Not going to go into too many details right now, but I just want to strongly suggest everyone building content sites look into using Lektor as a backend: https://www.getlektor.com/.
If you've realized that Wordpress can be a pain in the ass or is more than you need, and you want to be able to host sites extremely cheaply and simply, then static sites might be the way for you to go. I've been all in on static sites for a while, and I've just used my own scripts to build the sites up until now, just using Python and Jinja2, but Lektor is exactly what I wanted to build myself for the past couple years. I've actually built a couple site generators that are similar to Lektor as far as providing an admin interface, but the stuff I've built is not as flexible/general purpose, and not as well designed.
One thing to keep in mind is that Lektor is far, far simpler than Wordpress, but to initially get up and running it requires a little more technical ability.
So if you want an alternative to Wordpress for easily publishing sites, check out Lektor. I'll try to answer any questions people have in this thread (if anyone is actually interested in this).
Just realized I should add a quick summary of what Lektor is.
Lektor gives you an admin interface similar to Wordpress for creating a site, but you run the admin on your local machine and then the software handles uploading your site to a server, or Amazon S3, etc.
There is no database, all of the site content and configuration is stored as files on your filesystem, so it easy to make changes to the site by simply changing files in a text editor.
Also, Lektor is kind of a framework - it's up to you to configure what types of information different types of pages should contain and how they should relate to each other, aka you could define a "gallery" page that includes "image" pages as children. The Lektor quickstart tool creates "Blog", "Blog Post", and "Page" page types for you to get started with.
Edit: Added summary.
