october VS Drupal

git clone https://github.com/octobercms/october.git your-website

It's not a WordPress clone but I've been wanting to check out October CMS for a while and just noticed this Twill project that looks like it would be along the same lines.

If I was to go for a blog platform, I'd opt for https://octobercms.com

Beside Symfony there is Laravel Framework , I will not go into deep difference between this frameworks as it really is just taste of what your team likes more (active record vs datamapper, facade/helpers vs dependency injection, blade vs twig, ...), as already mention above this kind of CMS make sense if Website is just one part of your application and you have to build more then just a simple digital business card / website. In Laravel world there are CMS like October CMS / Winter CMS, which target the same providing a CMS based on the Full Stack Larave framework and give you all features of that framework. Another already mention CMS in Laravel world is Statmatic.

October CMS

How comfortable are you with learning PHP? WordPress is the obvious choice due to it's popularity (but with it moving towards a full-site editing experience it isn't as fun to work with anymore IMO but that's just me). You could also look into things like Statamic or October CMS which are supposed to be very nice to work with as i believe they're both Laravel based.

As u/frontendben said, you can use Statamic CMS, it is a decent solution, and there are a number of others like October CMS, Asgard CMS (a bit old, but quite solid), LavaLite, Pyro etc. Craft CMS (based on Yii) could also be a possibility. Here is a list of someone's opinions on 5 popular Laravel-based CMSs.

I've used OctoberCMS[1] for a smaller project, and this looks similar on first glance. (Might just be the Lavarel underpinnings.)

What I really like about October is the ability to quickly spin up small CRUD database functionality (index + detail pages and simple backend updates for "custom" objects like staff members, white papers, etc.) using their Builder plugin. Any idea if Statamic offers something similar without diving into custom code?

However, October seems to be a little stagnant: you search, and most of the forum discussions are from 2016, and many plugins are no longer maintained well.

[1] https://octobercms.com/

You won't find common examples of scaffolding for the XAMPP technology stack, because technology stacks in general do not follow such rigid styles that frontend frameworks like React do. For example if you compare two popular PHP projects like WordPress and Drupal they have completely different folder structures despite both being CMSs. Rigid or "recommended" folder structures only apply to any particular backend frameworks, design patterns or CI/CD methodologies you choose to follow, not the stack itself.