What HotDog CMS is
A website builder that turns plain text files into a fast, safe website, with an editor in your browser for the people who'd rather not touch files.
HotDog CMS builds websites. You write your pages as plain text, it puts them into a design, and the result is a finished website: a folder of ordinary web pages that any web host can serve.
It's made for people who want a website that's quick to load, hard to break into and cheap to run, without having to look after a server full of software.
What it does for you
- You write in plain text. Pages are written in Markdown, a simple way of writing text with headings, lists and links. There's no database to set up or back up. Your whole site is a folder of files you can read.
- It puts your words into a design. The template that comes with HotDog gives you a home page, an about page, articles, a contact form and more, in light and dark mode.
- It checks your site before it goes out. Broken links, missing pictures, pages that are hard to read, tracking without permission: HotDog looks for all of them before anything is published.
- It gives you an editor in your browser. You can edit pages, upload pictures, change your colors and publish without opening a single file. Every change is kept, so anything can be undone.
- It publishes wherever you like. The finished site is ordinary files, so it works on any web host: your own server, a cheap hosting plan, or a container.
How it's different from WordPress
WordPress runs a program every time someone visits your site, and keeps your pages in a database. That's flexible, but it means there's always something running that can be attacked, slowed down or broken by an update.
A HotDog site is finished before anyone visits. When someone opens a page, the web server just hands it over. There's no login page on your site, no database, and nothing for an attacker to talk to. The editor lives somewhere else entirely and only changes your site by saving to its history.
Moving from WordPress? HotDog can bring your posts, pages and pictures across, and keep every old link working. See Moving from WordPress.
What you need
- A computer running Linux, macOS or Windows, to install HotDog on.
- A little comfort with a terminal, the window where you type commands. The docs give you every command to type, and explain what it does. You only need it to set things up; day-to-day editing can happen in the editor.
- An account on a git platform, such as GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo or Bitbucket, to keep your site's files and their history. A free account is enough. Words you'll meet explains what git is.
- Somewhere to publish, when you're ready: a web host, a server of your own, or a container platform. You can build and preview a whole site before you decide.
What it costs
Nothing. HotDog CMS is free and open source. The program and the editor are under the AGPL-3.0 license; the starter template and themes are under the MIT license, so the site you build with them is yours to keep, change or sell.
Where to go next
Read How it works for the big picture, or go straight to Install.