hourly pay because it's all automated once it's made.
Over $40 for something that just converts is a pretty large amount. I get there are other features of the plan, but having no alternative plans is just ... There is no way to even test it. I also just noticed the price went down to $29 now, which is more reasonable, but even so I'd argue there should be alternative plans that maybe doesn't include the full support etc. I'd assume most people won't need to take advantage of that.
I could probably setup something similar in a couple of hours, I mean there's no magic done here.
Parsing markdown is easy and I already have that as a part of my web-framework.
You might not be the target audience. Regardless how many open source libraries or even products exist, there will be a market for users who prefer a single-click install with support.
Gutenberg (the new editor being released with WordPress 5.0 this month) supports pasting in markdown directly — no 3rd party solution required.
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.
Plus, 4.x and before can use markdown by simply activating it in Jetpack (a plugin you probably everyone is already using)
Jetpack also does Markdown. Been using it a lot this year. It's a plugin that needs to be enabled.
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
There's an exporter from Wordpress to Markdown and YAML: https://github.com/benbalter/wordpress-to-jekyll-exporter
Yep I used this to migrate off Wordpress to Jekyll, I migrated around 3000 posts and it worked very well.
I haven't tried recent ones personally, but there are plugins that exist that let you export your whole site as static html files, such as:
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/static-html-output-plugin/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/
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
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
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?
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
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.
Your price is absolutely ridiculous for what it does.
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.
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.
Doesn't seem out-of-line given that it is one-off. There's enough people that use Wordpress professionally and are willing to pay for stuff.
Price seems alright to me. That's typical for a one-off Wordpress plugin, especially those targeting non-technical admins.
Yes, but, how non-technical are people who rather write in Markdown than in WYSIWYG?
Non-technical enough that they can't develop or debug a solution themselves. There's a large-ish category of Wordpress user who can basic PHP to tweak a template if they have to and do basic admin tasks, but not much more and rather not waste time on things like that, are first-and-foremost writers and want a writing workflow that's nicer than the WYSIWYG editor in the WP backend.
Is it? How many hours for you to set up something similar, and then what do you get paid per hour?
It's rather stupid to compare this to an hourly pay because it's all automated once it's made.
Over $40 for something that just converts is a pretty large amount. I get there are other features of the plan, but having no alternative plans is just ... There is no way to even test it. I also just noticed the price went down to $29 now, which is more reasonable, but even so I'd argue there should be alternative plans that maybe doesn't include the full support etc. I'd assume most people won't need to take advantage of that.
I could probably setup something similar in a couple of hours, I mean there's no magic done here.
Parsing markdown is easy and I already have that as a part of my web-framework.
See: https://github.com/DiamondMVC/Diamond/tree/master/markdown
> Parsing markdown is easy
You might not be the target audience. Regardless how many open source libraries or even products exist, there will be a market for users who prefer a single-click install with support.
He asked how long it would take me to make something similar and I answered. I don't see what that has to do with "target audience".
Ship it and sell it for $15!
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-...
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
It's free. FYI: I made HexoPress.