Making static site generators more accessible

Originally posted as Roast my idea: making static site generators more accessible on r/website.

Hi everyone,

I would like to have your opinion about a product/tool idea that has grown in my mind over the past month.

Nowadays, most consumer-available tools to build websites or portfolios like Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress rely on a live editor and usually require a subscription to get access to the service and hosting.

On the other hand, static site generators like Jekyll allow you to build good-looking sites and rely on Markdown for writing content, and can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages or similar services.

They also have tons of templates available, and professional-looking sites are built with those. And many people only need a simple design with a few pages, a blog and a few images.

However, they often have a steeper learning curve; you need to at least get the basics of git, fork a template, understand the templating language used by the framework, and configure your site to be rendered properly.

Personally, I build a few portfolios, and I like to be able to edit Markdown in Obsidian, drag and drop images, and not have to think about HTML or layout when I edit.

I am thinking about building tools that allow me to edit a Markdown-based static site in the browser and publish easily by taking care of the configuration. Like authenticating with GitHub and letting the app handle the fork, pushing content, configuration, etc.

That, or build an Obsidian plugin, or even a new desktop app that will allow me to choose a template, write content, and publish in one click.

What you would get:

One-click setup: choose a template, start writing in Markdown
Minimal configuration
Pleasant UX to edit, add images, and create simple layouts
Theme customisation
Open source so you can add custom React components
You can let your coding agent do some customization
Development server running automatically
Hot reload and live preview
Publish and update in one click

Would you like to see that? Do you think that could reach an audience that is not technical enough for learning git but could benefit from the free hosting and flexibility of static site generators?

I am probably reinventing the wheel; do you know existing solutions that do that well?

Would you like to hear about it if I built it?

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