BITS Markdown

WordPress plugin by Bristlecone IT Services. Write in Markdown without Jetpack, with syntax aligned to iA Writer.

Plugin homepage: https://bristleconeit.com/bits-markdown.

Development repository: https://github.com/Zyniker13/bits-markdown.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4+
• PHP 8.1+

Development

composer install
composer test

The Gutenberg block is plain wp.* JavaScript (no build step).

WordPress.org

This directory is the plugin root. readme.txt is the file WordPress.org uses. The directory contributor is bristleconeit (Bristlecone IT Services). Plugin URI is https://bristleconeit.com/bits-markdown; Author URI is https://bristleconeit.com.

Do not include Jetpack in directory tags.

WordPress.org assets (icon, banner, screenshots) belong in the plugin’s SVN /assets directory after approval, not in this zip.

The public plugin page is https://bristleconeit.com/bits-markdown. Copy and standards notes for that page live in docs/plugin-home.md (not shipped in the WordPress.org zip).

Storage

Document-mode posts (Classic Editor, REST API, iA Writer) store HTML in post_content and Markdown in post_content_filtered, with _bits_markdown (Jetpack used _wpcom_markdown, which this plugin still honors). The Markdown block keeps source in block attributes and saves HTML as a fallback if the plugin is deactivated.

Footnotes

Footnote IDs are namespaced as bits-fn-{postId}-… so archive pages and WordPress’s core Footnotes block are less likely to collide. New posts are converted a second time after insert so those IDs use the real post ID rather than a placeholder.

wpautop is disabled for document-mode Markdown posts because it can scramble footnote markup. Themes that restyle sup may still need a small CSS tweak. Footnote lists still appear on archives for every excerpted/full post that contains them. Inline footnotes ([^text with spaces.]) work alongside named [^1] definitions. The core Footnotes block is a separate feature; IDs do not overlap, but a post could contain both.

Content Blocks

iA Writer Content Blocks transclude files from a local library WordPress cannot access. Compile the document in iA Writer (or publish the already-expanded Markdown) rather than expecting WordPress to resolve those paths.

Release zip

Build a production zip (single root folder bits-markdown, Composer --no-dev):

composer release

The zip is written to dist/bits-markdown-1.0.0.zip. Upload that file at Add Your Plugin. After approval, tag updates go through WordPress.org SVN; this GitHub repository stays the development tree.