I did this, partly as there were no solutions to the frontpage I wanted, and partly as I wanted to implement better caching than any of the current platforms offer ... My site queries the database once per day, unless I post an update. So it's fast, (~100ms on $20 hosting).
What I enjoyed was making software that isn't bulletproof and distributable, but safe, secure, fast and fun to build. What personal sites should be, imho.