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What Are the Prerequisites for cmdPost?
cmdPost requires the following:
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Windows: cmdPost was written to be compatible with Windows XP and later.
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WordPress.com: You must own (or be able to post to) a WordPress.com blog. You can either sign up for a free WordPress.com username and blog, or just a WordPress.com username (you can always create a blog later). Choose the latter if you’re joining an existing multiple-user blog.
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Pandoc: cmdPost uses Pandoc to convert documents written in markdown (see next) into HTML. If Pandoc is not already installed on your system, download and install the latest version.
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Markdown: If you have a working knowledge of markdown, you can skip past the next section. If not, then you need to learn it (see below). The good news is that it’s intuitive to use and you can master it in 15–20 minutes.
What Is Markdown?
Markdown is a markup language with plain text formatting syntax. It is designed to be easily converted into HTML and many other formats. In the words of John Gruber, the creator of markdown:
The overriding design goal for markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions… the single biggest source of inspiration for markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.
Here are some useful links to help you get started:
- Wikipedia’s entry for markdown: the story of markdown and its many offshoots
- John Gruber’s original markdown syntax: Pandoc’s syntax has precedence over the original syntax
- Pandoc’s markdown: the definitive reference
- Garen Torikian’s markdown tutorial: a no-nonsense guide to learning markdown
- Minimalist Online Markdown Editor: your markdown side-by-side with an HTML preview
Happy reading! 
How Does cmdPost Work?
cmdPost opens the markdown file containing your blog post and looks for a specially formatted header block at the start of the file. It scans the headers for meta information such as title, date, status, etc.
The program then passes the body of the file (ie, the markdown content) to Pandoc for conversion to HTML.
Lastly, the meta information extracted from the header block along with the HTML is assembled into an XML document, which is posted to your WordPress.com blog.