Wasseem Khayrattee

This is a simple plugin to help you write posts or pages in plain-text Markdown syntax. And even allowing plaint-text Markdown for comments as well. It will also switch-off the Visual Editor, as you don’t need distractions. This plugin sits on top of a giant’s shoulder, namely Jetpack.
This plugin is also installable via composer, see: https://github.com/7php/MarkItDownWordpress
<h3>Roadmap</h3>
<ul>
<li>By default, toggle the checkbox to true for Settings > Writing > ‘Use Markdown for posts and pages’</li>
<li>By default, toggle the checkbox to true for Settings > Discussion > ‘Use Markdown for comments’</li>
<li>In plain-tex editor mode, remove the short-formatting buttons, e.g [b, i, link, b-quote, del].. etc. Make the editor, distraction free.</li>
<li>Make an effort to provide Markdown buttons for the equivalent of [b, i, link, b-quote, del], just like bbcodes.</li>
</ul>

Mark It Down WordPress!

I just replaced JP Markdown (which is abandoned by now) with this plugin. The switch was easy and painless: 


Install this plugin and activate it
Deactivate JP Markdown
Set the flags under "Settings => Writing" and "Settings => Comments"
Done!


The posts written in Markdown are still written in markdown and still rendered as HTML as before, so a smooth transition from my POV.

Thanks!

Works as replacement for the abandoned JP Markdown

Helping you write posts/pages in plain-text Markdown syntax, while switching-off Visual Editor. It sits on the shoulders of a giant, namely Jetpack.

jesucarr

The main reason for the development of this plugin was the lack of options supporting the HTML5 recommendation, where the code snippets should be tagged with <code>pre</code> followed by <code>code</code>, and optionally a class starting with <code>language-</code> and then our language.
You can use the plugin like this:
<pre><code><pre class="prettyprint"><code class="language-php">
// my code
</code></pre>
</code></pre>
Also very important is that although this plugin loads different files depending on your configuration, it fully supports caching scripts (<a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/" rel="ugc">W3 Total Cache</a>) to concatenate and compress all the css and js, so the impact in performance will be minimum.
<h4>Languages</h4>
This syntax highlighter is based on <a href="http://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README.html" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Code Prettify</a> and should work on a number of languages including C and friends, Java, Python, Bash, SQL, HTML, XML, Javascript, Makefiles, and Rust. It works passably on Ruby, PHP, VB, and Awk and a decent subset of Perl and Ruby, but, because of commenting conventions, doesn’t work on Smalltalk.
Other languages are supported via an extension (plugin options): CSS, SQL, YAML, Visual Basic, Clojure, Scala, Latek (TeX, LaTeX), WikiText, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Lua, OCAML, SML, F#, Nemerle, Protocol Buffers, CHDL (VHDL), XQ (XQuery), Lisp, Scheme, Dart, Llvm, Mumps, Pascal, R, S, RD, TCL
<h4>Styles</h4>
Four different styles are provided, and they can be previewed in the plugin options. They are modified to make sure they don’t clash with any other styles in your theme.
You have also the option to include your custom style.
If you have a style that would like to see included in the option list, just <a href="http://www.frontendmatters.com/contact/" rel="nofollow ugc">contact me</a>, or <a href="https://github.com/jesucarr/wordpress-prettify-code-syntax" rel="nofollow ugc">fork me</a>.
<h4>Notes</h4>
<ul>
<li>
Plugin options are at Settings > Prettify Code Syntax. Have a look at the Screenshots tab to see how it looks like.
</li>
<li>
If you don’t care too much about the HTML5 recommendation, you can skip the <code>language-</code> class. The code always gets detected automatically.
</li>
<li>
It will also work if you only use a <code>pre</code> tag without the <code>code</code> tag (but long lines will be wrapped instead of get horizontal scroll), or if you only use a <code>code</code> tag with the <code>prettyprint</code> class (but if you don’t use <code>pre</code> your spaces/returns won’t be maintained.)
</li>
<li>
Be careful using the Visual Editor tab when inserting code, as some HTML tags will be modified or removed.
</li>
<li>
Using a chaching plugin like W3 Total Cache is highly recommended.
</li>
</ul>
<h4>Demo</h4>
You can find a <a href="http://www.frontendmatters.com/open-source/wordpress-plugins/prettify-code-syntax/" rel="nofollow ugc">front end demo</a> here a the bottom.

Prettify Code Syntax

Code syntax highlighter using Google Prettify, supporting the HTML5 recommendation, and caching plugins.

Mark It Down WordPress! vs Prettify Code Syntax