Ultimate Markdown – Markdown Editor, Importer, & Exporter

by DAEXT

Description

Ultimate Markdown is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to create WordPress posts with the popular Markdown syntax.

Specifically, after installing the plugin, you will be able to:

Create posts with perfectly formatted blocks from existing Markdown files or Markdown documents created with the plugin.
Instantly generate blocks from Markdown text.
Create and manage an unlimited number of Markdown documents in a dedicated plugin menu.
Import Markdown file in WordPress.
Create archives of Markdown files from the Markdown documents created with the plugin.

Please note that this plugin requires the use of the default WordPress Blocks Editor. With third-party visual editors or with the Classic Editor, you will not be able to use most of the plugin functionalities.

Pro Version

We distribute the Pro version of this plugin that includes more export options, REST API, additional Markdown parsers, document categories, and more.

Additional post sidebar sections

The plugin adds the following sections to the post sidebar.

Import Markdown

This section allows you to generate the blocks of a post from an uploaded Markdown file.

Load Markdown

Use this feature to create the blocks of a post from a Markdown document previously created with the plugin.

Submit Markdown

With this section, you can instantly transform Markdown text to blocks.

Dedicated plugin menus

Documents

This menu includes a Markdown editor with an HTML preview section. In addition, you will find functionalities to create, edit, duplicate or delete your Markdown documents.

Import

Import one or more Markdown files in the plugin with the upload form provided in this menu.

Export

With this menu, you can generate Markdown files from the Markdown documents stored in the plugin.

Supported Markdown syntax

The conversion from Markdown text to HTML is performed with Marked, a high-performance Markdown parser that supports documents written in the following Markdown flavors.

Front Matter

The plugin supports Front Matter key-value pairs provided in the YAML language. With this feature, you can configure specific post settings by providing their values at the beginning of the Markdown document.

Please see the plugin documentation for more information on the available Front Matter keys and practical examples.

Credits

This plugin makes use of the following resources:

DOMPurify licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0
Marked licensed under the MIT License
League\CommonMark licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License
Composer licensed under the MIT License
HTML To Markdown for PHP licensed under the MIT License
FrontYAML licensed under the MIT License

Installation

Installation (Single Site)

With this procedure you will be able to install the Ultimate Markdown plugin on your WordPress website:

Visit the Plugins -> Add New menu
Click on the Upload Plugin button and select the zip file you just downloaded
Click on Install Now
Click on Activate Plugin

Installation (Multisite)

This plugin supports both a Network Activation (the plugin will be activated on all the sites of your WordPress Network) and a Single Site Activation in a WordPress Network environment (your plugin will be activated on a single site of the network).

With this procedure you will be able to perform a Network Activation:

Visit the Plugins -> Add New menu
Click on the Upload Plugin button and select the zip file you just downloaded
Click on Install Now
Click on Network Activate

With this procedure you will be able to perform a Single Site Activation in a WordPress Network environment:

Visit the specific site of the WordPress Network where you want to install the plugin
Visit the Plugins menu
Click on the Activate button (just below the name of the plugin)

Screenshots

Import Markdown section in the post sidebar.
Load Markdown section in the post sidebar.
Submit Markdown section in the post sidebar.
A single document.
List of documents.
Tools menu.
Options menu.

Reviews

Serious bug: skips large sections of input

By scott8035 on August 30, 2025

UPDATE: Turns out it was the use of three dashes for an <hr> tag that caused the problem. Apparently that means something else in this markdown plugin. Changing it to "***" worked perfectly. Five stars now!

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I really wanted to like this plugin. Unfortunately, it has a fatal flaw. When I import a markdown file, it randomly skips chunks of the file. Can't use it that way. If and when this gets fixed, I'll update the review.

The UMD Pro plugin and developer support are great!

By George (georgew751) on June 20, 2025

This review is for the UMD Pro paid version. I previously had good success with the free version and decided to tryout the personal paid version (for 1 site).

I am a retired Linux software developer who is learning how to develop websites (just for fun). So I am not the expert, but I can share my experience with the plugin.

I am currently using a static site generator that uses Markdown for its content. I really like creating/updating my content on my Mac, using the bbedit app. Coming from the Linux world, I also use vi a lot. WordPress offers a lot of interesting capabilities that I want to try out, but I must be able to edit my content offline, using Markdown.

I have research and tried several options for using Markdown with WordPress. So far, the UMD Pro plugin has proved to be the best option for me. The plugin support is excellent! As a former developer, I really appreciate the support. I always receive a quick, detailed response to my questions or comments.

The plugin feature that I use the most is the post/page sidebar Markdown import. I have been able to import my posts perfectly, after setting the Front Matter to match the UMD Pro front matter requirements.

I am currently using my staging site to port my current static website to WordPress. I am also learning how to use WordPress. The UMD Pro Markdown plugin is saving me a lot of time. And it's enabling me to create/edit my content on my Mac.

Free version absolutely useless

By andybrandt on May 6, 2025

Free version has no useful capabilities, it is a fake plugin that just advertises the paid version. As such I feel it should not be here.

Great tool to export all your WordPress posts and pages to Markdown

By hupsakee on October 21, 2024

The Pro version of Ultimate Markdown lets you export all your WordPress posts and pages to single Markdown files in one go. Great for when you want a backup of all your articles in .md format.

I also use it to export single posts to Markdown after I update them in WordPress. This works great as well.(I have not used the import option.)

Also, as other have said as well, the developer is very responsive and attentive.

Thanks for a great plugin, Danilo!

Code block language missing

By januszkowal on February 5, 2024

Unfortunately, the plugin doesn't import code block language, e.g.

        assertThat(actual).isEqualTo(expected);

Works Well With Obsidian Markdown

By Robbie Link (Robbie) on May 23, 2023

Just tried with an Obsidian note that had blockquotes and lists. Worked great with no editing.

Great great plugin

By acon on September 20, 2022

I use Obsidian markdown note-taking software and always wondered how I could convert my notes into WordPress posts. This plugin is the missing link. There is still room for improvement but it pretty much does the job. Now I can convert an MD file to blocks and keep editing with Gutenburg. Well done!

Developer support is great

By MGitkos on July 1, 2022

I purchased the pro version of the plugin since I had a very specific use-case. The developer was extremely responsive and helpful.

Interesting management of Markdown

By Li-An on March 20, 2022

Using Markdown with Gutenberg is quite difficult. Markdown block from Jetpack is very limited, plugins proposing to edit in Markdown in a separate editor miss blocks philosophy. As I prefer to work with my favorite Markdown Editor, Ultimate Markdown is a nice solution : it can import Markdown text in the post and convert the different elements in the relative block. A text paragraph will be a block text, a list a block list and so on. So the result is a real Gutenberg content. The downside : you cannot convert back to Markdown the post content but it’s not a big deal for me.

Changelog

1.22

July 28, 2025

Improved normalization of front matter date field during Markdown imports in the block editor.
Bug fix: Categories and tags in the block editor are now correctly updated based on the imported front matter data.

1.21

July 11, 2025

Added the League CommonMark and League CommonMark GitHub Markdown parsers.
Added Editor and Live Preview Markdown parser options.
The Live Preview feature in the Documents menu editor can now use PHP-based parsers.
Added new settings to control the behavior of the Markdown preview when using PHP parsers.
The block editor now shows notification messages indicating whether Front Matter and Markdown content was parsed successfully or if errors occurred.
The Markdown preview in the Documents menu now displays a header indicating the active Markdown parser and, if applicable, a refresh button.
Bug fix: Markdown code was altered in specific scenarios due to improper use of sanitize_textarea_field().

1.20

April 21, 2025

Fixed PHP notice caused by early use of translation functions.

1.19

November 29, 2024

Resolved CSS style issue.
The load_plugin_textdomain() function now runs with the correct hook.

1.18

June 26, 2024

wp_unslash() was added to the Documents menu before input sanitization.

1.17

June 26, 2024

An alert message now prevents uploading more than the maximum number of files allowed with the max_file_uploads directive.

1.16

June 25, 2024

Vendor packages updated.

1.15

June 25, 2024

Major back-end UI update.

1.14

April 7, 2024

Fixed a bug (started with WordPress version 6.5) that prevented the creation of the plugin database tables and the initialization of the plugin database options during the plugin activation.

1.13

March 26, 2024

The phpcs “WordPress” ruleset has been applied to the plugin code.
Nonce verification has been added to the Documents menu for create/update/delete/duplicate operations.
Nonce verification has been added to the Import and Export menus.
The Select2 library has been removed.
Removed React warning in the block editor.

1.12

November 8, 2023

Removed deprecation warnings.

1.11

February 22, 2023

Fixed a bug causing incorrect parsing of Markdown tables in the context of the block editor.

1.10

September 22, 2022

Fixed a bug causing JavaScript errors in the site-editor.php page.
The “Content” textarea of the “Documents” menu now supports up to 1,000,000 characters.
Front Matter is now supported and can be used to configure post settings.

1.09

June 13, 2022

Fixed a bug causing JavaScript errors in the widgets.php page.
The “Pro Version” menu has been added.
A link to the Pro version has been added in the “Plugins” menu.

1.08

November 24, 2021

Fixed a bug causing JavaScript errors in the post editor of custom post types that don’t declare support for custom fields.
Aria attributes added in the “Documents” menu.

1.07

November 4, 2021

Improved the message displayed in the “Import” menu after a successful submission.
Improved input sanitization.
The file extensions supported in the upload process of the “Import” menu have been limited.

1.06

November 3, 2021

Initial release.