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.

Get startedWatch the tutorial

A cartoon dog peeks over a browser window: Markdown on the left, the finished page on the right.

What it's for

  • 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.

  • Every change is a commit

    Drafts are branches, publishing is a merge, and going back is a revert. Edit on GitHub, Gitea or Forgejo; publish from any git server.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • One editor, every skill level

    A visual editor for beginners, Markdown for most, the command line for power users. The same checks for everyone.

  • Run it where you like

    One program for bare metal, a VPS or a container. You decide how and where your sites are published.

Coming from WordPress?

Bring your site with you. One command copies your posts, pages and pictures from a live WordPress site or an export file. Your old links redirect to the new pages, and a report lists anything that didn't come across cleanly.

hotdog-cms import wordpress -url https://your-old-site.example

Watch it done in a three-minute tutorial. Ghost, Hugo and Jekyll sites come in the same way: see how.

About HotDog CMS

  • 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.

  • 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.

Try it in five minutes

Install one program, start from the template, and you'll have a site to edit in your browser.

Get started