What's the best way/stack to create websites for others?
I want to start creating websites for others, in particular non-profits.
The problem is that:
- I want them to have a very smooth experience, which means, a good CMS.
- I also want them to not pay a lot of money for something they don't need in terms of hosting, for example, netlify or vercel, that offer a free tear, are fine for most cases.
- Having a DB could cost a lot, so my guess was a git based CMS
- They should have total control and own everything, the hosting, the domain, and the code, this way, they're not linked to working with me at all
- I much prefer static websites, or if I can't, server side generated websites
With those requiremeents, I wasn't able to find a stack that was right for me. I thought about Astro + Netlify + Decap but, first of all Astro's i18n is not that good, and neither is Decap's (you'd have create 2 collections or even hackier ways to handle it), and additionally Netlify's identity is deprecated and OAuth/Auth0 I wasn't able to find a guide to make it work with decap.
I've looked a few other cms and frameworks/ssgs, but I wasn't able to find an alternative that is worth shipping.
The only solution that comes to mind is Wordpress, but I dont want to go to that route.
What stack do you use to create websites for others? What's their feedback on their user experience with managing the website?
11 Replies
wordpress or astro with a cms might be your best options
hosting a wordpress website can easily be done with a cheap $3 vps
and you might not even need to do much setup, as some offer it out of the box
What CMS do you recommend with Astro? And yes, that's what I thought about wordpress too, but it's just something that I'd rather avoid if I can
i've never tried any, but i heard about eleventy or something
and another one, which i forgot about
but considering that astro produces static sites as the output, it may be the best option
astro has this in their website: https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/cms/
StrapiCMS!!
i think i heard that name before
Opensource free Headless
Strapi - Open source Node.js Headless CMS 🚀
Strapi is the next-gen headless CMS, open-source, JavaScript/TypeScript, enabling content-rich experiences to be created, managed and exposed to any digital device.
I can't help with JAMStack because I don't have experience with it (regrettably), but if you just want to buy and go you can't go wrong with something like Webflow or Wordpress
wordpress is really the easiest to just buy and get going
@lko I've used Astro + TinaCMS wayyy back (like 2-3 years ago) which is probably exactly what you're looking for as Tina is a git based CMS. But I'm not sure I can recommend it now; I have no idea if it's still supported with Astro and Tina got bought out a year or two ago
The editting experience left a bit to be desired; I had to make a video for the client on how to edit content. Though that's pretty normal regardless but I didn't find it suppppper intuitive from a client perspective
https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/cms/tina-cms/
I'll have to check out Strapi or Tina again. I'd really love to get into JAMStack for more customization (and because I have an ego and like to actually render out my HTML lol). Too stuck in the Webflow / monolith CMS world atm
Right now the best cms I've found so far is PagesCMS
It just works in its own domain but it's 100% free, you don't even have to install it in your project
The only problem is that as of today has a bug where it doesn't allow you to upload large files