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Where should the blog’s articles live? The question looks technical, and it is often settled by habit: the CMS you know, or the one the agency offers. It is better settled by starting from people: who writes, how many times a month, and who must review before anything goes out. We have done both on this site: articles lived in Sanity, a headless CMS, connected in 2025, then moved to Markdown files in the repository on 1 September 2026. That change does not say one option beats the other; it says our needs had changed. The wider frame is in our guide to migrating to a static site with Astro.
In short
In Markdown in the repository, each article is a text file: versioned, checked by script, reviewed before publication, with no subscription.
A CMS gives a team that publishes often an editing interface, roles, a media library and scheduling.
The deciding criterion is human: the number of writers, their comfort with tools, and the review required.
The two combine: a CMS can write Markdown files, and a static site can read either.
Switching later is possible: content moves, URLs are kept.
Two ways to store an article
Definition
Markdown
A way of writing formatted text with simple signs: a hash for a heading, two asterisks for bold, brackets for a link. The file stays readable as is, by a person as well as by a program.
Markdown in the site repository
Each article is a file, stored with the site’s code
Each change is versioned, reviewed, then merged
Automatic checks run before publication
No subscription, no interface to maintain
Requires comfort with the review tool, or someone in between
A CMS, traditional or headless
Each article is a record, edited in an interface
Roles, approval workflow, media library, scheduling
Preview happens in the interface, often live
A subscription or a server to maintain, and a schema to evolve
Usable by the whole team without technical training
What Markdown in the repository brings
An article that cannot go out incomplete
With Astro, articles sit in a collection described by a schema: title, summary, date, category, language. Astro’s documentation sums it up: if a file violates its collection schema, Astro reports it with an error. On this site, an article with no title or an unknown category does not build: forgetting becomes impossible, instead of being caught at review.
Checks before every publication
A text file can be checked by script. Before an article goes out, an in-house check rereads what a machine can verify: each internal link leads to a page that exists, each figure in a block has its source, the FAQ has the right length, no name that must not appear does. The rest (whether a source is right, the tone) stays with human review.
Publishing means merging
An article’s path on this site
- The draft
A file, marked as a draft.
- The checks
Links, sources, structure, verified by script.
- The preview
The article online at a private URL.
- The review
A person reads, corrects, then lifts the draft marker.
- The merge
The article is published, and rolling back stays one command.
This path matters all the more when drafts are produced with AI. A generated article is born marked as a draft, and only human review publishes it.
From the field
Why review is not optional
Palmora Property, a real estate portal we operate, learned it the hard way: an AI model published articles presenting three real estate projects that did not exist. They had to be unpublished, and their URLs now answer that they no longer exist. Since then, on this site as elsewhere, nothing generated goes out without a person who reads and signs it.
Whether to say that a text was written with AI is covered in our article on disclosing AI-written text.
What it costs
Nothing in subscriptions: articles are files, served with the rest of the site. As of 19 October 2026, this blog holds more than 120 article files per language, drafts included, with no database at all. The real cost is elsewhere: whoever publishes must be comfortable with the change review tool, or go through someone who is.
What a CMS brings
A CMS is built for a team: several writers, roles (who writes, who approves, who publishes), an image library, scheduling an article for a date. It is the most widespread tool on the web: WordPress alone powers 39.6% of websites according to W3Techs, and most writers have used it before.
A headless CMS separates editing from display: the team writes in the interface, and the site, still static for visitors, rebuilds on each publication. That is the setup described in our article on headless Astro and Sanity. Its cost is readable, and it changes; here is Sanity’s price list as checked for this article:
per month on the entry plan, up to 20 users
per user per month on the Growth plan, up to 50 users
Add the time to evolve the schema (each new block type is declared in the CMS and in the site) and, for a traditional CMS such as WordPress, the updates and monitoring that a server running code requires: our article on hacked WordPress sites explains why.
The questions that decide
- How many people write?
One or two people comfortable with the tools: Markdown is enough. Five writers or more: a CMS saves them an intermediary.
- How often?
One article a week does not weigh like ten a day. The higher the pace, the more scheduling and roles matter.
- What review is required?
If every article must be reviewed and checked before going out, the repository’s change workflow guarantees it by design; a CMS allows it with a configured approval workflow.
- Who produces the drafts?
An AI drafting articles writes a file more simply than a CMS record, and script checks apply to it directly.
- Which media?
A few diagrams and screenshots sit with the article; a photo library of thousands of images calls for a media library.
Our switch on 1 September 2026 comes down to questions 3 and 4: few human writers, drafts produced with AI, and mandatory human review before every publication. An editorial team of ten, with no AI in the chain, would have concluded the opposite.
The two are not exclusive
So-called Git-based CMSs give an editing interface to Markdown files stored in the repository: the team writes in a form, and each save becomes a change reviewed like any other. And an Astro site can read both sources at once, for example the blog from files and product pages from a CMS.
Switching later remains possible. Content moves: a Markdown file is text, and a CMS exports. What must not move is the articles’ URLs, or else with a 301 redirect list set before the switch, after sorting which articles to keep, merge or delete.
The blog in the rest of the site
A blog feeds the proof of a business website (the five blocks that generate enquiries), and each option is priced over time (how much a business website costs). A blog in several languages files its articles by language, with a translated slug (one language, one URL). Articles must load fast on mobile (Core Web Vitals for business leaders), stay accessible, image descriptions included (the EU accessibility obligation), and a CMS stores its data somewhere (hosting your website in Europe, and Cloudflare, Netlify or a VPS). A newsletter sign-up form plugs in like the others (forms and search on a static site).
Our website offers include either option, decided during scoping: the business website to start from scratch, the static site migration to take over an existing blog and its URLs, with a Sanity editor when several people publish.
Frequently asked questions
Can someone who is not a developer publish in Markdown?
Yes, with short training: Markdown comes down to a dozen signs, and the platforms that host repositories offer an editor in the browser. What takes some comfort is the workflow (draft, preview, merge). If several writers do not want it, a CMS, possibly Git-based, gives them an interface without changing the rest.
Does a company blog need a CMS?
Not necessarily. A CMS makes sense when several writers publish often, with roles and scheduling. For one or two people, or for drafts produced with AI and then reviewed, Markdown files in the repository are enough, with no subscription, automatic checks before each publication and a rollback always available.
Can you move from WordPress to Markdown files without losing articles?
Yes. Articles are exported, converted into files and checked one by one: headings, images, internal links. The critical point is each article’s URL: keep it identical, or set a 301 redirect to the new one before the switch. Articles with no visits and no links can be merged or removed at the same time.
Do Markdown files suit articles written with AI?
Yes, and it is one of their strengths: an AI easily writes a text file, which scripts can then check (links, sources, structure). The file is born as a draft, and only human review publishes it. That step is not optional: a model can invent facts, and a false article published costs more than a late one.
Sources
- Astro, content collections guide (new tab)docs.astro.build
- W3Techs, WordPress market share, October 2026 (new tab)w3techs.com
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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