Instead of using a JavaScript WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get), which often produces poor-quality HTML, it is better to use a simple Wiki mark-up language like Markdown, so that managing content is as simple as writing plain-text e-mails.   Markup has the added advantage that it still offers web developers the ability to insert standard HTML to their liking.

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Web-to-Database Middleware

Markdown Syntax Guide

This is an overview of Markdown's syntax.   For more information, visit the Markdown web site.

Italics and Bold

This is italicized, and so is this.

This is bold, and so is this.

You can use italics and bold together if you have to.

Links

Simple links

There are three ways to write links.   Each is easier to read than the last:

Here's an inline link to [YahooDE] (http://www.yahoo.de/). Here's a reference-style link to YahooUK. Here's a very readable link to Yahoo!.

The link definitions can appear anywhere in the document -- before or after the place where you use them.   The link definition names (1 and Yahoo!) can be any unique string, and are case-insensitive; [Yahoo!] is the same as [YAHOO!].

Advanced links: Title attributes

You can also add a title attribute to a link, which will show up when the user holds the mouse pointer it.   Title attributes are helpful if your link text is not descriptive enough to tell users where they're going.   (In reference links, you can use optionally parentheses for the link title instead of quotation marks.)

Here's a poorly-named link. Never write "click here". Check out ONE.

Advanced links: Bare URLs

You can write bare URLs by enclosing them in angle brackets:

My web site is at http://www.onenewengland.com/.

If you use this format for e-mail addresses, Markdown may encode the address to make it harder for spammers to harvest.   Try it and look in the HTML Output pane to see the results:

Humans can read this, but most spam harvesting robots can't: me@privacy.net

Headers

There are two ways to do headers in Markdown.   (In these examples, Header 1 is the biggest, and Header 6 is the smallest.)

You can underline text to make the two top-level headers:

Header 1

Header 2

The number of = or - signs doesn't matter; you can get away with just one.   But using enough to underline the text makes your titles look better in plain text.

You can also use hash marks for all six levels of HTML headers:

Header 1

Header 2

Header 3

Header 4

Header 5

Header 6

The closing # characters are optional.

Horizontal Rules

You can insert a horizontal rule by putting three or more hyphens, asterisks, or underscores on a line by themselves:

---

---

---

You can also use spaces between the characters:

---

All of these examples produce the same output.

Lists

Simple lists

A bulleted list:

• You can use a minus sign for a bullet
• Or plus sign
• Or an asterisk

A numbered list:

1. Numbered lists are easy
2. Markdown keeps track of the numbers for you
3. So this will be item 3.

A double-spaced list:

• This list gets wrapped in <p> tags

• So there will be extra space between items

Advanced lists: Nesting

You can put other Markdown blocks in a list; just indent four spaces for each nesting level.   So:

1. Lists in a list item:

   • Indented four spaces.
     • indented eight spaces.
   • Four spaces again.

2. Multiple paragraphs in a list items:

   It's best to indent the paragraphs four spaces You can get away with three, but it can get confusing when you nest other things. Stick to four.

   We indented the first line an extra space to align it with these paragraphs.   In real use, we might do that to the entire list so that all items line up.

   This paragraph is still part of the list item, but it looks messy to humans.   So it's a good idea to wrap your nested paragraphs manually, as we did with the first two.

3. Blockquotes in a list item:

   Skip a line and indent the >'s four spaces.

4. Preformatted text in a list item:

     Skip a line and indent eight spaces.
     That's four spaces for the list
     and four to trigger the code block.
   

Blockquotes

Simple blockquotes

Blockquotes are indented:

The syntax is based on the way email programs usually do quotations. You don't need to hard-wrap the paragraphs in your blockquotes, but it looks much nicer if you do.   Depends how lazy you feel.

Advanced blockquotes: Nesting

You can put other Markdown blocks in a blockquote; just add a > followed by a space:

Parragraph breaks in a blockquote:

The > on the blank lines is optional. Include it or don't; Markdown doesn't care.

But your plain text looks better to humans if you include the extra > between paragraphs.

Blockquotes within a blockquote:

A standard blockquote is indented

A nested blockquote is indented more

You can nest to any depth.

Lists in a blockquote:

• A list in a blockquote
• With a > and space in front of it
  • A sublist

Preformatted text in a blockquote:

 Indent five spaces total.   The first
 one is part of the blockquote designator.

Images

Images are exactly like links, but they have an exclamation point in front of them:

.

The word in square brackets is the alt text, which gets displayed if the browser can't show the image.   Be sure to include meaningful alt text for blind users' screen-reader software.

Just like links, images work with reference syntax and titles:

This page is .

Note:

Markdown does not currently support the shortest reference syntax for images:

Here's a broken !checkmark.

But you can use a slightly more verbose version of implicit reference names:

This works.

The reference name (valid icon) is also used as the alt text.

Inline HTML

If you need to do something that Markdown can't handle, you can always just use HTML:

Strikethrough humor is funny.

Markdown is smart enough not to mangle your span-level HTML:

Markdown works fine in here.

Block-level HTML elements have a few restrictions:

1. They must be separated from surrounding text by blank lines.
2. The begin and end tags of the outermost block element must not be indented.
3. You can't use Markdown within HTML blocks.

So:

Preformatted Text

You can include pre-formatted text in a Markdown document.

To make a code block, indent four spaces:

 printf("goodbye world!");  /* his suicide note
                               was in C */

The text will be wrapped in <pre> and <code> tags, and the browser will display it in a monospaced typeface.   The first four spaces will be stripped off, but all other whitespace will be preserved.

You cannot use Markdown or HTML within a code block, which makes them a convenient way to show samples of Markdown or HTML syntax:

 <blink>
    You would hate this if it weren't
    wrapped in a code block.
 </blink>

Code Spans

You can make inline <code> tags by using code spans.   Use backticks to make a code span:

Press the <Tab> key, then type a $.

(The backtick key is in the upper left corner of most keyboards.)

Like code blocks, code spans will be displayed in a monospaced typeface.   Markdown and HTML will not work within them:

Markdown italicizes things like this: I *love* it.

Don't use the <font> tag; use CSS instead.

Praesent libero felis, varius facilisis suscipit in, cursus sed magna. In ullamcorper sapien vel lorem auctor aliquam. Pellentesque placerat justo vel felis consectetur gravida. Integer ac neque eu tortor vulputate iaculis non eu sem. Nunc molestie hendrerit nisl vitae dignissim. In id quam eget augue laoreet tincidunt. Praesent elit justo, varius eu rhoncus vitae, elementum vitae justo. Nunc semper, est sed pulvinar semper, nulla dui volutpat orci, eget faucibus arcu erat non arcu. Donec accumsan viverra metus, non venenatis purus elementum eget. Nullam purus diam, rutrum at elementum et, molestie et tortor. Nullam tincidunt tristique egestas.