What is WMD?

WMD is a simple, lightweight HTML editor for blog comments, forum posts, and basic content management. You can add WMD to any textarea with one line of code. Add live preview with one line more. WMD works in nearly all modern browsers, and is now completely free to use.

WMD is a WYSIWYM Markdown Editor, which is something new to most people. Here’s a little bit more information to help you understand it better.

• Wysiwym stands for What You See Is What You Mean. WMD produces clean semantic HTML, leaving presentation details like fonts and colors up to style sheets. But you’re not left in the dark about cosmetics; as you type, WMD’s live preview shows you exactly what your text will look like after the current styles have been applied.
• Markdown is a simple markup language that’s as easy to read and write as plain-text email. WMD uses Markdown as an input format, converting it into HTML behind the scenes. You can also mix raw HTML with Markdown, so the full expressiveness of HTML is always there if you need it.

Screenshot:

I’m really glad I found this WordPress plugin. The WMD Editor makes commenting more user-friendly and more convenient. With the WMD Editor, users can now easily insert blockquotes, codes, links and images in their comments without struggling with the codes. Aside from that, the WMD Editor also has the “Undo” and “Redo” options in case you make typographical errors or mistakes.

The WMD Editor WordPress plugin also has another cool feature which is the Live Preview. Now, you don’t have to use a separate WordPress plugin to display the comment’s live preview because this feature is already built-in with WMD Editor. All you need to do is edit your comments.php template and add this line of code.

I haven’t had any problem/issue using the WMD Editor plugin, except that it has some sort of minor issue/conflict with the WP Grin plugin which I used to have here. The grins and the WMD Editor panel were overlapping each other so I decided to get rid of the WP Grin plugin since its not really that important.

Btw, I’d like to thank Chad Coleman for taking the time to port this to WordPress and also adding the Live Preview feature. Great job!

I’ve already installed it here so if you’d like to see the WMD Editor WordPress plugin in action, just scroll down to the comment box. You can also try it out by leaving a comment and sharing your thoughts, comments and experience with the WMD Editor WordPress plugin. Anyone else tried using the WMD Editor? Any issues/conflicts with other WordPress plugins?

Download the WMD Editor WordPress plugin.