What is a simple CMS for personal blog / static website

Question

I host a personal blog as Static website on Amazon S3 -- really small one -- I suspect I may be the only one who reads it :)I used plain Hugo on my local desktop initially to build and publish.Once it got tedious I switched to Netlify (free version, before the rebrand) with github integration to do the builds and deployments.Netlify CMS is barely useable -- with not even an option to "save as draft"!There is no great way to origanize / re-organize the content, cross-link posts, embed youtube videos, etc.Writing a blog post there is a chore - and formatting it is painful. So I mostly avoid it unless I have a LOT of free time.It is 2024 and I was hoping there are simple self-hosted solutions / free-tier managed services that can support a simple website.Something were I can use a VS Code or Obsidian or Notion like interface to quickly author long text, freely play with the structure, maybe use markdown or similar, easly link to other posts, embed media, add images without needing dozen clicks, etc. and save drafts / maintain versions / publish / unpublish with ease.Looking for any recommendations on current tooling.

LaughingZhu · Accepted Answer

I am a front-end developer, and I am glad to chat with you here. I had the same problem as you before, so I also built many blogs. Recently, I open-sourced a blog project named DevNow based on Astro. You can find it here https://github.com/LaughingZhu/DevNow . The content of the article can be md/mdx. I recommend you to use .mdx, which can better support some advanced features, such as media embed, callout, copy code, etc. The project supports vercel for one-click deployment. You only need to write .mdx content in md format in vscode, and then push it to github. Vercel will redeploy itself. If you are interested, you can try it, but the unfriendly thing is that the comments used in my project are mostly in Chinese. If you are interested, I am happy to provide some help.

vednig · Answer

Hey, checkout Ghost.org if you want to self-host, it has all the above features.
Also, if you want to try it out and have an existing domain I have built https://shedtheshade.com for the Indie hackers and Startups that want to skip the hassle for self hosting, it's an web ui wrapper over docker, with managed Cloudflare SSL and CDN.
Pricing structure is, first month is free then $1.9/mo per blog (comes with free subdomain).

solardev · Answer

Probably Astro can do what you want, or Grav CMS or Tina or Ghost etc. There are also a bunch of hosted commercial "headless" CMSes (disclaimer: I work for one) that let you more cleanly separate content and presentation with easy to use editor experiences and good devex for static builds. They often have free plans, but IMO you don't really need something like that, just a simpler Markdown based system with some minor custom coding for embeds and such that you can self-host.

jechton · Answer

I would suggest Astro or Eleventy connected to a CMS. There are a lot of options there, and both projects have a list of ways to set them up. Simple git-based CMSes have worked great for me in the past this way, with a GitHub action to build for my hosting provider.

jppope · Answer

Heres the best thing I have found: https://pagescms.org/ Solid project that leverages Github as a CMS.

brudgers · Answer

Why do you want to self-host?Do you really need free?When it comes to writing a blog/website, SAAS is the simplest thing that might work. Good luck.