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AI assistants and LLM crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Googlebot-AI) struggle to read messy HTML, and content they cannot read cleanly is content they cannot cite. Berq Markdown exists to fix that and increase your AI visibility. It gives every page on your site a clean, structured Markdown version, so your content is more likely to be read accurately, cited correctly, and recommended by AI tools instead of getting skipped or misread. It does all of this without duplicating your content or creating any separate pages to manage.
Append .md to any public page or post URL (for example https://example.com/about.md) and you get a clean, structured Markdown file with YAML frontmatter, ready for AI tools to consume directly. The plugin handles content from all common sources: Gutenberg blocks, classic editor, shortcodes, and custom PHP templates, so your AI visibility gain covers your entire site, not just pages built one specific way.
How it works
When a visitor or crawler requests /about.md, the plugin intercepts the request, finds the matching WordPress post, converts the HTML content to Markdown, and serves it with the correct Content-Type: text/markdown header, the format AI tools expect. No new database entries or files are created, so you gain AI visibility without adding any clutter to your site.
Key Features
- Automatic .md URLs: any public post or page URL plus
.mdreturns clean Markdown, so AI crawlers get a direct, accurate read of your content instead of a messy HTML parse, increasing the odds your content gets cited. - YAML frontmatter: every .md file includes
title,description,url,date_modified,author, andlanguage, so AI tools can attribute and date your content correctly instead of guessing, which improves how confidently they cite you. - Full content compatibility: works with Gutenberg blocks, classic editor, shortcodes, and custom PHP page templates, so your AI visibility gain reaches every page on your site, not just a few.
- HTML to Markdown conversion: pure PHP with no external dependencies. It handles headings, paragraphs, lists, links, images, tables, and code blocks, so AI tools get well formed Markdown instead of a broken or partial conversion.
<link>tag injection: injects a<link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown">tag in every page’s<head>, so crawlers can discover the .md version of every page on their own, increasing the chance they read the clean version instead of the raw HTML.- Multilingual support: detects language via Polylang or WPML, adds
languageandalternatesfields to the frontmatter, and emitshreflanglink tags, so AI tools recommend the correct language version of your content to the right audience instead of the wrong one. - Post type selection: choose which post types (posts, pages, custom post types) are served as Markdown, so you decide exactly which content is eligible to be read and cited by AI tools.
- URL exclusions with wildcards: exclude specific URL patterns using
*as a wildcard (for example/cart/*,*/checkout*), so private or transactional areas like checkout and account pages are kept out of AI crawling entirely. - Transient caching: optional cache with a configurable TTL that absorbs traffic spikes from AI crawlers, so your site stays fast for human visitors even under heavy bot traffic.
[btrmd313_md_link]shortcode: renders a link to the current page’s.mdfile and opens it in a new tab, giving readers an easy way to grab a clean copy of your content for their own AI tools.- Public content rendering: always renders content as a non logged in visitor, so member only sections are never exposed through the Markdown endpoint.
- Admin settings page: every option is configurable under Settings > Berq Markdown, with a Settings link on the Plugins page, so you stay in control without touching code.
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