Author here. For all my personal and small-client sites that previously had auth and a database, and that I previously hosted on my VPS, I realised that, no, no

Author here. For all my personal and small-client sites that previously had auth and a database, and that I previously hosted on my VPS, I realised that, no, none of them really do need auth or a database. An SSG (Hugo or Eleventy) and a simple host (mainly Netlify) will do the job. If I need auth and a real database, I'd probably still go with a more traditional architecture (Python + PostgreSQL is my go-to). Hosted either on a VPS, if I want to keep it cheap and simple, or on ECS / RDS (or non-AWS equivalent), if I want more scalability and resilience (and have the budget for it). But thanks for your suggestion, I'll mull over it.