[z3t4]

I like this article, and I also like hand typing HTML and CSS. But coding is not for everyone. What we need is a better Wordpress, so ordinary people can publish their own website. It has to look good, perform well and be secure, but most importantly publishing content should be quick and easy.

[godot]

I think writing some basic HTML is not hard, what's hard is everything else around hosting a web site properly nowadays. (and is where Wordpress wins users, I think)

I have non-tech-savvy family who has started content web sites over 20 years ago, by writing some basic HTML, and uses FTP to upload HTML files. It's a mental model that's easily understood by someone who can operate Windows. He went on to maintain the site for the next 20 years and it worked fine.

In the last couple of years I did a big migration for his site and moved it to a markdown based CMS (PicoCMS in PHP) and he's been happy with it -- having a web editor (and learning markdown, which was easy) and not have to FTP.

The thing is, it took work to set all that up (on my end, that he doesn't see). I got a Digital Ocean server, installed a bunch of stuff around PHP, wrote some custom plugins for the CMS, etc.

After having done that 3-4 years ago, I realized the more modern, ideal, alternative is to have a Git repo of markdown files, and a Netlify setup (or another similar service to Netlify) where check-ins are automatically deployed.

The problem then is this -- Git workflows are way, way too difficult for non-tech folks to understand. We're not even talking about command line or desktop git clients; even asking someone to use Github (or Gitlab) to edit markdown files to update their site is not an easy mental model to wrap around (if you're not a coder).

I think the most ideal setup, this "better Wordpress" you mention, would be to have a web UI to edit markdown files, backed by a git repo, hooked up with a Netlify-like service. I thought about working on that as a project; but it would be one that relies on using Github and Netlify as key pieces and I'm not even sure Netlify allows a 3rd party to develop apps that end up creating Netlify sites on behalf of other customers, which means I'd have to build out the full Netlify deploy flow and I'm really not in the business of doing that.

[nulbyte]

For sites where a static-site generator will suffice, there is Forestry[1]. It puts an editor-friendly frontend on top of Git. I have thought about this for a few projects that involve folks who aren't very tech savvy, but none of them have gained much momentum (for other reasons), so I've only given it a cursory look. It seems pretty well put together, though.

[1]: https://forestry.io

[livatlantis]

Indeed, my first homepage was on Homestead IIRC, using the online WYSIWYG builder. It was terribly hard to get consistent results, but it worked. And got me into learning HTML4. I don't think they're too common now — it's usually things like Wix that have a more "pick a theme and enter content" + automagic website creation.

An opportunity, perhaps...