My New CMS Setup

cybardev | 04 Dec 2025

When I was still using Hugo for my website, I had set up Netlify CMS (and then moved to Decap when they changed the name), thinking it would help me write blogs more smoothly. And sure, the process was less cumbersome than opening up my local repository, firing up a code editor, writing some markdown, and going through the Git flow. But something just didn't stick, and I ended up doing that cumbersome process anyway instead of using the CMS. Soon after, I stopped posting altogether. Not surprising.

This year, when I moved my site to Zola with a custom template, I thought I wouldn't add a CMS, given my lackluster experience with them in the past. Recently though, I found myself writing (and wanting to write) more and more blog posts. Thanks to that, my flow of writing things in Apple Notes, copy-pasting to code editor, then pushing to Git was getting rather tedious and boring. I was on the lookout for a headless Git-based CMS that would reduce the friction — especially on mobile.

For starters, I went back to Decap. I set it up with a Cloudflare Worker OAuth proxy for authentication, so everything remains in my control (at no extra cost). It "worked", but the mobile experience was as bad as it was the last time I checked (about 2 years ago). I kept looking for a better solution.

Enter Sveltia CMS. This looked rather promising, but for some reason I was hesitant. That is, until they tagged me on Bluesky asking me to give it a try. I'll be honest, I was initially taken aback by the overeager marketing, but the "Made in Canada 🇨🇦" hook softened me a bit. I looked into it further and decided to give it a try. It was mostly a one line change, with some extra conveniences added on top. I pushed my changes, waited for CI to rebuild and publish, then visited the admin URL. What used to look like an outdated login screen from 2015, now looked… white? I was greeted with a fully blank screen. That's not a good sign…

I scurried to the issue tracker for Sveltia, hoping to find a solution, in case I wasn't alone. Unfortunately (or maybe it is fortunate that people didn't have to deal with it), no one else raised the issue. But before opening an issue, I wanted to confirm that it wasn't my fault — that I wasn't just using a broken config or something. So I headed to their GitHub Discussions and asked what may be causing this blank screen. Within the next 40 minutes, the lead developer of the project had a look, figured out the issue, suggested a solution, and improved on his suggestion. Amazing support.

The issue was Cloudflare's Rocket Loader, which I had to disable for the CMS script. Once that was done, I had a beautiful login flow, and elegant CMS interface that looked great on both desktop and mobile. I was thoroughly impressed and satisfied with the switch.

Now, more than ever before, I feel inspired to write on my blog. Thanks Sveltia, for bringing back the joy in writing.