WP Markdown Endpoint

A WordPress plugin that exposes posts and pages as Markdown via .md URL suffix, Accept header negotiation, and auto-discovery links.

Features

• .md URL suffix — append .md to any post or page URL to receive its content as Markdown (e.g. https://example.com/my-post.md)
• Accept header negotiation — send Accept: text/markdown to get a Markdown response without changing the URL
• ?format=md query parameter — an alternative way to request Markdown output
• YAML frontmatter — every Markdown response includes structured metadata (title, date, author, URL, tags, categories, excerpt)
• Canonical Link header — Markdown responses include a Link: <…>; rel="canonical" HTTP header pointing back to the original HTML page
• Auto-discovery link — a <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"> tag is injected into the HTML <head> of every singular post/page so clients can discover the Markdown URL automatically
• HTML-to-Markdown conversion — converts Gutenberg block output (headings, paragraphs, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, images, links, bold, italic, strikethrough) to clean Markdown

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or later (uses str_ends_with())
• PHP 8.0 or later

Installation

1. Upload the wp-markdown-endpoint folder to /wp-content/plugins/.
2. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
3. No configuration required.

Usage

Given a post at https://example.com/hello-world/, you can retrieve its Markdown content in three ways:

# URL suffix
GET https://example.com/hello-world.md

# Query parameter
GET https://example.com/hello-world/?format=md

# Accept header
GET https://example.com/hello-world/
Accept: text/markdown

Example response

---
title: Hello World
date: 2026-02-23
author: Jane Doe
url: https://example.com/hello-world/
tags: ["news", "updates"]
categories: ["General"]
---

## Introduction

Welcome to my site! This content is served as **Markdown**.

File Structure

wp-markdown-endpoint/
├── wp-markdown-endpoint.php   # Plugin bootstrap, defines constants, loads classes
├── includes/
│   ├── class-rewrite.php      # Intercepts .md URL suffix, sets format query var
│   ├── class-output.php       # Serves Markdown responses and injects discovery link
│   └── class-converter.php    # Converts HTML (Gutenberg output) to Markdown
├── readme.md                  # This file
└── readme.txt                 # WordPress.org-compatible readme

License

GPL-2.0+. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html.

Author

Birgit Pauli-Haack