I think CMS engines like wordpress are great for semi technical people who are curious enough to set stuff up themselves.
However whenever I've had a website to develop I've never seen the point of using one.
If the website is going to be very simple the chances are it doesn't really need a full on CMS.
All it needs is an HTML/CSS layout and some content that can come from either static HTML files, a few form handlers and perhaps some parts that my client can update themselves. Most of the time this can be solved by simply creating a part of the site behind a login with a few text boxes that update a database and are then displayed on the site or the ability to create lists of things.
I can create this sort of functionality myself from scratch in an afternoon or so and it is usually much easier to use for the client because it will have less buttons on the interface and be designed around metaphors that they are actually interested in (for example types of cake or whatever).
I gave a client Drupal to use once and the result was that they would just call me up every time they wanted an update done to the site.
If it's something non trivial then I'd rather not have to work around a clunky PHP codebase and worry about the plethora of security updates I would have to do when I could just create something much more flexible in Java/Scala/Python.
Your forgetting that this favors your more than them.
People dont want to learn a new system, and they are confortable with wordpress.
There are millions of devs and designers also familiar with wordpress - which can mean they can leave you in an instant and get anyone else to make changes or add feature to the site easily.
That's assuming they are already familiar with wordpress, most people have never used a CMS in their life.
If requirements are simple then all you generally need is an admin area with about 3-4 links.
Something like:
Change Homepage Text
Show Customer Inquiries
Add Item to catalog
This is much easier to understand to a newbie than "Add Page" , "Add menu item" etc.
If they want complicated changes they will usually end up calling me anyway.
I always keep the coding for my simple sites simple enough that any competent developer should be able to figure it all out in an hour or so anyway.
Many people who are not technically inclined do not have time to do much modification to their website themselves, so will generally not bother if you give them something with a lot of power like a full CMS.
Most small business people aren't going to go around installing new designs on their site on a whim (isn't that what they paid the designer to design?).
They want something they can log into once every couple of weeks and post some minor update too, then possibly consider a redesign 2 years down the line at which point they are likely to want to throw out most of what they have anyway which doesn't matter since they spent maybe $1000 on the whole thing.
If the site provides any kind of complex functionality then wordpress is really no longer going to make sense as a core to build around. Here 90% of the site is likely to be customer forms, order processes etc that don't fit into any convenient pre-existing model. At this point if you build around an off the shelf CMS 90% of the site will be custom plugin code so there will not be a huge benefit to anyone who would take over the code.
It's all about making the business itself a first class citizen rather than a particular piece of software.
However whenever I've had a website to develop I've never seen the point of using one.
If the website is going to be very simple the chances are it doesn't really need a full on CMS. All it needs is an HTML/CSS layout and some content that can come from either static HTML files, a few form handlers and perhaps some parts that my client can update themselves. Most of the time this can be solved by simply creating a part of the site behind a login with a few text boxes that update a database and are then displayed on the site or the ability to create lists of things.
I can create this sort of functionality myself from scratch in an afternoon or so and it is usually much easier to use for the client because it will have less buttons on the interface and be designed around metaphors that they are actually interested in (for example types of cake or whatever). I gave a client Drupal to use once and the result was that they would just call me up every time they wanted an update done to the site.
If it's something non trivial then I'd rather not have to work around a clunky PHP codebase and worry about the plethora of security updates I would have to do when I could just create something much more flexible in Java/Scala/Python.