I wanted to explore simple WYSIWYG website editors (markdown acceptable) for personal academic sites, focusing on those that can be hosted on GitHub Pages for free, or that you at least own your content. Here's what I discovered:
- Montaigne is quick with Apple Notes and creates a presentable site.
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Introducing Webtrotion by ME! can be used to make websites with a blog component. It is built off Notion to Astro blog by otoyo0122 is excellent for basic blogs. - Publii is an open-source CMS that integrates well with Github Pages or Netlify.
- Primo is another visual website builder that's open-source.
- Quarto requires local writing, but has many templates.
- Quartz integrates well with Obsidian.
- Git-based CMS options like Decap_CMS and tinacms provide a WordPress-like experience.
- Nuxt Studio is a new git-based visual CMS.
- Google Sites is a WYSIWYG option but you don't own the content.
- Astro with Dark Matter are for those familiar with Astro.
- Editable.website is easy to use but complex to install.
- Hugo (Paper Mod) and Jekyll are for those who are tech-savvy.
Paid options: blot.im (which I highly recommend, you still own your content!), Pagy, Wordpress, Webflow, and Wix
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