You will never choose the correct CMS and that is ok

There is way too much software. They simply should have stopped making it after they figured out how to make a text file, and then some sort of program to open it, everything after that was a mistake. I simply just want to make a website where I can share some of my favorite JPEGS and videos and links. I do kinda love the idea of constantly uploading a new version of your website whenever you add a file, but I am so mf lazy, so I simply would grow so fucking tired of writing DOCTYPE html !!!! or whatever tf you write at the top of html files. Like I want to write words, with my keyboard, add a gif, and then be done with it. I will now document my journey with how much of a fucking nightmare this actually is, and maybe this will help you find the option that works for you.

Phase 1: Just upload the files, and if you want to change something, then change the files (it's not that deep)

Your first option is opening up a file on your computer, naming it index.html, and double click that bad boy. You can write html in it, but like, you also don't have to. You can then upload it to a static site hosting platform (my brain is so clogged with this sort of jargon like there are so many more important things like reaching out to your loved ones and giving back to your community but my ass is searching dynamic site vs static site on youtube dot com like a absolute menace). One of my favorites is to just use github pages and you will be able to see everything you typed in that index.html on a website you can share with your friends. Honestly there is NOTHING wrong with it and people on the internet are gonna be talking about groundbreaking new web tech and those people should try breaking some ground with a girl.

Pros: 

• Easy to wrap your head around/Beginner Friendly: I see a file on a folder on my computer, I see a file on a website.
• Has some very cool 90s styling by default: if you don't fuck w css your website will still look kinda sick like some college website in the 90s or something.
• Pretty easily maintained.
• You don't have to worry with keeping up with the latest trends: this one is huge imo. Like html and css have been around for a while and it's not going anywhere. Like if facebook was suddenly like "if you've ever used react once ever even as a joke you now owe us 100$" you would be fine because you're getting the html strait from the source!
• Easy to host it using a static site.

Cons:

• Updating it can be cumbersome, since you have to type out all of your content using html tags. Sometimes it is nice to write just normally and have your computer do the hard work of adding all that noise.
• Not a lot of shared functionality around your pages, no reusability, no components.
• All of your content lives in the same place where it is displayed (i.e. on the page), sometimes it is nice having all your articles one place, and all the stuff that makes it look pretty somewhere else.

Phase 2: Use something like Jekyll, a static site generator.

Ok so my first attempt at making my little corner on the internet was Phase 1. I just uploaded some html files to github, some of them had javascript, it was tight. However, there was a point where I wanted to show off all of the games I made , but manually adding a new html page for each game sounded like it sucked (although there would be nothing wrong in doing this, I think it would look cool if every page looked a little different). I was talking with a co worker about this and they recommended Jekyll. It honestly was a pain to set up, but I eventually wrapped my head around it. It honestly was pretty cool, and allows you to generate pages from data you have in a folder. It also works well with github pages, i.e. if they see that you're uploading a jekyll project, they'll like run the build step for you. My only gripe with it is that it used Ruby (I do not know anything about this language and therefore I am scared), and that the component type things were not as easy to use as react components.

Pros:

• Jekyll is a cool name
• Works great on github pages
• No javascript required.
• There are a lot of themes that you can add to make your whole website look very cool without doing any work.

Cons:

• Ruby :((((
• Lack of javascipt means that it is not as customizable as I would like.
• You can't mix and match this with react really. Like if I had a react component, I would have to build it or something idk.
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Phase 3: the react pilled to next js pilled pipeline