Markdown-based Everything — what you can build with markdown
Websites, blogs, wikis, knowledge bases, databases, digital gardens, even a Notion replacement — all from plain markdown files you own. The guide index.
Markdown-based Everything
Nobody cares about markdown, the same way nobody cares about ASCII. What you care about is the stuff you want to build: a website, a knowledge base, a place for your team's docs. And right now you probably build those inside somebody else's platform, in somebody else's format, on somebody else's terms.
The markdown-based way: take almost any of those things and rebuild it as plain markdown files you own, plus tools you choose. Same capability, no lock-in. That's the whole trick.
Below, one guide per thing. Each covers: what it is, the markdown-based pattern for it, which tools to use, and (for the big ones) a full walkthrough.
The guides
- Websites 🌟 – the flagship guide. From "I have some markdown files" to a live, elegant website. Includes the underrated superpower: markdown supports HTML.
- Blogs – a folder of posts + dates. Blogging was born markdown-shaped.
- Knowledge bases & second brains – notes, wiki-links, backlinks; Obsidian and friends.
- Replacing Notion – the escape guide: docs, wikis and databases without the platform. (Deciding? The comparison.)
- Databases & catalogs – files as records, frontmatter as fields. Yes really. (The pattern, in depth.)
- Wikis & team handbooks – shared knowledge with review and history built in.
- Docs sites – product and project documentation, the way every serious dev tool already does it.
- Digital gardens – notes that grow in public.
- Journals & daily notes – the simplest habit, the most durable archive.
- Bookmarking & web clipping – save the web as markdown you can search forever.
- Books & long-form – write in markdown, publish to anything via pandoc.
- Landing pages – hero, pitch, call to action; the HTML superpower earning its keep.
- A single page – the humblest version: put one document on the web, now.
The pattern behind all of them
Every guide is the same move applied to a different problem:
- Content = markdown files in folders. Human-readable, future-proof, AI-readable.
- Structure = frontmatter + links. Metadata fields make files act like records; wiki-links make them act like a web.
- Capability = tools on top. Obsidian to edit, git/GitHub to version and collaborate, a publisher (Flowershow or any static site tool) when you want it on the web, AI tools to work the whole thing.
Swap any tool without touching the content. That's the way of markdown 😎
New to markdown itself? Ten minutes: the basics. Prefer video? Watch instead.
