 We're back to my recurring nightmare of making it easy for a non-technical client to edit a static website generated using #Hugo. Are there any good solutions? Or am I going to end up writing my own solution after many painful hours with other people's janky solutions? If you know of a non-technical user successfully editing a static website, how are they doing it? EDIT: I'll only use open source solutions I can self-host, but happy to hear about proprietary options. 13 comments
 @skyfaller I’ve built @mattrbld to solve this problem, maybe it could work for you? It’s not open source quite yet, but it will be by the end of the year! You can already try it out, if you want to, though. 😊  @skyfaller My non-technical wife has been maintaining the content of https://doughtydesigns.com for years: edits files locally using a Markdown editor (Pulsar); a Makefile wrapped by a Platypus app steers her browser to updated pages. I showed her how to create a git commit when she was ready to publish using a GUI git client (Sourcetree). A post-commit-hook then causes the Makefile to build the site locally and, on success, rsync's the new/changed web content to the actual web site. @skyfaller Ghost, set up as a headless CMS: https://ghost.org/docs/jamstack/ If you get past their "content maker" marketing, you'll discover that it's dead-simple to use for non-technical users. Very Medium-like editing experience, very low possibility of a major screw up (assuming no admin access). I can't vouch for Hugo compatibility though, it works with my static site generator of choice (11ty). @skyfaller I recently switched from Hugo to Astro (OSS but funded) and it's been a delight. The docs are _incredible_, and it is popular enough that there's meaningful and updated packages to do more things with it (there's a whole section on using a headless CMS service: https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/cms/) not sure if it aligns with your needs, but for me it is a breath of fresh air after wrangling Hugo for so many years. The <Image/> component/service alone is worth it imho @bigethan Thank you for the recommendation, I had heard of Astro but didn't realize it generates static sites by default. (Perhaps because it also has dynamic modes) https://docs.astro.build/en/basics/rendering-modes/ How long does Astro take to build your website? I committed to Hugo a while back after suffering through tools like Gatsby that took eons to render websites. I've never really noticed incremental builds on Hugo, and even rebuilding everything from scratch doesn't keep me waiting very long. @skyfaller it’s different than Hugo, as it does a lot of image processing too, so a full build of a 900 post site, each with an image, takes a minute or two (not at my desk so can’t verify). But it’s good at caching, so that subsequent builds are only what’s needed. And the dev experience is fast enough. Though I’m on an M2. Smaller sites (~15 pages) are super fast. @skyfaller Terrible question, but it must be asked. Is the effort to install, teach and maintain a CMS greater than the effort for you to make the client's updates yourself? Or is that just out of the question? I am biased, never met a CMS I liked. Some of the static generators are not bad though. |
Gregory's Server
@skyfaller I have thought about this in the past. I know there are CMSses designed to work with static sites, like this one for #jekyll, though I’ve never evaluated any.
There’s got to be something similar for
#hugo, though cost may be a concern if it’s an enterprise focused tool.
https://www.siteleaf.com/