When I started maintaining a personal website years ago, I kept all content
in static HTML files which I uploaded. The server didn't support server side
scripting and for a while I used a JavaScript to provide a navigation menu.
The JavaScript menu fixed just that, navigation. Devising a publishing side
scripting system allowed me to separate the website look (template) from the
content too.
I created a set of PHP scripts I named Pepp to process the page content
along with a navigation menu to static HTML files to upload to the webspace.