I Left WordPress After 10 Years — and Let AI Build My Website in 30 Minutes
Last week I thought: "I should have a personal blog."
Nothing grand. Just a small corner of the internet where I could write down what I'm working on, what I'm learning. Like a notebook that anyone could flip through if they wanted.
The problem was: I don't know how to code.
Well, more accurately — I know Photoshop, Canva, basic HTML/CSS. But building a website from scratch? React? Next.js? Firebase?
Nope.
## But wait — this wasn't my first time building a website.
I used to work with WordPress all the time. Built several personal blogs with it, even an e-commerce site. Back then, WordPress was the default choice for pretty much everyone — want a website? Install WordPress, pick a theme, install plugins, done.
Sounds simple enough, but anyone who's used WordPress long enough knows the feeling: everything starts out easy, then the longer you use it, the more... exhausting it gets.
The theme you picked looked gorgeous in the demo, but on your own site it never quite matches. Want to tweak something small — change a font, move a button — sometimes you have to dig into custom CSS or install yet another plugin. Then that plugin conflicts with another one. Your website starts loading slowly, and you have no idea which of the dozens of installed plugins is the culprit.
WordPress is like renting a house and decorating it by buying furniture from dozens of different stores. A table from here, a chair from there, a lamp from somewhere else. Each piece is fine on its own, but put them together and sometimes they just refuse to get along.
And then one day you wake up, open your website, and find a line of strange Chinese characters sitting right there in your footer. Or Google sends you an email warning that your site is distributing malware. You didn't do anything wrong — it's just that some plugin had a security vulnerability, and hackers quietly slipped in without you ever knowing.
In 2024, nearly 8,000 new security vulnerabilities were discovered in the WordPress ecosystem — a 68% increase from the previous year. 96% of them came from plugins. Over half a million websites were infected with malware in just one year. Looking back, my own e-commerce site got hit with malware once too. Had to hire someone to clean it up, took a whole week.
Then there's the hosting situation. WordPress is "free" — true, but you still have to pay for hosting every month. Cheap shared hosting is slow, fast VPS is expensive. Not to mention SSL certificates, automatic backups, CDN... each thing costs a little, but it all adds up.
My needs were simple: write a blog, post my artwork, have an "about me" page. That's it. But WordPress gave me an enterprise-level content management system — with a complex admin dashboard, thousands of options I'd never touch, and the never-ending anxiety of updating core, themes, and plugins.
It's like buying an 18-wheeler to go grocery shopping.
Is this the slow death of WordPress for users like me — people who just need a simple little corner of the internet, who don't need WooCommerce, don't need Elementor, don't need a "plugin maze" with 70,000 choices where every single one claims to be "the best"?
I don't know. But I know I was tired of it.
Tired enough that when I thought "I should have a blog," my first instinct was no longer to open WordPress.
And there's another thing that anyone who's used WordPress long enough knows about: pirated themes and plugins. I was guilty of this too — who wouldn't be, when a $60 premium theme is shared for free online, just download and install? It looks identical to the original. But inside, there are sometimes lines of code you'll never see — backdoors, redirects, ad injections, even crypto miners running on your visitors' machines. All I wanted was a fun little blog to write random stuff, and I ended up unknowingly hosting malware for someone else.
## So I tried asking AI.
No high expectations. Just thought: "Let's see what it can do."
And... the result genuinely surprised me.
### First 5 minutes
I opened Claude and typed:
"Claude, I want a personal website. Has a blog for writing posts, a place to show my drawings. Tech stack: Next.js, Firebase, Vercel (I heard people mention these on Twitter). Dark theme, like a computer terminal."
I wasn't sure what I was saying. Just copied terminology from other people's blogs and stitched it into a sentence that sounded-somewhat-reasonable.
Claude replied with a wall of text. I didn't understand all of it. But at the end it said: "I've created the project for you."
Opened GitHub to check... wait, there was actually a repo with all the folders and files. The entire project structure that would have taken me half a day of Googling just to figure out where to start.
Genuinely surprised.
### 10 minutes later
Time to make it look good. I used V0 (Vercel's tool) — a tool where you describe what you want in words, and it generates the UI.
I typed: "I want an ASCII art logo, typing animation effect, image gallery in Pinterest-style layout."
V0 generated several components.
I didn't understand the code. But I know how to copy-paste. The most useful skill life has ever taught me.
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V into the project.
### 20 minutes later
Now... how do I get this on the internet?
I Googled "how to deploy Next.js."
It said to type vercel deploy.
I tried it.
It ran. Loading. Done.
There was a link. I clicked it.
Website. Live. For real.
gianghaison.me
I sat staring at my screen for 5 minutes. Refreshed a few times. Checked on my phone. Sent the link to friends: "hey, can you see anything when you open this?"
It was still there. My website. Made by me. 30 minutes.
Not a drag-and-drop WordPress template — the thing I'd grown so familiar with that I was sick of it. This was custom, with real code, running on the same stack that proper developers use.
And I can't code.
## What AI could do (that genuinely surprised me)
✅ Created the entire project structure — Folders, files, config. I didn't need to know what any of it was, just like you don't need to know how each brick is laid as long as the house stands.
✅ Wrote "proper" code — A developer friend looked it over and nodded: "Hey, this is pretty solid, follows best practices." I didn't know what "best practices" meant, but it felt good.
✅ Set up automatic deployment — Every time I push code to GitHub, the website auto-updates. No FTP, no SSH into a server like the WordPress days. Magic.
✅ Responsive out of the box — No tweaking needed, it just adapts to mobile/desktop. With WordPress, this sometimes required installing yet another plugin.
## What AI... couldn't do (being honest)
❌ Didn't know what I wanted — If I said something vague like "make it pretty," the result was equally vague. AI can't read minds, it reads words. I had to describe specifically: what color, what font, what layout — the clearer I was, the better the result.
❌ Had no "taste" — AI generated 5 options. I had to pick which one looked good. It's like a very skilled tailor who cuts every line perfectly straight, but needs you to tell them what style you want to wear.
❌ Couldn't fix complex bugs on its own — Once, deployment failed. AI said "check the log file." I didn't know what a log file was. Had to Google it. Then went back to ask AI. Then Googled again. Looped several rounds before it was resolved.
❌ Didn't understand implicit context — First time I said "add a gallery," it assumed I meant a photo gallery. I had to explain: "No, it's an art gallery, with filters by medium — watercolor, pencil, digital." You have to be very explicit, because AI doesn't know your life.
Bottom line: AI is very capable, but it's not a wizard. It needs clear direction from you. No direction, no results. Simple as that.
## A new kind of "no-code" — and it's nothing like Wix
I used to think "no-code" meant Wix, Webflow. Drag and drop. Use a template. Looks nice out of the box, but try to change anything beyond the template and you... hit the ceiling.
This is different.
Wix/Webflow gives you pre-made blocks. You arrange them like playing Lego — but you can only play with the Lego set they give you.
Claude + V0 — you describe anything, and it codes it for you. No limits in theory. But in practice there are still real limitations: if you can't describe well, it builds the wrong thing; if you want complex features, you have to iterate many times; sometimes it generates broken code, and you have to debug it (or ask it to debug itself — yes, very meta).
It's not a magic wand. It's a power tool — powerful, but you need to know how to hold it.
## What I learned
1. I don't need to "know code" to have a website. But I need to know what I want — clearly, specifically, no ambiguity. I need to be able to describe things in words, because it turns out communication skills matter more than coding skills in this era. And I need patience to iterate — first attempt doesn't look great, redo it. Second attempt still not right, redo again.
2. AI doesn't replace me. It works alongside me. I still have to decide the design, choose colors, pick fonts, review output, fix things I don't like. AI is an assistant, not a contractor. It doesn't take a brief and disappear for 2 weeks. It sits beside you, works step by step, and asks "does this look right?" after each step.
3. Some things AI does terrifyingly well. Generating boilerplate code, setting up config files, writing documentation, suggesting best practices. Tasks that would take me all day if I did them manually. AI does them in seconds.
4. Some things AI does... poorly. Understanding vague context, making "taste" decisions, fixing complex bugs, optimizing performance. Things that require intuition and experience — AI still can't replace those.
5. The cost is surprisingly low. Claude Pro: $20/month. V0: Free. Vercel: Free. Firebase: Free. Cloudflare: Free. Total: $20/month. Compare that to the WordPress days: hosting $5-10/month, premium theme $50-60 one-time, yearly plugin renewals... and if you got hit with malware, another $100-200 to hire someone to clean it up.
## Then I built one more thing
The website was up. But every time I wanted to write a blog post, I had to: write the content, paste it into a file, push to GitHub, wait for deployment, then if I wanted to share on Facebook/Twitter, manually copy-paste everything.
Sound familiar? Exactly the same as the WordPress workflow — write, go to dashboard, paste, format, choose category, set featured image, publish, then copy the link to social media. Too many steps.
I thought: "Is there a way for AI to handle all of this?"
Turns out... yes. It's called MCP (Model Context Protocol).
Basically, instead of AI just chatting with you, it can actually "work" with real tools — upload to Firebase, create Calendar events, update Google Sheets. Like having a real person sitting next to you who has hands to press buttons, not just a mouth to talk.
Real example:
I type: "Kai (my name for Claude), publish the blog post about Hũ Vàng."
Kai takes the content I just wrote, generates a slug, uploads to Firebase, returns the link. 5 seconds. Done.
I type: "Kai, create Facebook content for this post."
Kai reads the blog, writes 3 Facebook posts with different hooks, saves them to Google Sheet, creates a Calendar reminder so I remember to post.
Done. From "finished writing" to "content ready for 3 platforms" — less than 2 minutes.
## This isn't "perfect" either
Setting up MCP was complex — took me 2 days to get everything running smoothly. Sometimes it misunderstands, does the wrong thing, requires multiple iterations. It's not a "set up once and forget" situation — you still have to fine-tune occasionally.
But once it's working... wow.
2 hours of work per week → 5 minutes. Not an exaggeration.
## Final thoughts
I'm not bragging. Honestly, I'm still surprised I pulled this off.
I'm not "good at tech." I'm a designer. I draw. I use Photoshop. When it came to building websites, I knew WordPress, knew drag-and-drop, knew how to install plugins. That was it.
But now I have:
- >My own website (gianghaison.me) — not WordPress, but custom code running on a modern stack
- >A self-managed blog — there's a proper admin dashboard, but I almost never need to open it. Everything I delegate to Kai through chat: publish posts, edit content, upload images, create schedules — one message and it's done, like texting a close friend for a favor
- >An automated workflow — finish writing, say one sentence, everything runs on its own
All thanks to AI.
But honestly, I know exactly where I stand. Technology has gone far beyond what I'm doing — there are people out there who've built automation systems so sophisticated that looking at my setup, they'd see it as a child's toy. I'm still a beginner, just stepping into this world, still looking around wide-eyed.
But... I'm happy.
Happy because 6 months ago, I didn't even know what Next.js was. Now I have a website running on it. Happy because that feeling of typing a command, hitting Enter, and watching my website appear on screen — that feeling, no matter how many times, still thrills me. Happy because I know there's so much more ahead to discover, and the journey has only just begun.
People say "don't compare your chapter 1 with someone else's chapter 20." I think that's right. This website might be nothing to a senior developer, but to me — a designer who'd never written a single line of JavaScript before — it's an achievement worth being proud of.
AI isn't magic. It makes mistakes. It needs clear direction. It needs iteration, patience. It needs you to know what you want.
But it's good enough for my needs. I don't need a "perfect" website. I need one that's "good enough, looks decent, runs well." AI delivered that — in 30 minutes, for $20/month, and it'll never get hacked because of a faulty plugin.
As for WordPress? I'm not saying WordPress is bad — it still powers 43% of all websites worldwide, and it'll be around for a long time. But for people like me, with simple needs, working solo, low budget, wanting peace of mind... maybe WordPress's time has passed.
Or at least, it has for me.
If you also want your own blog/website but think "I don't know how to code":
Try it.
You don't need 6 months of programming courses. You don't need to hire a developer. You don't need to install WordPress and drown in a plugin maze.
Just know what you want, describe it clearly, and be patient with trial and error.
AI will handle the rest.
Not perfect. But good enough. And sometimes, "good enough" is exactly what you need.
P.S: This post was also drafted by Kai (my AI assistant). I edited the tone to make it sound more... human. And I've lost count of how many times I asked it to rewrite — the first few versions read like a sales pitch. Had to teach it how to tell a story like a normal person. 😅