Publii Review: The Simplest Open Source Static CMS!

Publii Review: Although there are many advantages of static websites, they have one major drawback – the lack of simple tools to run and manage them. You have to manually change the HTML files and then upload the files to your server.

Of course, things have changed a lot in recent times. There are Content Management Systems (CMS) for static websites as well. The Netlify CMS, for example, lets you create, format, and post content directly without having to use FTP and the likes, thereby, simplifying things. With some static site generators, you can use Dropbox to publish content.

So, yes, there are tools that have simplified things. But most of these static CMS and tools lack in one or the other features, making it managing a website a bit difficult.

This is where Publii comes to the picture.

Publii Review 2019

Publii is an open source CMS and website builder created by Bob Mitro. It’s an extremely lightweight CMS. What makes it unique is that it is a desktop app, which means you can manage it from your desktop without having to go online. Once you have made the necessary changes or written a blog post, all you have to do is sync it with your server, and you are done.

Let us have a look at the different features of Publii CMS:

Offline App

Like I mentioned above, you don’t need to have access to an Internet connection to work on your website. You just download the Publii app (available for free for both Windows and Mac) and start building your site or write content. You can save them and once you have an Internet connection, you can just push it to your server with a single click. What makes it awesome is that Publii shows you the preview of how your site is going to look (the entire site and not just a page, you can click and move around the site) even though you are not connected to the Internet.

Extremely Simple

The app is extremely simple to use. Although Publii is well documented, you won’t need them much. The user interface , despite having various features that running a professional website needs, is self-explanatory. Even beginners won’t take much time to get a hang of it.

Beautiful Themes

Publii comes with eight free themes – all of them are professional looking and responsive. These free themes are included in the Publii app. All you have to do is select the theme that you want to use. There are a few paid themes available as well which you can purchase from the Publii Marketplace page. The price is not very high and I think they are worth it.

High Speed

Websites created with Publii load very fast. One of the major reasons is that you can disable various features if you do not want them on your website. Also, a website created with Publii is just a collection of static HTML files, thereby, making it load faster.

In-built SEO Tools

You don’t need any additional plugin for search engine optimization of your Publii site. All the tools are in-built. You can easily set up post slug, title, meta description, follow/nofollow tag, index/noindex tag, featured image, alt tag, canonical URL, etc. from the post editor itself. You can also enable/disable tags, author name, date, etc. for individual posts.

Social Sharing & Google Analytics Integration

You can choose to enable social sharing buttons if you want to for individual platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, etc. Also, you can integrate Google Analytics to your site for tracking purposes.

Local Backups

With Publii, you don’t have to worry about server crash and the likes. Publii comes with in-built backup and restore tools. You can create a backup of your site in your computer itself. If necessary, you can restore the website with just a few clicks.

Custom CSS & HTML

If you know CSS and HTML, you can make changes in the theme to serve your brand’s purpose better. Publii has separate tools to insert HTML and CSS codes if necessary. This means you have pretty good control over how your website is going to look.

Publii Review: Final Verdict

Still in its Beta stage, the CMS, all these features make Publii an amazing tool to build and manage your website, be it a portfolio, a blog, or even a website for an organization. It is a great CMS, be it in terms of speed, simplicity, security, or control. And it is available for free. I believe Publii has a great potential and an amazing future ahead.

I hope this article on Publii Review helps you. If you have any query pertaining to this article on Publii review, feel free to drop a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.