Export as Markdown

A site's pages and collection items can be downloaded as a folder of Markdown files, with the media library, to use with another website tool such as Hugo, Jekyll, Eleventy or Astro, a notes app such as Obsidian, or an AI tool. It's the opposite of importing Markdown files, which reads what it writes back.

Markdown holds words and pictures, not a site's look, so the export leaves out a good deal (see What doesn't come across). To keep everything, to put back later or to move into another Goodfellow site, use Download a copy on Site Settings → Site history instead (see Downloading a copy and Move content between Goodfellow sites).

In the admin panel

1. Go to Site Settings → Import / Export, and find Export as Markdown.
2. Choose how links between pages are written:
   • As the site's addresses, such as /about/, for website tools, which serve each file at its address. This is the default.
   • As links to the files, such as about.md, for notes apps, which follow links between files.
3. Tick Also export pages and items that aren't shown yet or anymore to include what a schedule hides now, marked as drafts. Without it, they're left out.
4. Click Download the Markdown files. You get one zip file named after the site, and a list of anything that couldn't come across as it was.

What it writes

my-site-markdown/
  index.md               the home page
  about.md               /about
  news/
    index.md             /news, with the items under it
    fall-fair.md         /news/fall-fair
  es/…                   each other language's pages, under its code
  _staff/…               a collection without pages of its own
  media/…                the media library
  menus.json             the menus

• Each page and item is a file at its address: about.md for /about, or about/index.md where other pages are under it. The home page is index.md.
• Front matter says what the page is: title, description, permalink (its address), aliases and redirect_from (old addresses that redirect to it), lang (its language, where it isn't the main one), translationKey (shared by a page and its translations), noindex and image (its search engine settings), and for scheduled pages, publishDate, expiryDate and draft.
• Pages' blocks become Markdown: headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes, links, pictures with their descriptions as alt text, tables, code, buttons as links, and what's in sections, columns and collapsible blocks, one after another.
• Items' fields are front matter, by their names, with the item's date as date. The body is the item's text: Markdown items keep theirs as written, and rich text becomes Markdown.
• Links to the site's own pages and media keep the site's addresses, ending as its addresses do, unless you chose links to the files.

Using it with other tools

• Jekyll, Eleventy and Astro read the folder as it is: put the Markdown files where the tool keeps its pages, and media/ where it keeps files served as they are (Jekyll's site folder, Eleventy's passthrough copy, Astro's public/).
• Hugo reads index.md in a folder as a page whose other files are its pictures, so rename each folder's index.md to _index.md there, and put media/ in static/.
• Obsidian and other notes apps: choose links to the files.

What doesn't come across

• The site's look: its layout, colors and fonts, and blocks' Style settings. What sections and columns hold comes out one after another.
• The header and footer, which Markdown has no place for. The menus come across, as menus.json.
• Blocks that do something or show other content: forms, newsletter signups, search, calendars, lists of items, the On this page list, breadcrumbs, menus, share buttons, page lists and the dark mode switch. The download lists each, and the pages it was left out of.
• Blocks of the site's own and blocks added from block registries: only what's in their slots comes across, since the export reads the site's content, not its code.
• Videos and posts from other sites become links. Focal points and crops of pictures are left out.
• Collections' page designs: each item is its fields and its text.
• Settings: forms, consent, visit counts, custom code and CSS, plugins and editors' limits.
• Media your storage service keeps, which isn't downloaded: pages link to it where it's kept.

Importing the files again doesn't give back the same site: pages come back as built-in blocks, not the layout they had.

From the command line

npx goodfellow export markdown

(npx goodfellow-next export markdown for a Next.js site.) It writes a folder named after the site, or the folder you name, which has to be empty or not exist yet. --scheduled exports what a schedule hides now, as drafts, and --links files writes links to the files.