There are various ways of creating, managing, and publishing digital content. Historically, the foundational technologies of the Web (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) were used to manually create templates and their content, which was stored as static files and saved to a server. Later on, content management systems (CMSs) helped automate this process. Here, content is saved to a database, and when a page is requested, an application:
- Obtains the requested content from the database
- Identifies the appropriate premade template to place the content into
- Generates the final HTML page
- Serves the page
Most recently, static site generators (SSGs) have served as a popular compromise between the prior two approaches, in that they allow for the use of templates with automatic page generation, while avoiding the potential issues associated with traditional CMSs. You may even see modern solutions that mix aspects of both CMSs and SSGs (e.g., a CMS that generates static versions of a site, or a SSG that offers a graphical interface).
Regardless of what solution you choose, it is important to continually evaluate the project. What was once a great solution can become a bloated, unintuitive piece of software. There are other factors to consider, as well:
- Is the solution well-documented?
- How many contributors does it have and what is the onboarding process like?
- Does the project have mature, stable leadership and a democratic leadership model?
- How does the project financially support itself?
- Does the project have a healthy, helpful community?
The following is a collection of projects that may contain the solution you are looking for.
- django CMS
- django CMS is a powerful and lean open source platform for managing your content needs.
- Drupal
- Drupal is an open source content management platform supporting a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.
- Joomla!
- Joomla! is an award-winning CMS, which enables you to build web sites and powerful online applications.
- Ghost
- Ghost is a powerful app for professional publishers to create, share, and grow a business around their content.
- Grav
- Grav is a modern open source flat-file CMS.
- Hugo
- Hugo is a fast and flexible static site generator built in Go.
- MDN Web Docs
- Documenting web technologies, including CSS, HTML, and JavaScript, since 2005.
- Pelican
- Pelican is a static site generator powered by Python.
- Plone
- Plone is an open-source CMS that is used to create, edit, and manage digital content.
- ProcessWire
- ProcessWire is a friendly and powerful open source CMS built to save you time and work the way you do.
- Wagtail
- Wagtail is a fast, elegant open-source Python CMS designed to give everyone on your team the tools they need to manage content at enterprise scale.
- WriteFreely
- WriteFreely is an open source platform for building a writing space on the Web.