Add a View as Markdown Link to Joomla Articles

Readers paste your articles into ChatGPT, save them to note apps or feed them to their own tools, and the HTML page carries menus, scripts and markup they don't want. Google Structured Data can serve a clean Markdown copy of every page. A link at the end of each article tells readers it exists. You can add a "View as Markdown" link to Joomla articles with one HTML snippet in Code Snippets.

Before you start

The link points to the Markdown version that Google Structured Data serves at the article's own address plus .md. The feature is part of Google Structured Data Pro. Install the extension and turn it on as Convert HTML to Markdown describes. Your site also needs Search Engine Friendly URLs, which are on by default in Joomla.

On the Code Snippets side you need version 1.0.2 or later, and the Pro edition for the article location and the PHP condition used below.

How to add this snippet

Install Code Snippets if it isn't installed already.
Log into your Joomla backend.
Go to Components → Tassos Code Snippets.
Click New.
Enter a title, for example View as Markdown link.
Set Code Type to HTML.
Set Insertion Method to Auto-Insert Locations.
Set Location to After Article Content.
Paste this code into the editor. The {tcs article.link} smart tag is replaced with the address of the article being shown, and .md goes right after it. To change the link text, edit View as Markdown:
```
<p class="tcs-markdown-link"><a href='{tcs article.link}.md'>View as Markdown</a></p>
```
Open the Conditional Logic tab. The condition keeps the link off while the Markdown feature is off or Google Structured Data is disabled, so there's never a dead link:
- Set Display on to Selected Pages.
- Click New Condition Set.
- Click Select Condition and choose PHP.
- Paste this code into the condition's editor:
```
$helper = '\Joomla\CMS\Component\ComponentHelper';

return $helper::isEnabled('com_gsd')
    && $helper::getParams('com_gsd')->get('markdown_enabled');
```
Click Save & Close.

Check that it works

Open any article on your site and scroll to the end of the text.
Click View as Markdown.

The browser shows the article as plain Markdown text, starting with the title as a heading. The address in the bar is the article's address with .md at the end. Blog and featured pages don't get the link, only single article pages.

Write the condition with full class names, as above. A use statement in the condition's code makes the condition fail, and the snippet never shows.

To show the article's last modified date in the same spot, see Display the Last Modified Date in Joomla Articles. To learn more about HTML snippets, read the HTML snippet docs.

Add a View as Markdown Link to Joomla Articles

Give readers and AI tools a one-click plain-text version of every Joomla article by linking to its Markdown copy, using one HTML snippet.

Before you start

How to add this snippet

Check that it works