What technology to choose for simple website

I’m going to develop a simple website. The requirement is that the client can log into some sort of administration panel, create projects (groups) and add pictures to those projects. As for the visitors of the website, they can view the content and send a question with a form.

I’ve been reading for 2 days about different technologies that can be used to make a website. The amount of possible solutions is overwhelming. Static site generators pared with headless CMSs, custom dynamic solution with various front-end or server-side rendering frameworks, full CMS, static site with API…

On daily basis I’m a .NET developer and my first thought was to implement above mentioned website from the ground up. But then I started looking at hosting solutions and hosting for .NET Core is not as cheap and as popular as Node.js or PHP. Later it occurred to me that using .NET Core for such small website is an overkill. Moreover it requires setting up database, security etc. Maybe it’s not an overkill? I’m no longer sure.

Could you guys suggest what could be the best approach to take here? Should I try using a CMS or code everything myself from scratch? Maybe I’m over complicating all of this.

I would based it on how much the client is giving me. Then, I would definitely want to use something I am comfortable with. So for you .NET Core is the way to go.

But based on your description, Wordpress seems the way to go! But .NET core is your comfortable point.

Isn’t the .NET Core an overkill for such small website. Maybe I’m biased since I used .NET stack only for enterprise level applications. I also think that .NET isn’t as popular among freelance developers as other frameworks, right?

Wordpress is probably a good option, but if you know Node.js also, then that would be another great option!

I personally prefer Node.js as that is my to-go language to write in since the frontend and backend can be written in the same language.

I was suggesting .NET Core since you were comfortable with it (according to what you wrote)