Open source website builder
Write in Markdown. See it live. Publish from git.
HotDog CMS is a website builder for people who want a fast, safe site without babysitting a server. Your pages are plain files, every change is a commit, and the public site is nothing but pages.
Hello, world
Write in Markdown,
see it rendered live.
- Pages are plain files
- Every change is a commit
What it's for
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Nothing to break into
The editor never runs on your web server. The public site is plain files, plus one small endpoint if you want forms.
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Every change is a commit
Drafts are branches, publishing is a merge, and going back is a revert. Works with GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, Bitbucket or plain git.
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See it before anyone else
A live preview as you type, and a private preview of every draft, built exactly the way it will be published.
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Checks before it goes live
Broken links, missing alt text, analytics that load before consent and the other small mistakes are caught before anyone sees them.
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One editor, every skill level
A visual editor for beginners, Markdown for most, the command line for power users. The same checks for everyone.
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Run it where you like
One program for bare metal, a VPS or a container. You decide how and where your sites are published.
Open source
The engine and the editor are AGPL-3.0. The starter site and themes are MIT, so what you build with them is yours to keep, change or sell. The code goes public at launch.
Why HotDog?
It's a nod to HotDog, the 1990s HTML editor that gave beginners and experts their own views of the same page, with a live preview. Those two ideas are at the heart of this editor.
Who's making it
Coffey Labs, the small company behind inbuxa and ihasmail. HotDog CMS started as the setup behind our own websites.