> t is similar to Netlify CMS and Prose, the difference is that, unlike the first, it doesn't try to be a multipurpose CMS, it lets you edit files, create text files, upload files, browse your files, but doesn't try to look like a fancy CMS with custom schema and objects and all that mess;

Err, "all that mess" are the additional features that actually make it a worthwhile upgrade from GitHub's in built file management. I'm using a CMS because I'd like to interact with raw files as little as possible.

I didn't mean that Netlify CMS is horrible, just that this one is more low level and has less magic, serving a different purpose.

It's interesting to me that, before I learned about databases (circa 2004), I built 3 distinct software products based on flat files (no database). They were all written in PHP (the only backend language I knew at the time). This was before the days of GitHub, so I don't have links to the software anymore, but I may still have the (horrendous) source code. The products were: a forum (!) system called "DatForum"; a chat app called "Chategory"[1] (this one still apparently exists on SourceForge); and a flat-file backed bookmark manager that synchronized with del.icio.us called "LinkDex." I did also build a blog/CMS based on flat files, which I used personally, but it was hardly productized (practically server-side includes). Obviously, using flat file databases is very different from static site generation, but since all of these were written using flat file databases, it would have been easy to optimize their (often poor) performance by statically regenerating the site periodically, instead of reading the flat file database at render time.

[1] http://chategory.sourceforge.net/

This looks great, I think it solves an existing need and could be extended beyond editing files on GitHub, to be a more general-purpose tool.

One suggestion: a demo where a potential user can try editing files without needing to authenticate with a GitHub account. I actually haven't seen the editing interface yet - I'll clone the repo locally since I'm curious, but it would be a better on-boarding process if I could try it first.

Here's a demo: https://coisas.alhur.es/#!/geraldoquagliato/geraldoquagliato...

The access token will work out of the box (it is hardcoded), and the site is a Jekyll which will automatically be rendered by GitHub and shown at https://geraldoquagliato.github.io/

Why would anyone want to use it to edit files on their own computer?

This is a weekend hack, not a fully finished and polished project. I'm sorry about the errors if you encountered some. The idea is that things will improve in the near future. Criticism and suggestions are welcome.

Anyone else unable to actually get it to do anything? Running it from their URL: https://coisas.alhur.es/

You need to enter a Github repo url and click go, then you can start editing.

The grey 'fiatjaf/coisas'e is just a placeholder.

Didnt work on firefox. Works on chrome.

Sorry about that. Didn't test it on Firefox yet. I'll do.

Is the license MIT?

It looked like but I was not sure (it might also just be that I read it too early in the morning.)

Yes, the desktop version of github highlights common licenses: https://github.com/fiatjaf/coisas/blob/master/LICENSE

I'm using Lektor[0] as a static site CMS for a non-technical user. It's not super advanced nor shiny, but it does the job.

[0] https://github.com/lektor/lektor

The problem with Lektor is that you need a server running this Python app.

Hello fiatjaf, are there some example sites that we can take a quick look to see how they end up?

Thanks

You didn't read a single line of the README, right? It is written there that you may AND SHOULD use your own authentication methods, and that's quite easy to implement.

Now if you were going to freak out because you don't want to authorize access to your account I just can't imagine why you clicked at "authorize with GitHub".

What do you want the CMS to do without write permission ? It does give you option to just browse without logging in.