About BlogText

BlogText is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to use a simple wiki-like syntax to write your posts and pages. This syntax is easy-to-learn and fast-to-type. The goal behind BlogText is that you don’t need to write HTML anymore to achieve the desired text layout.

For example, with BlogText installed and actived on your blog you can write the following:

This is just a small test to demonstrate BlogText.

It's **quite simple**. With blog text you can:
* create good looking posts
* containg lists and tables that are easy to write
* link to other posts or external website very easy
and much more...

This will display as (without the frame, of course):

This is just a small test to demonstrate BlogText.

It’s quite simple. With blog text you can:

  • create good looking posts
  • containg lists and tables that are easy to write
  • link to other posts or external website very easy

and much more…

For an overview over all of BlogText’s features, see Features.

Is BlogText something for me? ∞

If you’ve worked with WordPress’ viusal editor (WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get) and had no problems with it, you probably won’t need BlogText. But even if you don’t really need it, you should give it a try.

BlogText solves some/most of the problems that arise from using WordPress’ WYSIWYG editor:

  • Link to other posts and pages (of your own blog) without having to worry about whether the post’s URL changes in the future.
  • Insert images (or general links to attachments) without having to worry about whether the URL of your blog will ever change.
  • Insert code snippets into your posts without having to worry that WordPress’ editor will screw them up.

The last point can be prevented with certain WordPress plugins. However, this will require you to write your posts in HTML which is quite ugly and not easily readable. For example including an image as thumbnail into a post produces the following HTML code:

<a href="http://www.mydomain.com/wordpress-latest/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/mayalogo.jpg">
<img src="http://www.mydomain.com/wordpress-latest/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/mayalogo-150x150.jpg" alt="" title="mayalogo" width="150" height="150" class="size-thumbnail" /></a>

Note that this code contains the full URL to the blog (http://www.mydomain.com/wordpress-latest/). With BlogText, inserting the exactly same image would look like this:

[[image:mayalogo.jpg|thumb]]

This is much shorter and also doesn’t contain any absolute URLs. For a full list of what syntax elements (aka features) BlogText provides, see Syntax Description.

Goals ∞

As stated above, BlogText aims have a syntax that is easy-to-lern and fast-to-type. For that we decided to base BlogText on the Creole syntax (in version 1.0). The people behind the Creole project have conducted research on common wiki markup elements basically with the goal to find “the best wiki syntax”.

>Creole covers markup for some common text elements. The markup should be easy to learn and easy to teach, as well as fast to type and should use readable markup which is non destructive. It should cover the common things people need.
>
>The special role of common markup requires it to be […] not new […].
>
>Source: Creole Website

However, since WordPress is a blog or CMS — and Creole is a wiki — we made a few changes to the syntax (most notably in how insert images and code snippets) – but the basics remain the same. Again, have a look at our syntax description page to see how you can write your text with BlogText.

Side note: Creole doesn’t suggest an arbitrary syntax. If you’re insterested in seeing why certain syntax elements where chosen over others (eg. ''' vs. ** for bold text), see Creole’s reasoning page.