Picking a CMS for a Static Blog in 2026

I've built plenty of WordPress sites. I know where everything lives, and I can fix most of what breaks. So when I rebuilt this blog, WordPress was the obvious answer.

I didn't pick it. Here's how I thought it through, in case you're staring at the same decision.

What I actually needed

• Write posts in a browser, not just in a code editor.
• Upload my own photos without fighting the tool.
• Keep the site static: fast, cheap to host, and nothing on a server to patch.
• Keep everything in GitHub, where I can see every change.

That last one mattered most. My posts are Markdown files in a repo. I wanted an editor that works with that, not one that pulls everything into a database.

The options I looked at

Headless WordPress. You write in WordPress, and a static site generator pulls the content through its API. You get the editor and media library you already know. You also get a WordPress server to host, update, and secure, just to feed a site that doesn't need one. For a team that lives in WordPress, it makes sense. For one person, it's a lot of plumbing.

Decap CMS (formerly Netlify CMS). The original Git-based CMS: an admin page that commits Markdown straight to your repo. It works, but it's showing its age, and login is awkward if you're not hosting on Netlify.

Sveltia CMS. A modern, MIT-licensed rewrite of Decap that reads the same config. It's faster and it looks better. Two things sold me:

• You can sign in with a GitHub token, so there's no login server to run.
• It can convert uploaded photos to WebP and resize them on the way in, so full-size phone shots don't bloat the site.

Pages CMS. Another nice Git-based option, and it can store images in S3 or Cloudflare R2 instead of the repo. Worth a look if your photo library is going to get big.

API-based CMSes like Sanity, Storyblok, and Contentful are powerful, and some have great editors. But your content lives on their platform, and pricing can jump as you grow. That's overkill for a personal notebook.

What I picked

Sveltia CMS, on top of Eleventy, hosted as a static site on DigitalOcean. Writing a post means opening /admin, filling in a form, and hitting save. That commits to GitHub, and the site rebuilds itself a few minutes later.

Note

The nice surprise: because the editor is just a config file, every kind of post gets its own form. Recipes have fields for prep time and servings. Scripts have fields for requirements, parameters, and the code itself. The editor fits the content, not the other way around.

If I were starting over

If you're...	Pick
Mostly writing, a few photos	Sveltia or Decap
Lots of photos	Pages CMS with external storage, or Sveltia with its image conversion turned on
A team already fluent in WordPress	Headless WordPress, and budget time for keeping it patched
Just you, happy in a code editor	No CMS at all. Honestly, that's a perfectly good answer.