How to Build a Website With AI
There are three ways to build a website with AI. An AI website builder generates and hosts the site for you. WordPress with AI tools gives you a familiar system with AI help for content and fixes. An AI coding agent like Claude Code writes the site’s files, which you host anywhere. Builders are fastest. A coding agent gives you the most control and the lowest running costs, and it’s what I use.
Whichever route you take, the job is the same: write a clear brief, give the AI real content, check what it makes, and publish. Below is a live test of the coding-agent route from today, plus what I learned moving one of my own sites off WordPress with AI.
Three routes, compared
| AI website builder | WordPress + AI | AI coding agent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Examples | Hostinger, GoDaddy Airo, Wix, B12 | WordPress with AI plugins, or an assistant helping you | Claude Code, Cursor, Codex |
| Best for | A small business site, live today | Blogs and sites that need plugins (shops, bookings) | Custom sites, tools, calculators, fast static pages |
| Control over the design and code | Low to medium | Medium | Full |
| Can you move it later? | Often hard | Yes | Yes: it’s just files |
| Ongoing cost | Monthly builder plan | Hosting, plus paid plugins | AI plan while building; hosting can be free or cheap |
| Coding knowledge | None | Little | None needed, but you must check the result |
Our guide to AI website builders compares the builder route in detail. The rest of this article focuses on what I’ve done myself.
Live test: a portfolio site from one paragraph
On October 28, 2026 I gave Claude Code an empty folder and a single-paragraph brief. The site was a one-page portfolio for a fictional Portland wedding photographer, Ava Brooks. It needed a hero section, a six-photo gallery, three packages with fixed prices, an About section, testimonials clearly marked as placeholders, and a contact link. The rules were plain HTML and CSS, no outside files, mobile-first, one H1, a meta description, a title under 60 characters, visible keyboard focus, WCAG AA colour contrast, and under 50 KB in total.
It finished in 130 seconds with two files totalling 18 KB. Then I checked its work with my own script instead of trusting its summary:
| Requirement | Result |
|---|---|
| Under 50 KB | Pass: 18,061 bytes |
| One H1, no skipped heading levels | Pass |
| Title under 60 characters, meta description, mobile viewport | Pass: “Ava Brooks | Portland Wedding Photographer” (42) |
| Placeholder images labelled for screen readers | Pass: 7 of 7 |
| No external fonts, scripts or images | Pass |
| Colour contrast at least 4.5:1 | Pass: lowest pair 6.66:1 |
| Mobile-first layout | Pass: one column, then two and three at wider screens |
| Prices, placeholder labels, mailto contact | Pass |
It also added things I hadn’t asked for that a good developer would: a “skip to content” link for keyboard users, and less animation for people who’ve set their device to reduce motion. It was upfront about what it couldn’t do. It hadn’t been allowed to run its own contrast-checking script, so it checked by hand. It said the placeholder email used a reserved test domain and must be replaced, and that real photos would push the page past 50 KB unless compressed.
My check found one real flaw. The “Most popular” badge sits inside the package’s heading, so a screen reader announces the heading as “Classic Most popular”. It’s a one-line fix, and the kind of detail you only catch by checking.
What this shows: for a small, well-specified site, a coding agent gets very close in two minutes. The work that remains is yours. Add real photos (compressed), real testimonials, a real email address, and a final check on your own phone. If you want to try it, start with installing Claude Code and use the brief above as a template; writing clear prompts explains why the brief matters so much.
Moving an existing WordPress site with AI
One of my sites, a PC bottleneck calculator, ran on WordPress with a calculator plugin. On September 5, 2026 I had Claude Code rebuild it as a static site: plain files, no database, no plugins to update. Three things made that move safe:
- Keep every URL: the new site used the same 16 page addresses as the old one, so search engines and existing links kept working.
- Prove the replacement matches: the plugin’s calculation engine was ported to JavaScript and checked against the live WordPress version on 900 test combinations. All 900 matched before anything went live.
- Redirect what changes: eight old WordPress addresses (privacy page, contact page, feeds and similar) were redirected to their new equivalents.
The switch itself happened on October 27, when the domain was pointed at the new host. One detail is easy to miss: the domain’s email records had to be copied to the new DNS settings, or email would have stopped. The old WordPress site stayed on the old host for a few days as a fallback. The code took one day. The care around URLs, redirects and email is what takes the time.
WordPress with AI: where it helps and where it bites
I also run several WordPress sites with AI help, built with the Kadence block editor. AI is excellent at writing content, explaining errors and drafting custom CSS. It’s riskier when an AI agent edits pages directly through WordPress’s API: on my sites that produced page layouts that didn’t render and pages saved empty. Our guide to fixing WordPress errors with AI covers those traps and how to avoid them.
The steps, whichever route you choose
- Write a brief: who the site is for, the pages it needs, what visitors should do, and the rules (speed, accessibility, style). The brief from my test is a good model.
- Gather your real content first: text, photos, prices, contact details. AI fills gaps with placeholders and confident guesses; real content keeps the site honest.
- Get a domain and hosting: builders include hosting; static sites can go on hosts like Vercel, Netlify or Cloudflare Pages. Check the plan’s terms if the site will be commercial.
- Generate, then check: look at every page on a phone and a laptop, test every link and form, and check titles, descriptions, headings and image alt text.
- Remove what isn’t true: AI templates love invented testimonials, fake badges and made-up numbers. Delete anything you can’t back up.
- Launch and redirect: if you’re replacing an old site, keep or redirect every old URL before you switch.
For a bigger example of this process across many pages, see our calculator website case study, which covers nine sites built with AI.
If you’re building a portfolio
A portfolio is one of the best first sites to build with AI, because it’s small and the content is yours. A few things matter more than the design:
- Show fewer, better pieces: pick the work that matches the jobs you want, not everything you’ve done.
- Explain the work: a line or two per piece on the problem, your part and the result helps more than a bare gallery. AI can help you draft these from your notes, but the facts must be yours.
- Use real testimonials or none: my test labelled its testimonials as placeholders. Replace them with real quotes, with permission, or leave the section out.
- Compress your images: photos are what make portfolio sites slow. Resize them to the size they’re shown at and save as WebP or JPEG.
- Make contact obvious: one clear way to reach you, repeated at the end of the page.
- Put your name in the title: people often search for you by name, so a title like “Your Name | What You Do, Where” helps them find you.
Common questions
Can I build a website with AI for free? Partly. Many AI builders have free plans with limits, such as their own subdomain or branding. With a coding agent, the hosting for a static site can be free, but the agent itself needs a paid plan; Claude Code needs Claude Pro or higher.
Do I need coding skills? No, for any of the three routes. You do need to check the result: look at every page, test the links and read the text. In my test, that check caught a flaw the AI’s own summary missed.
How long does it take? A simple one-page site took the agent 130 seconds in my test. Gathering real content, checking and launching takes longer than the build, usually hours rather than minutes.
Can AI move my existing site? Yes, if you keep every URL, prove any tools still work the same, and redirect what changes. My WordPress-to-static move took a day of building and a careful switch of the domain’s settings. To compare AI coding tools for this kind of job, see our AI coding tools comparison.
