[Osmium]

If you're at the stage where you're maintaining your own server anyway, it doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Static websites are glorious. Much more secure, much faster to load, far fewer things that can go wrong. Cheaper, too, since they require fewer resources. And, as luck would have it, there's a perfect Hacker News thread to get one started:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857473

[nthj]

Or, if you really want or need a dynamic website, throw CloudFront or similar in front of the site.

Then lock down your CMS at a secret, SSL-only URL.

It's about 2 lines of Ruby or PHP to ping CloudFront and request an invalidation when you change a page (which only happens rarely anyway.)

Secure, fast, dynamic, only goes down if CloudFront does.

[steveklabnik]

I agree, but we weren't talking about maintaining your own server, just static languages and blog platforms.

I use Jekyll/Octopress all the time, I totally agree, static sites are great. But non-programmers are never going to use it.

[dangoldin]

To add to that. You can add a whole lot these days via Javascript. You want to get some comments? Just embed a Disqus widget. Want some feedback? Embed a getsatisfaction widget.