James Gowans on running his own site the right way:

Rolling my own site gave me the opportunity to learn a very small amount of CSS, HTML and Node.js. Building it from the ground up provided me with intimate knowledge of how all of these things work together. If something breaks, it's almost certainly because of something I did wrong. I can troubleshoot almost any issue. I'm in control of everything except domain and VPS hosting, and either of those can be changed to any other provider with minimal effort or downtime. I know this site and how it works better than anyone else.

I agree with every word. I love static sites for a lot of reasons. They're fast, simple, and almost completely in my control. Static doesn't mean scary any more. It's a little more trouble to set up than WordPress¹ but you end up with a much better site.