> "the content is what is important"
The only problem there is that users have come to expect certain UI elements on any given web page and those things are far beyond "content". For example, let's say you want to allow comments on articles. Now you have opened an enormous can of worms by requiring logins, storing of passwords (hashes! with salts! using modern algorithms!), permissions management, password reset mechanisms, collection of emails (for password reset), and personal data.
You can handle all that the old fashioned way and implement it yourself or you can look into the great wild of the Internet to see what solutions already exist. That's where the rabbit hole begins!
Now you've got a back-end OAuth infrastructure supporting your website. You're using a login module that you were able to "easily" install via npm. You used an oauth2 module in your back end and everything seems to work fine except now your JS code is getting a little crazy with all the "time saving" npm stuff you're using so you start to look at "bundlers" like WebPack...
Welcome to hell, my friend. This is modern "minimal" web development.
Oh but perhaps you could use a static site generator instead! Surely someone has created the perfect Markdown/ReStructuredText tool for generating your perfect web page that has all the features you need!
There happens to be one that's close. It does everything you need except that one little thing. So you reach into the npm bucket... Then you end up having to deal with bundlers again.
It never ends!