What is a good design for a simple web site with mostly static pages and a blog?

Question

What is a good design for a simple web site with mostly static pages and a blog?

I am helping a friend build this for their small business. We are looking for a simple approach that can be implemented fairly quickly. (I am a programmer and can help with coding, hosting, etc.)

One option is to use a site like virb, which lets you choose from one of their themes and build a site pretty easily. You can also include a blog. They host the site for a pretty low monthly rate. I recommended this option, but my friend wants a design that is unique and custom. So, I took one of the themes and started modifying the HTML and CSS. This might still be a good option, but...

...If we are going to greatly modify it, why not just create the static pages from scratch and use something like Wordpress for the blog. Is this a good option? It looks fairly easy to integrate Wordpress with a site so that the design and behavior are really cohesive.

Is this a good idea? Do you recommend any other approaches?

Explanation / Answer

You could just as easily build your static pages as static .html (or simple php/ruby/perl/python), and add a tumblr blog on a subdomain:

There is no need to use one monolithic thing for a site, and there's more learning to be had by developing some of it by hand. This exposes you to web server config, basic web page generation, theme generation, and so on. Good mojo all around.

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