My attempts to use a CMS in 2026

EmDash

EmDash CMS has been all the hype on the web lately. It seems like a reasonable project to replace Wordpress. I've been working with Astro for a while and I think it fits very well for the problem. Excitedly, I took exports from a WordPress website I help administer, Inverse Journal. After trying many variations, the imports would not work at all. So I thought, well, working with D1 and R2 aren't my first choice in life anyway, how about I look at other ways to do this that are local-only.

No EmDash, Local!

No EmDash, what then? How about something local?

WYSIWYG (reads /assets and /content) --> Serializes content to JSON -> Save files to the file-system --> Astro content collections --> Block renderer --> Static HTML

So after looking a bunch of formats that are more extensible than Markdown, like PortableText, I decided to settle on handling this with just the pure Tiptap WYSIWYG JSON output.

So all my posts were structured as the Tiptap block JSON, rendered by Astro, and edited using a React based project. All running locally. This could be extended to a CMS-like setup with a Github App.

I don't think I quite have the right idiom for this but I think I'm close to figuring out how I'd want a WYSIWYG editor to look like for me, if I used or recommended one.

The local approach is horrible for non-technical folks and collaboration. I think my frontend-first approach to solving problems fails in this context. So let's look at CMS'.

Strapi

Strapi can't do live edits on collection types/components.

Payload

Payload CMS is too basic to be called a CMS, has no opinions on how media/content should be done.

PocketBase

PocketBase is an interesting choice because it can do a lot more than just create a posts collection with media uploads and a rich-text editor (which, out-of-the-box is already a little better than Payload).

Ghost

Ghost isn't quite a CMS. It only supports Posts as a collection and Wordpress migration is still patchy (definitely not as bad as EmDash). The editor leaves much to be desired and I kept reaching to create my own handlebars templates. Something as simple as a dropcap on paragraph start can't be implemented straightforwardly, granted, this cannot be done on any of the other I have tried so far, except Strapi. Ghost also does not have a media library for all the assets you create so the wordpress migration is even worse to handle.

Wordpress

I guess the verdict is out, and I hate to say it but Wordpress remains the best CMS out there. The plugin system is horrible, the sites are sluggish, but it works. It has complex editors like Divi and can do a lot more than create a Substack clone.