If you've ever built a church website or ministry blog with a static site generator like Hugo, Astro, or Eleventy, you know the catch: the developer can make it look beautiful, but the moment a pastor or content volunteer needs to update a page, they're stuck editing raw Markdown files and pushing Git commits. PubCrank bridges that gap — it's a lightweight CMS layer that sits on top of your existing static site generator and gives non-technical editors a clean, guided interface for updating content without breaking layouts or styles.^1
PubCrank works by letting the developer define templates with specific front matter fields for each content type. Editors see only the fields they need — no code, no terminal, no risk of accidentally deleting a layout partial. It supports Hugo, Astro, Eleventy (11ty), and Jekyll out of the box, and there's even a portable Django app (pubcrank-django-app) on PyPI for teams that want to integrate CMS functionality into a Django project.^2 The tool is recognized by the Hugo project itself as an official front-end interface.^3
Built by Paul Bailey, a web developer with a background in aerospace engineering who goes by @pizzapanther online. Bailey is also the creator of Godcaster (a faith-based radio and podcast app) and built the website for Wildwood Assembly church — so he understands firsthand the challenge of empowering church teams to manage their own web content. As he explained when launching PubCrank: "Every once in a while, I get lucky and someone wants to help develop content. They are essentially locked out of helping without a CMS. Thus, the CMS for static sites was born."^1
Platforms: Web Pricing: Free (open source, BSD 3-Clause)
