Ask HN: Is WordPress the best way to create new websites for beginner

I would recommend looking at static sites for learning the basics of building websites. There are a ton of static site generators in different programming languages. You'll be able to to build as you go and learn how the various parts of a website work together.

I recommend looking at jamstack.org as they have a long list of options.

Personally, I enjoy Hugo, a Go based static site generator. Though if you're unsure then try a couple out and see which you like best.

No. Wordpress requires overly complex administration and deployment. There’s just a lot that goes on with Wordpress, and you’d need a VPS to deploy it just by the nature of Wordpress.

If you’re building a static site - meaning, a site which does not have any forms which require backend functions - you should use a static site generator. If you’re not building a static site, I recommend starting with a static site. It’s just a lot less to keep in your head as a beginner.

My recommendation is Astro. I like it because it makes it easy and straightforward to create a static site. And, you will also learn JavaScript along the way, without building out a node backend or even anything on the front end.

But, if you really want to learn, I recommend noting. Yes, nothing. Just HTML files in a folder, a css stylesheet, maybe some JS files, and a web server. For deployment, you don’t need a web server config or a VPS. Just use cloud flare pages, link it up with GitHub, and boom, you have a static site.

Don’t be intimidated. If you do just HTML, you can learn a lot and you get the nitty gritty. You understand how the site actually functions from start to end.

I would definitely not recommend WordPress.

If you just want a website for cheap: Bearblog, carrd.co, etc.

if you want all the bells and whistles on a platter: Squarespace, Wix, etc.

if you want to supply all the HTML/CSS yourself: Github Pages or Cloudflare Pages.

(Later, if you want to host the above (except the "bells and whistles" tier) yourself: Hetzner, Digital Ocean, etc.)

Cloudflare launched some alternative (also compatible iirc) to WP built on Astro this year. I haven’t tried it but might be worth a look.

I've never tried learning WordPress, I know they say it makes building stuff easy, but I just enjoy writing code, man. It's fun.

I love using WP for my blog and I've a self-hosted version. In your question "new websites for beginner" indicates that the user is a beginner and wants to build websites. If websites have simple and static content that don't involve any serious stuff (e.g. e-commerce) then WP is probably ok. But for serious work i won't use it.

No. WordPress is a giant nest of security holes.