[amelius]

> Cost isn't the big issue, there are plenty of ways to do it for free.

Okay, but I was also thinking how easy it would be, for non-programmers. I.e., what would be the easiest way to host it without cost?

> I'm curious why you think this is against GitHub's TOS? We're creating commits and pull requests via their API, which is exactly why the API exists, programmatic interaction with the service.

Yes, but you would be committing data, not code.

Also, I suppose the data would not be not human-friendly to read, so that's another step away from typical github use.

[erquhart]

It's meant to be implemented by a developer, but it doesn't take much skill, and can be hosted for free on a number of services. I was a champion of Netlify well before I became an employee, so I still shamelessly plug them as the way to host static.

Regarding what we're committing, it's definitely human friendly, mostly markdown, or else json/yaml/toml/etc, nothing crazy. It's a completely legitimate use, same kind of data that GitHub's own Pages product uses.

[amelius]

Thanks for the explanation.

I wonder though, if a developer needs to find/provide hosting, then why not use a local db (or even a local git-repo) instead of github? With current data storage solutions, installing could be as simple as one line of code.

[erquhart]

The CMS is specifically made to work with Git, because so many developers are already using it for the rest of their site development. That said, it's not impossible to write a non-git backend, but it's heavily bent that way at the moment.