CrowderSoup

A website about programming, technology, and life.

I made a no‑build CMS for Neocities
Aaron Crowder

I’ve been wanting a dead‑simple way to publish small personal sites on Neocities without build tools, databases, or plugins. Today I’m sharing Neo‑CMS — a tiny flat‑file CMS that renders Markdown right in the browser.

The whole idea is: just files. Drop Markdown into /content, list those files in content/index.json, and add a little YAML front matter for titles, menus, and slugs. That’s it. No build step. No dependencies. No CLI. If you can edit a text file and upload it to Neocities, you can use this.

Why I built it

I love the Neocities vibe: personal sites, small scope, and a lightweight workflow. Most CMS options are either too big or assume a modern build pipeline. Neo‑CMS aims for the sweet spot: learnable, hackable, and intentionally tiny.

But the bigger reason is closer to home: I wanted my kids and my girlfriend to have an easy framework to start tinkering and building for the web. Something they could open up, read, and change without a stack of tooling in the way.

What you get

  • Markdown rendering for headings, lists, links, and code
  • Hash‑based routing so every page has a shareable URL
  • Front matter for titles, menu sections, slugs, and page metadata
  • A small, readable codebase (the brain lives in one neo-cms.js file)
  • Minimal IndieWeb affordances like rel="me" links
  • Webmentions via webmention.io if you want them

How it works (the 60‑second version)

  1. Create a Markdown file in /content (e.g. about.md).
  2. Add it to the files array in content/index.json.
  3. Add YAML front matter (title, slug, menu, description).
  4. Refresh. Your page is live.

If you want the full details, I added a walkthrough on the “How it works” page in the demo.

Who it’s for

Neo‑CMS is for hobbyists, tinkerers, and people who want to keep their personal sites small and understandable. It’s not a full CMS, and it doesn’t try to be. There are no plugins, no multi‑user workflows, and no complex content models — just a tiny foundation you can tweak.

Where to find it

If this sounds like your kind of project, feel free to fork it, remix it, or just grab the release ZIP and upload it to Neocities. I’d love to see what you make!

P.S. this is my first attempt at publishing to IndieNews!