WordPress
1) Beginner friendly
- One doesn't need to be a coder or mess with cmd to use it.
- Abundance of tutorial(text/audio/video)
- You can host it anywhere, even for free. FTP? I know that from work.
- Hosting provider even install it for you
- Expert support is all over the web
- Drupal and Joomla can't beat WordPress new user adoption, why? They're made to be customized(more developer-centric). Too much option is apparently not good for new user.
2) Features
- Need something? there's plugin for that
- People/visitors loves nice design/layout, WordPress have thousands of themes
- Secure. Attacked by some random ddos/script kiddies? Hosting provider will take care of it. Malicious code? same case.
Static site generator.
1) Beginner friendly
- Yes, at least if you're familiar with cmd.
- Most tutorial suggesting Amazon S3/CDN/cloud etc. Well those service are inaccessible to many.
- Write new post, generate, upload...complicated!
- Lets embed image/audio/video with one-click...nope!
- Lets edit old blog post... oh why art thou so hard
- Lets try it on my phone, nope!
2) Features
- I want to add Facebook comment, how? Read the manual, download that, configure...blabla. No thanks
- Lets add analytics code. Edit template and insert this javascript, save and regenerate...blabla. No thanks
Conclusion : it might be a piece of cake for you but not to most people. Remember "most user are idiot"?. If I want to have simple static blog with nice editor I would use Blogger. Dumping random text? I have pastebin for that. Static site generator sure is attractive but we are just not there yet.
I have a feeling that 'campaign' to promote static site generator to WordPress user is strikingly similar to Windows-to-Linux campaign. It just never going to happen for most user, at this rate.