What Building a Website with AI Actually Taught Me (Hint: It’s Not as Simple as 5 Clicks)

Spoiler: This wasn’t built in a day—and definitely not in five clicks.
I’ve seen all the headlines and YouTube thumbnails:
“Build a stunning website in 5 minutes with AI!”
While technically true, I quickly learned there’s a huge difference between publishing a site and building one that reflects your goals, brand, and creativity. This post is about the real process I went through: the false starts, the stack decisions, and the mindset shift that made everything click.
If you’re starting your own journey with AI and web development, this one’s for you.
🧠 What You’ll Learn in This Post
- Why I ditched WordPress, Wix, and no-code platforms for a custom stack
- How planning and prompts made or broke my progress with AI
- The unexpected value of failure and “dumb” questions
- What I’d do differently if I started again
🧱 Before This Site: All the Dead Ends
I didn’t get here on my first try. Or second. Or third.
Before landing on the custom site you’re on now, I tried:
- WordPress (overwhelming plugin sprawl)
- Wix (fast, but limited in flexibility)
- CMS tools like Notion-backed blogs (cool, but too constrained)
- Vercel site templates (clean, but still cookie-cutter)
Each time, I got a little closer to what I wanted—but something was always missing. I wanted control. I wanted flexibility. I wanted to understand what was going on under the hood.
That’s when I decided:
I’m going to build this thing from scratch.
Even if it breaks me a little.
🔧 My Final Stack (and Why I Chose It)
After all the testing, I picked this combo:
- Next.js – Fast, modern, and React-based (I’d never touched React before this… fun times)
- Tailwind CSS – Once it clicked, it made design way easier
- MDX – I can write posts in Markdown and still use React components
- Vercel – Smooth deployment and free tier is beginner-friendly
This stack gave me full control—without drowning me in complexity (at least, not all the time).
💡 The First Big Lesson: AI Isn’t Magic—It’s a Mirror
I expected AI to do more of the heavy lifting. I thought I could just say “Build me a custom site” and boom, done.
What I learned instead:
- The better the prompt, the better the output
- If I didn’t know what I wanted, neither did the AI
- Adding context, screenshots, code, and examples made a huge difference
Eventually, I realized:
AI gives you back what you put in. Garbage in, garbage out.
🧠 The Secret Weapon = Planning + Prompting
One of the most powerful things I learned was to plan first.
This sounds boring, but hear me out.
When I mapped out:
- What I wanted my homepage to include
- What features I needed
- How I wanted posts, pages, and navigation to work
…it saved hours of rework later. AI tools helped so much more when I gave them structure to work from.
And when I used tools like Claude Code or custom GPTs with instructions tuned to my voice and goals? Game-changer.
🤖 The AI Tools I Used the Most
🔹 ChatGPT
Explaining things, troubleshooting, generating code snippets, naming files, structuring layouts
🔹 Claude Code
Autonomous coding agent with custom memory and ability to maintain flow across changes
Yup. Still needed this one. AI didn’t always get it right.
🤯 What Humbled Me
- Every element on a site is a decision—design, layout, accessibility, responsiveness
- A “simple nav bar” took me three attempts and multiple fixes
- Understanding how front-end and back-end connect was way harder than expected
- You don’t know how much you don’t know until you try building from scratch
But it also made me realize:
This stuff is learnable.
I just had to be willing to slow down and figure it out.
💡 Advice for Other Beginners
- Don’t chase “easy” if you care about learning.
- Ask the “dumb” questions. They’re usually the best ones.
- Use AI with intention. The more context you give it, the more useful it becomes.
- Document your progress. You’ll forget how much you’ve grown otherwise.
🔗 Related Posts You Might Like
- How Launching My First Website Nearly Broke Me (But Didn’t)
- Level Up Complete? My Adventures Building Two Simple Games
💬 What Are You Building?
Whether it’s your first site, a portfolio, or a random project idea—tell me about it.
Let’s figure this stuff out together. And if you ever feel overwhelmed, just remember:
You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just doing something new.
Thanks for reading!