using a modern content management system has its benefits,

but it is not really any less complex and time consuming that using a static site generator or writing a website from scratch.

i have had the pleasure of setting up both a self-hosted wikimedia+wikibase install and a self-hosted wordpress install.

both are programs written in PHP. both of the most forward-facing and authoritative-seeming websites used by the projects link documentation, debugging information, and installation instructions which are all obsolete--

i.e.--when you download wordpress.zip and attempt to install it, the instructions that represent themselves as definitive do not work at all.

completing correct installation of both of these projects required quite an in-depth understanding of how the entire app fitted together.

a great amount of information about how to install the app and get it going is, putting it simply, secret knowledge to the developers.

Example in the case of wordpress as of yesterday:

• wordpress on debian stable does not just require php, but also php-fpm and, on debian, the php-mysql plugins. this is not included in the web page specifying system dependencies.
• there is no real definitive project page for how to configure wordpress to work with the nginx software. project prefers apache and makes it very difficult to use other web server software.
• the wp-config.php loads in a very particular order. this is not explained. you cannot, say, simply edit wp-config.php and insert trivial config settings at the bottom. you must learn the structure of wp-config.php. the most frequent error is to fail to put config lines ABOVE an arbitrary line containing reference to "wp-settings.php".