That's the problem. For some clients, there simply isn't a decent alternative.

That said, if I was forced to choose a "user friendly" CMS, I'd go with Drupal 8 (when it's released). The reasoning? It still has the client-facing tooling that non techy users expect, but is built on top of the Symfony core, following all relevant standards.

It's a little while away though, unfortunately. Depending on the site, my answer nowadays is a Silex API for the data they want to work on, and a React + Flux front-end. That's too much work for a $2k site however; WordPress is so entrenched that any replacement needs to be able to answer the plugins question successfully to overtake it.

I'm using the blazing fast http://gohugo.io/ Hugo static site generator (written in GoLang 8-) )

And that plugin can help you with the migration: https://github.com/SchumacherFM/wordpress-to-hugo-exporter

Hugo is more for nerds than the average WordPress blogger.

Ghost is coming along very nicely. From what I have followed from their development I have seen very thoughtful developers from the start.

edit to add https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost

Most people would be fine with a static site generator like Jekyll and a third-party commenting system like Facebook or Disqus. As a bonus, it costs pennies to host such a thing on S3.

I'm not necessarily here to defend WordPress, but, I agree, a compiled static site does make sense for the HN user's blog, but you're not typical. What about the neighborhood barbershop that needs a website and likes to self-publish blog articles a couple times a week? What's the best solution for them?

> What's the best solution for them?

I'd love to see a user-friendly GUI backed by Jekyll.

> Most people

We in technology are not "most people".

Anyone who can manage a WordPress install should be able to get Jekyll working, but I'd like to see it get a user-friendly GUI that takes care of the grunt work.

+1