The Best Static CMS

Have you ever thought that WordPress is slow? Have you ever been suspended for causing high load because of WordPress? Did you think that other CMSs like Joomla and Drupal have an outdated dashboard and/or are overwhelming for beginners?

Then look no further.

Publii is an AMAZING FREE static site CMS. Static sites can load WAYY faster than sites coded with an admin page. Faster websites increases SEO, user engagement, and so much more. Unlike other static site generators or the simply static WordPress plugin, you can actually edit and update your site(s) with a simple to use, user friendly admin page (instead of having to manually code your website).

It has an easy to use, beginner friendly user interface. Yet with customization features good for people with experience with code. After all, this CMS generates static files that you can easily edit through the vPanel interface (or your favorite code editor) if you want more customization.

To get started, go to Publii and just download their app. Then install the app on your computer. Done, it is that easy to setup.

To create your first website, you need to click on add a new website. When you add a new website it will tell you to choose a name, symbol and author name. Then click add. Before you start anything, I recommend that you choose a theme. To choose a theme, go to this website: Themes and Plugins and download your preferred theme. Then go to the Publii dashboard and click on the three dots on the upper right hand corner. Select themes, click on install themes and select the zip file you downloaded. When you are finished, you can start creating your website.

You can create your website in multiple different ways. If you have an existing (or backed up) WordPress installation, you can easily upload the website using the WordPress importer. If not, you can easily create your first post either using a WYSIWYG editor (kind of like the WordPress classic editor), block editor (pretty much identical as the WordPress Gutenberg editor), or Markdown editor (for the tech savvy people to code a page).

When you finish writing your posts/pages (they are called the same thing), you can explore and play around with everything since the website hasn’t been published yet. For example: tags, menus, authors, theme settings, site settings, backups, custom CSS, custom html, File Manger (not for existing files but to upload a new file), Log viewer, Regenerate Thumbnails, AMP (accelerated mobile pages), WordPress Importer(etc.).

Now you just need to connect to a server so your website can be public. You can either choose to publish your website on vPanel or using GitHub Pages, whichever one you choose. To do that, click on Server in the side menu and choose your method of publishing. You can either upload using ftp (here you enter your site URL and ftp server, username, and password), using GitHub Pages, or manually uploading the files (not recommended as you will need to upload a fresh copy every time you edit your website).

To publish your changes just click on sync your website and it will automatically upload a fresh copy of your website and rewrite the old copy of your website.

Voila, you have just created a FAST and SECURE static site.

If you have any questions, just post it below.

Pictures of the Dashboard:

3 Likes

Amazing! I’ll keep that in mind. Is there an option to create an online store with this? (As woocommerance is the main reason I use WP over self-coding)
Thanks!

1 Like

This looks like an AMAZING CMS for bloggers!

@Greenreader9 You can use ecwid. Go to ecwid.com and make an account. Then customize your online store. Then you can just add a simple code to your website page. Ecwid is free and has a lot of features. This is an example hosted on Publii (and infinity free of course):https://robertzou.ml/products-pending.html

Hey there, unfortunately, ecwid does not allow the creation of unlimited products, as well as some other things I didn’t like. Most (all) of those online store platforms (or open-source software) don’t fit my needs (whether it be customization, product limitations, no-ads, or payment fees). The only thing that would work for me is WP-WooCommerance, but it has its own issues (Loading times, the number of plugins needed to have it work/look right for my liking), so I was wondering if this platform had an e-commerce option.
Thanks!

1 Like

Oh Okay. If you can sell more than $604 a month, you can try using Snipcart.com. They have unlimited products and other features. The only condition is that they take 2% of your sales (if you sell less than $604 a month, it costs $12 a month, but they don’t take any of your sales).

:thought_balloon: I wish :thought_balloon:

Also, I’m just starting out, and I did come across them, that $12 is way to high. I think I’ll just stuck with WooXommeramce :slight_smile:

4 Likes

BTW, If you want to be able to have multiple authors (on different computers) edit your site follow this tutorial: Accessing your Publii site on multiple computers via Dropbox - Publii

An example Publii site (hosted on infinityfree to let you know if you want to do a speed test) is this: https://robertzou.ml

@Greenreader9 Sorry for the late reply. But another option is to create a dedicated ecommerce site on either a subdirectory or a subdomain. To do that you can go to Softaculous and choose your favorite ecommerce CMS (Prestashop, WHMCS, Abantecart, magneto etc.). Install it in a subdirectory (or an existing subdomain). Then go to your Publii dashboard < Menus, create a new menu, and add a new menu item. Give the label a name (like shop), select external link as type, input your ecommerce installation link (everything else is optional). Done.