Advanced Markdown with David Wells

Slides -> github.com/DavidWells/advanced-markdown

Table of Contents

• Why markdown?
• Markdown basics
• Advanced Formatting tips
  • left alignment
  • right alignment
  • center alignment example
  • collapse Sections
  • additional links
  • Badges
• Useful packages
• Useful utilities
• How Serverless uses markdown
  • DEMO
• Other Markdown Resources

Why markdown?

Markdown is a universal doc format that is easy to write and easy to add to a version control system.

• Open - Anyone can submit content, fix typos & update anything via pull requests
• Version control - Roll back & see the history of any given post
• No CMS lock in - We can easily port to any static site generator
• It's just simple - No user accounts to manage, no CMS software to upgrade, no plugins to install.

Markdown basics

The basics of markdown can be found here & here. Super easy!

Advanced Formatting tips

left alignment

This is the code you need to align images to the left:

<img align="left" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.fillmurray.com/100/100">

right alignment

This is the code you need to align images to the right:

<img align="right" width="100" height="100" src="http://www.fillmurray.com/100/100">

center alignment example

<p align="center">
  <img width="460" height="300" src="http://www.fillmurray.com/460/300">
</p>

collapse Sections

Collapsing large blocks of text can make your markdown much easier to digest

<details>
<summary>"Click to expand"</summary>
this is hidden
</details>

Collapsing large blocks of Markdown text

1. Put an empty line after the <summary> block.
2. Insert your markdown syntax

3. Put an empty line before the </details> tag

<details>
<summary>To make sure markdown is rendered correctly in the collapsed section...</summary>

 1. Put an **empty line** after the `<summary>` block.
 2. *Insert your markdown syntax*
 3. Put an **empty line** before the `</details>` tag
 
</details>

additional links

Website • Email Updates • Gitter • Forum • Meetups • Twitter • Facebook • Contact Us

[Website](http://www.serverless.com) • [Email Updates](http://eepurl.com/b8dv4P) • [Gitter](https://gitter.im/serverless/serverless) • [Forum](http://forum.serverless.com) • [Meetups](https://github.com/serverless-meetups/main) • [Twitter](https://twitter.com/goserverless) • [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/serverless) • [Contact Us](mailto:hello@serverless.com)

Badges

I hate them so. Don't use badges.

Useful packages

1. gray-matter

   YAML front-matter is your friend. You can keep metadata in markdown files

   title: Serverless Framework Documentation
   description: "Great F'in docs!"
   menuText: Docs
   layout: Doc

2. Remark

   Useful for rendering markdown in HTML/React

3. Markdown Magic

• Repo
• Plugins
• Show automatic doc generation. Example 1 | Example 2

Useful utilities

1. Schedule Posts - Post scheduler for static sites

   Show DEMO

2. Zero friction inline content editing

   Show DEMO

3. Byword & Typora - Good Editors

4. Monodraw - Flow charts for days

5. Kap - Make gifs

6. IDE markdown preview

7. Stuck on WordPress? Try easy-markdown plugin

How Serverless uses markdown

Serverless.com is comprised of 3 separate repositories

• https://github.com/serverless/blog
• https://github.com/serverless/serverless | Shoutout to Phenomic.io
• https://github.com/serverless/site

Why multiple repos?

1. We wanted documentation about the framework to live in the serverless github repo for easy access
2. We wanted our blog content to be easily portable to any static site generator separate from the implementation (site)
3. prebuild npm script pulls the content together & processes them for site build

A single repo is easier to manage but harder for people to find/edit/PR content.

DEMO

• Site structure
• Serverless build process
• Validation
• Editing Flow
• Github optimizations
  • Link from top of each doc to live link on site
  • use markdown magic =) to auto generate tables etc
  • Hide yaml frontmatter from github folks
  • consider linking everything to site

Other Markdown Resources

• Verb - Documentation generator for GitHub projects
• ACSII docs - Markdown alternative