Without a better description of the requirements of the site it is hard to give an answer about your specific situation with regards to what is taking so long.

Without a better description of the requirements of the site it is hard to give an answer about your specific situation with regards to what is taking so long. Technologies have improved, and requirements have gotten more complex. It sounds like the team you are working on is either doing things in an awful way or the requirements are such that there is a lot that needs to be done. 20 years ago it was very difficult to build anything remotely complex. 2-3 people could build a very simple, static site over a few weeks. If you showed web developers 20 years ago what a modern web app looks like today they would be impressed. It is certainly possible to use a bunch of technologies that complicate things unnecessarily but even then it shouldn't take 9 months for four engineers to build a simple site.