To make a website is quite easy. All it requires is some basic level programming knowledge. However, it totally depends on what kind of website you want to make. If you want your website to look totally professional, and include all kinds of features like ad rotators, banners, pictures and videos, programming complexity would increase.
Also, these days, the focus is on making websites that use very little bandwidth. Thus, manual programming would take a long time, a lot of resources and cost you a lot of money. The best website design would be one that included many features, arranged systematically on the page, and using up the least possible amount of bandwidth. Keeping the bandwidth has several advantages. It can be accessed by more people, and it is much faster.
WordPress as a designing Tool
