Should I use WordPress or build my own website?

Thanks for your input. I mainly want people to post anonymous comments so I can gather feedback and use to to improve my blog. I did find WordPress to be very useful in setting up a website quickly, but since I know how to build a website, I thought it would be better to build my own so I can have full customisability. Another reason why I didn't like using WordPress originally is because the webpage loading times were terrible, I think this may be because of the plugins on the site. Using Jekyll instead made loading times a lot faster.

If you want to learn how to make a CMS or just learn more about web development then definitely have a go at making your own website from scratch. If however your main aim is not to learn about technical aspects I'd strongly advise you to just use a preexisting service.

As per a different comment if you are worried about page load speeds you have some options, you can use Wordpress as your CMS in a headless manner which will let you cache pages for future visitors.

> I don’t want you to have to sign up to Wordpress just to leave comments and communicate with me.

Then don't restrict your comments like that. WordPress pages don't gather 8000+ spam links because it's only capable of accepting wordpress users' comments.

WordPress is flexible enough and rich enough in plugins and themes that I wouldn't it an alternative to "building my own website", but rather as one technology you can use to do that.