I also have this same problem. It's one of the things which has made me think about switching to web2py - you can edit templates and css, and do commits directly in the admin. There is something a bit crazy about it though. Alternatively I don't think it would be that difficult to put a decent JavaScript-based editor on a page and allow editing of certain files, combined with a way of running the collectstatic management command. Difficult enough for me to not have tried it though.