I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for my YouTube channel for several years, but keep putting it off. My coffee channel is small, but has a growing community of fans, reaching over 3000 subscribers as of recently.
So I wish to have a platform where I can share more detailed reviews without relying on the YouTube algorithm. But the thought of building a website from scratch, all by myself always frightened me.
When I came across WordPress.com’s AI website builder I decided to test it out and build a real website for my coffee reviews.
In this post, I’ll share my experience, step by step, from start to finish.
*Just a quick note: this post contains affiliate links. That means I may earn a small commission if you decide to sign up through my link at no extra cost to you.
Now let’s get down to business!
Step 1: Launching the WordPress AI Builder
I started by visiting WordPress.com/ai-website-builder at about 12:58 PM today.
The builder page looks very simple and easy to use with just a single chatbox in the middle of the screen.
The first thing it asked me was what type of website I wanted to create.
I typed: “Create a website for a coffee blog”
Next, it asked me to clarify the main goal of the website.
I wrote: “I want a website to review coffee and gear”
Then came the site title question.
I wasn’t 100% locked on a title yet, so I asked for suggestions, hoping it could help me decide based on four options. It did not act as a chatbot assistant and instead asked me again to choose a title. So I went with: “The Toasted Bean” for now.
The next step was to choose a tagline (or website description) in one sentence.
I typed: “Coffee review website”
The WordPress AI then generated a summary of my site name, concept, and tagline.
Happy with it, I clicked “Create my site.”
And this is how part one ended. All this took less than 5 minutes.
Step 2: Watching WordPress AI Generate My Site
Here’s where it got interesting. As I was waiting for AI to work its magic, I kept thinking: “why the AI didn’t ask me about colors, fonts, or number of pages”. So naturally, I was worried that the website would be a disaster.
But within less than one minute, it created a website that completely exceeded my expectations.
- The colors matched a “coffee vibe” (with browns, whites, blacks)
- Images looked realistic, blended well and were relevant to my topic
- Layout was clean and functional, including a section titled “reviews”
Here’s a quick look at my site:
To summarize, the AI generated website included all these sections:
- Site title and menu at the top
- A cover photo
- About section
- Reviews section
- Email newsletter signup
- Contact form
- …and a second About section (which I believe was a mistake, but later I fixed it)
Honestly, I was impressed. For just describing my website in a few sentences, the WordPress AI builder gave me a full, usable site structure in 1 minute.
Step 3: Customizing The Site With AI Help
On the right-hand side, an AI chat panel appeared and let me choose the next customization steps. I had a list of standard customisation steps I could choose from, plus a chat panel where I could write my own instructions:
- Change colors
- Adjust page layout
- Choose fonts
- Create more pages
- Rewrite text
I didn’t need to add new pages, but I wanted to change the second “About section” and turn it into a YouTube channel section.
Here’s the before with the AI generated text:
Here’s the same section after I updated it with my own text:
I manually typed my own text and then, out of curiosity, let the AI rewrite it in a “feminine, earthy, coffee lover voice.”
Big mistake. 😅
It churned out overly flowery phrases like “gentle rankings” to describe my coffee review process. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Lesson learned: the AI’s text generation is not always practical, and sometimes it can make things worse.
Even worse, I hadn’t saved my original text, and the AI couldn’t revert it. Ughhh…
Important tip: SAVE YOUR WORK. The AI builder does not autosave, so I lost almost an hour of writing.
Step 4: Uploading Images, Layouts and Final Touches
Next, I replaced all the images with my own uploads by clicking on them, but remembered to save every step.
I also adjusted the fonts and colors to fit my brand style. This part took the longest, simply beacuse it’s hard to decide. I went back and forth, but it was quite easy. All these were done by chatting with the AI tool.
Here are the questions I asked:
- “Can we change the layout?” – and it generated 4 completely different website layouts with different image placements, colors and fonts.
- “Show me color palettes for my site that are: minimalist, neutral and fit a coffee site”
- “Show me minimalist fonts suitable for a blog”
Before publishing, I previewed the site across multiple devices, especially the mobile view. This is crucial. Even if a website looks fine on a desktop view, it can look completely off on a mobile phone.
In the preview mode I also discovered something cool: every section on the landing page automatically became a clickable, individual page (About, Reviews, Guides etc.).
This made it super easy to have a complete, ready-to-launch webiste in just a few hours!
By 5:03 PM, I had a fully functional coffee website ready to go.
My Final Thougts After Building a Coffee Blog with WordPress AI Builder
Overall, it’s quite impressive to be able to build a website from scratch without a developer, a copywriter a designer, or even a teammate. The AI tools have managed to speed up and simplify websites which is very useful for many creators and small businesses with tight budgets.
In my case, I was postponing starting a website for my YouTube channel because I thought it was a lot of work and a tedious process.
I’m glad that building a website with WordPress.com’s AI website builder wasn’t either.
Here’s the final look (mobile view) of my new website!
Let me share some of the pros and cons based on my experience with this AI website builder.
Pros:
- Easy to create websites and blogs with no prior experience needed
- Removes the hardest part: starting a website
- Good for beginners, creators and small businesses
- I built a basic website (with a blog) in under 5 hours which is remarkable
- Easy to customize the look (colors, fonts, images, etc)
- You can chat with the AI panel and ask for improvements
Cons:
- Doesn’t autosave your work as you go (huge risk to waste hours of work!)
- AI text rewriting is often worse than your own writing.
- Can’t revert generated text once replaced
Now to the question you’re most likely asking:
Would I recommend it?
Absolutely. For anyone who wants to start a site quickly, especially solo creators like me. Just remember: save your edits frequently, and be careful with using AI-generated text, as it can sound weird or have mistakes.
For me, The Toasted Bean is ready to officially go live (need to decide on a website domain name), and I can’t wait to start sharing more detailed coffee reviews, both on YouTube and on the blog.
If you’ve been holding off on starting your website, try the WordPress.com AI website builder for yourself. It might surprise you how fast you can go from idea to live site.
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