I'm embarrassed to say that I still hand write my blog directly in HTML using Notepad++ and manually FTP changes to the hosting company. Most of my blog is static HMTL, with a smidgen of script for analytics or occasional interaction. Every now and then I'll use some light PHP (typically when I need interaction with a database on the server).
J/k. But if you are familiar with NPM, install node-ftpsync.
Configuration is really easy. Just one small json file at the root of your site.
One command and your local files are automagically synced. It does file diff checking so it'll only upload the files that have changed.
I originally wrote it because inherited a site located on shared hosting. I got really tired of the cognitive overhead of manually uploading changes via FileZilla then checking, rechecking, and praying that I didn't forget something.
I'm going to do the same. I modified a wordpress theme to fit better my needs, after an update all my changes were gone (I had a backup ofc), but it's irritating that I have to patch my theme after every update. I'm going to create a few scripts that will host my blog on gitlab and post it automatically on my server. Static pages are the future.
Yeah, hardcore! I helped run a music review blog in ~1998 that gained at least 10 reviews per week, all handcoded HTML with multiple audio samples. I mean, when markdown is a common enough blogging format on its own, handcoding HTML to get the same effect isn't going to be crazy.
