Turning a CMS Export Into a Wiki Page: What This Converter Keeps and Skips

Moving content out of a CMS and into a Markdown-based wiki is a slightly different job than copy-pasting a paragraph off a random web page - CMS exports tend to be more structured, with real headings, real lists, and sometimes a table or two. HTML to Markdown handles that structure directly, but it's worth knowing exactly what carries over.

What survives the move cleanly

Headings keep their level - an `<h2>` in the export becomes a real `##` heading, not a bolded paragraph. Ordered and unordered lists convert to their Markdown equivalents, and a list nested inside a list item keeps its level, indented under its parent. Links and images keep their targets. Simple tables - the kind with plain rows and columns, no merged cells - convert to a standard Markdown pipe table. Inline code and fenced code blocks both carry over correctly, including a code block's language tag when the export includes one.

What doesn't: table alignment and merged cells

Markdown tables do support column alignment markers, but this converter doesn't write them, so any column alignment in the source table gets dropped. Merged cells (colspan/rowspan) also aren't supported - a genuinely rare pattern in prose content, more common in data-heavy tables that probably belong in a spreadsheet rather than a wiki page anyway.

What doesn't: footnotes and definition lists

Both are real HTML/Markdown features, and both are uncommon enough in typical CMS content that they're out of scope here. A footnote reference in the source will come through as plain text rather than a working Markdown footnote link.

A practical way to use this for a bigger migration

For moving more than a page or two, converting one page at a time and skimming the result for the specific gaps above (table alignment, merged cells, footnotes) is faster and more reliable than trying to batch-process an entire wiki blind - the converter gets the bulk of the structure right every time, and knowing exactly what to double-check narrows the review to a few real spots instead of the whole document.

For the actual conversion steps, see the how-to guide. For why a direct paste causes problems in the first place, this piece covers it. Or convert HTML now.