You Don't Need Markdown to Blog—But It Makes It Easier

24 Apr 2025 #writing

These days, Ben, one of my email subscribers, asked me a question about blogging using Markdown.

Here’s an edited version of his email:

I have been on a journey to start a coding blog over the past couple of months but just cannot get behind Markdown blogging in an IDE, which seems to be the most common or popular way to create a blog. I find it far easier to use some web service that essentially amounts to a rich text editor.

What would you recommend in this instance? Am I missing some obvious solutions or is getting the hang of Markdown just the way everyone recommends doing this?

Well, I’m a plain-text fan. Writing posts using Markdown on a text editor is my favorite way to blog.

Do you have to use Markdown? Short answer: No.

You could write HTML files and publish them directly to the Internet.

I’ve even seen people blogging using GitHub Gist or public GitHub repositories. They simply share file URLs from the repo.

A Markdown-based blogging engine like Jekyll is convenient. You could try editors like MacDown or Typora. These days, I’m using Notable. Or you could try a Markdown extension for Visual Studio Code.

And by the way, yesterday, I found a guy who runs his blog with Obsidian, if you’re looking for inspiration.

Now, if you’re writing for the first time on the Internet, I’d recommend to start on a “social blog.”

A social blog is a place for long-form writing with an audience and a distribution mechanism, like dev.to or Medium.

Social blogs are “slower” than social media platforms like Twitter/X or LinkedIn, but “faster” than traditional blogs or websites. It’s easier to get traction on a social blog than on a personal blog, which sits behind search engines and their bots.

I’d recommend starting on dev.to.

I have an account there where I repost some of my coding content. It has a decent built-in editor with basic formatting, but still uses Markdown.

It has a large audience of mostly beginner coders learning web development. Of course, you can share any content related to coding there.

You have nothing to lose by starting a blog. Start writing, even if it’s just one post. Choose the simplest option so you can focus on writing, not tweaking tools or writing your own blogging engine.

For more blogging lessons, read four lessons for a coder struggling to write, start writing by writing TIL posts, and how I organize my blogging workflow as inspiration.