More Flexible oEmbeds?

Developer help
1

Hey guys,

I find the new editor a little cumbersome when working on posts with a lot of embeds.

You need to:

  • Create a new Markdown Card
  • Write your content
  • Close that card
  • Add Embed card (Instagram for Example)
  • Embed your URL
  • Open another Markdown Card to continue writing

This creates a number of issues:

  • You can only add sections/cards at the bottom of the post, you can’t add them “between” other cards
  • Migrating from other providers is very difficult since you have to restructure your entire posts to support cards
  • You can’t move embed cards around
  • You can’t change URL’s on existing embed cards (say for example an Instagram post is removed)

To get around the issues above we typically write entire posts inside a single Markdown block.

Is there a reason why Ghost doesn’t just parse oEmbed links inside Markdown and show the card instead of having to add it separately? Maybe I’m missing some Markdown that allows this?

Even something like (with an option to control width):

{% embed 100% ᴛ ᴇ ᴀ 🍵 on Instagram: ". 風鈴が似合う夏の暑さ. tomokoさん(@tomo.0911 ) ." %}

Would make life so much easier for Markdown purists. We’re writing our own Javascript to handle this automatically but I thought I’d raise it also.

Thanks!

2

@stu the markdown card will not support oembeds like the main editor. If you’re dead set on using the markdown card instead of the rich-text editor then you can paste the embed html in directly.

As an aside, what’s the reason for sticking to using markdown cards? Do you realise the rich-text area supports all of the usual markdown formatting? You can type in markdown in the rich-text editor and it will auto-convert everything on the fly

3

Hey Kevin,

I find the Rich Text editor less flexible and hard to use for embed heavy posts (I highlighted some reasons for that above).

So it’d be need to handle embeds like Medium do for Markdown purists also.

Cheers,

4

The markdown format itself doesn’t have any support for embeds other than the raw HTML and we can’t start adding our own custom formats into markdown without breaking compatibility so it’s not something that will be added.

The reason you’re having trouble is because you’re trying to do everything with multiple markdown and embed cards. If you write in the rich text area itself (you can still use markdown formatting as I said above) you’ll have a much easier time.

In the future we plan to support custom cards, at that point you’ll be free to make your own “markdown-like” card with as many markdown-incompatible customisations as you like :slight_smile:

5

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