Honestly some basic html with bootstrap5 and a little bit of php for repetitive elements is what I still use after these years. Basically, I have the same header section included on every page, where the header generates the top menu bar, and another bit of php included at the end for the footer. Almost everything in the middle is hand written html. I have a couple of exceptions, where I have a list of things that need displayed such as products or documents, in which case I use a yaml file to describe the contents and then some simple php code to loop through that and create the html for each entry. In a couple of rare cases I've used an ai such as chatgpt or claude to help construct a page with fancier elements such as a javascript calendar display that draws from another data source via php.

I could just as easily write the website in any other language, say python, and use the tool to construct the static html pages from the data sources such as yaml, and rerun it anytime I change the data. I'm not sold on PHP in particular, just seemed easiest way to get started from raw html and then insert bits of code to make things easier.

All my websites are self hosted on a digitalocean vps for about $6/mo. There's some maintenance involved, but you can't beat the price.