Just curious if there is any better alternative for those who just knows basics of coding and are learning as they build.

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.

Depends on your goal.

If you’re not interested in hand-maintaining the code of the website(s), and you just want a nice GUI for publishing pages/posts/etc., then I’d say use some hosted platform like Squarespace.

For actually learning how to build websites, start with something more low-level and barebones like a static site generator (Jekyll, Hugo, Gatsby, etc.), or even plain GitHub Pages without a static site generator for the most “manual” experience.

In neither of those cases would I consider WordPress.

I've been building sites on WordPress for over 20 years, and it's fine, but if I were building a new site today, I'd probably use ClassicPress[1]. It's a fork of WordPress that eliminates a lot of the cruft that WordPress has accumulated over the years.

[1] https://www.classicpress.net/

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.)

It depends.

Personally, I would prefer a static site generator, simply because it requires zero maintenance to safely keep a static site online.

It might also be a good introduction to git and various deployment methods.

I run a website for a living, and moving to a static site generator is the best decision I've made.

Websites or web apps?

For web apps, Rails, Django, Laravel. React is the "standard" client framework of the last number of years. Perhaps someone can give advice about those web techs.

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 is a giant nest of security holes.

As others have noted, WordPress is complex to setup/administer. If you are just prototyping/learning, try https://ht-ml.app

It is free, and doesn't require any backend setup.

I find it a bit odd that none of the comments so far have mentioned LLMs.

Astro with a good understanding of how to build using a coding agent (my go to is the BMAD method)

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 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.

Publii static site generator is great for beginners and easier than WP for simple sites

https://getpublii.com/

I've always been a big fan of the WordPress community, which is a part of how WordPress works. A few years ago Wordpress would have definitely been my go to, but there are a ton of alternatives now (great suggestions in the comments here)

Wordpress is good. People complain about it because it's popular. Or Github pages is also fine if you just want to write and host HTML.

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.

No No No, start building websites with Claude Code, even if you don't know the basics of coding that's going to give you a better and more secure website.

WordPress was a good idea over a decade ago if you were doing affiliate marketing and couldn't code. But now everyone can code.