I had a friend with zero programming experience who put up a simple webpage for her small business in 1995 with just a text editor and some photos. Yes, it was

I had a friend with zero programming experience who put up a simple webpage for her small business in 1995 with just a text editor and some photos. Yes, it was much simpler. And it was encouraged, because most ISPs offered free web page hosting - including a free URL, and email - with an access account. Wordpress is a nightmare in comparison. And a fully engineered blog stack is far beyond the reach of most users. You could argue that the modern equivalent is a Facebook page, but of course web pages were fully public. You were in a public space, under your own name, limited only by your willingness to learn some very basic HTML. It's a completely different experience to being in a privatised space with its own content management tools, which you only have very limited user level access to.