It’s not hard to make a website these days. You can build one using AI or just drag-and-drop platforms. There are tons of cheap (and even free!) hosting options out there too.

But if you’re a bit of an idiot like me and enjoy making things harder than they need to be, AI fits like a glove. In this post I’ll explain how I built this site even without being super technical, how AI helped me, how it got in the way, and what you can learn from the whole mess.

From the beginning

I’ve built websites in freaking Dreamweaver (!) with raw HTML. But lately, both for myself and clients, I’d been relying on the good ol’ reliable combo: WordPress + Elementor. Once ChatGPT showed up in our lives 🙏🏻 I realized there had to be an easier way. (spoiler: it was just different, not necessarily easier)

Since AI was already helping me learn some new things, I decided to build a site from scratch, using AI both to learn stuff I had no idea how to do and to actually do things I couldn’t pull off on my own.

I just wanted a simple one-pager (but with the option to add more later) and a blog that pulled posts from my Notion, because that’s where I run my agency’s workflow and it’s where I like to write. Including right now, as I’m typing this.

Domain

Easiest part. I’ve done it a million times, just sign up on any platform, choose your domain, and point the DNS.

“Oh god I have no idea what that means!”

Then be grateful you live in 2025 and have a little all-knowing robot ready to help you with (almost) anything. Ask ChatGPT and it’ll explain it to you.

Hosting

Hehehe this is where I wasted most of my time. I’ve always used the usual hosting websites, and for simple WordPress stuff, they work great. One-click installers, support, all that jazz. But if I took the easy way I wouldn’t suffer, and I like to suffer.

So I got a raw server and tried to configure everything myself. I absolutely do not have the technical chops for that. At best I kind of understand the logic of how things should work, but that alone won’t get you far.

I went with a VPS from DigitalOcean, but there are plenty of options. And you’re not locked into yearly plans, you can pay monthly. The entire process was guided by ChatGPT. Seriously. That’s the secret. Channel your inner 3-year-old and ask “why?” about everything.

“Chat, why do I need a VPS and not just a regular server?”

If you don’t even know what a VPS is, guess what I’m gonna tell you to do:

“Chat, what is a VPS?” lol

Seriously, just keep asking and you’ll probably learn a ton (and screw things up along the way too).

“Chat, are these specs enough for what I need?”

“Chat, how do I link my domain to this server?”

“Chat, can I have subdomains?”

“Chat, a terminal window popped up, it’s all black with a bunch of code, what do I do?”

…

Eventually I managed to configure everything...

Except for the whole part where the site goes live automatically like I wanted 💀

Forgive me, but now comes the twist: I did set up the server, but I’m only using it to run n8n (an automation tool, more on that in another post). After failing to update the site the specific way I wanted, I gave up and moved to Vercel. Oops.

(but the process is basically the same, and honestly way easier, I just asked Chat to walk me through it and boom, done in 10 minutes. If you don’t feel like “wasting time,” take this route)

The site itself

Look, the site is pretty simple. The magic’s all in the process. I’m using Claude Code, but you could use Cursor or just copy/paste code from ChatGPT. Doesn’t matter. What matters is a machine is writing code that makes a nice, responsive site.

If it were just a landing page, you could pull it off with basic html+css+js (don’t know how? ask Chat!), but I wanted to integrate blog posts from Notion, since that’s where I manage everything. Did I come up with that on my own? Absolutely not. But I didn’t ask ChatGPT either, that idea came from Jack Friks!

“Wait, should I know who Jack Friks is?”

Nah, just a guy I follow on Twitter (yes, it’ll always be Twitter to me). He mentioned the idea, implemented it, and even shared the prompt.

I threw that into Claude Code and, same as I do with ChatGPT, I kept tweaking and asking questions until I was happy. After a bit of trial and error, who would’ve thought, my blog posts were live on the site.

The rest of the static content followed the same formula. Ask AI. Adjust. Grab references. Paste screenshots. Repeat until satisfied.

There’s a whole heated debate to be had here about using AI for this kind of stuff , ethical concerns (if I ask AI to “draw inspiration” from a site screenshot, is that plagiarism?) or security concerns (can someone delete my posts if I mess something up? What would I need to do to make sure a future web app is safe?).

And yeah, some purists will probably hate all this vibecoding. Honestly? I don’t care. This cursed little smart robot helped me learn a bunch of things and gave me a push to finally bring a few ideas to life. It helped me express myself and write things down.

If that’s not both amazing and completely insane to you, it sure is to me.

Conclusion

You can tell someone doesn’t know how to wrap up a post when they literally write “Conclusion” in bold at the end lol. Whatever. This was basically a diary entry, I don’t always have to make sense.

Bottom line: AI can teach you a lot. Just ask. Build the habit of using it to explain stuff you don’t get, and even stuff you do get, but want to see in a new light.

“But AI hallucinates!”

Of course it does. So cross-check it. Use models that search the web. Confirm with someone. Don’t let that stop you from using this mystical beast made of sand and silicon that somehow knows a ton of stuff and can help you.

Think about it, AI will hallucinate if you ask questions it can’t answer or that don’t have clear answers. That’s expected behavior. But web development? Linux servers? Basic stuff like this site? Bro, the internet is flooded with tutorials on this. AI has swallowed terabytes of this content and can spit it back at you beautifully.

Dive in.