How to Build a Website With ChatGPT: Using AI to Create a WordPress Site From Scratch

In today’s fast-paced environment, the ability to quickly and efficiently develop websites is crucial for businesses and organizations. Therefore, many AI tools like ChatGPT have gained significant popularity in recent years.

Users can now utilize this advanced AI technology to streamline and automate various web development tasks. In this tutorial, we’ll dive deeper into how to build a website using ChatGPT.

How Does ChatGPT Work

From a user standpoint, ChatGPT works in a very straightforward manner. You just need to input a question or prompt in the chatbox, and the AI tool will provide a relevant response.

But the process behind this advanced AI response is quite complex.

ChatGPT uses a machine learning technique called the Natural Language Processing (NLP) model. It enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language by combining aspects of linguistics and computer science.

However, this is not a new model. In fact, most tools, like Google Translate and Siri, that offer features like word suggestion, plagiarism detection, and proofreading, also use the NLP model.

What makes OpenAI different is that it trains ChatGPT using the Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) method. It involves human feedback to measure and rank the responses based on their quality.

In addition, engineers apply the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm to finetune the reinforced learning procedure and produce more realistic responses from ChatGPT.

According to OpenAI, ChatGPT can mimic a human-like conversational pattern. The dialogue format enables the chatbot to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

Those aspects make ChatGPT far more advanced than the existing AI-powered assistants like Siri or Alexa, as they are not trained to engage in back-and-forth conversations.

How to Set Up ChatGPT

Users need to create an account on OpenAI’s website before using ChatGPT. The process is quite straightforward – all you have to do is provide some information, including your name, email address, and phone number.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the detailed step-by-step process of setting up a new OpenAI account.

1. Navigate to OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Visit ChatGPT’s page and click Try ChatGPT to log in or create a new account. You can also get some information about this tool, including its training method, limitations, and examples of use cases.

2. Enter Your Email Address and Password

Create a new account by entering your email address and password, and click Continue.

3. Confirm Your Email and Phone Number

After that, you will receive a verification request through email. Open it and click Verify email address.

The button will direct you to OpenAI’s account onboarding page, where you have to input your name and phone number. Then, OpenAI will send a verification code to your phone number through WhatsApp or SMS.

4. Fill In Your Questions, Hit Submit, and Wait for a Response

Once you’re done with the onboarding process, you can start using the AI model by writing a question or prompt on the AI chat box. Hit enter and wait for the chatbot to respond to your query.

The speed of this response depends on how many people use the service at the moment.

Users can rate the response by clicking either thumbs up or down, helping the AI learn the best answer for the prompt.

It is also possible to try for a new response with the same prompt by clicking the Regenerate response button above the chat box.

How to Build a WordPress Website With ChatGPT

As a language model, ChatGPT can help with various tasks in a web development project. For example, a full-stack developer may use it to:

Create code snippets and examples to help implement specific functionality or features.

Answer technical questions related to the website-building project, such as explaining a certain programming concept or best practices.

Get recommendations for tools, libraries, and resources to streamline the development process and improve efficiency.

Furthermore, this AI model can help users write basic website outlines, design a site and templates, and generate some content ideas.

Build Your WordPress Site Pages with ChatGPT

To start, we asked ChatGPT to create a simple website outline for a small web development business that consists of at least five pages.

ChatGPT provided us with a simple outline and some brief explanations about what each page should contain. Users can use this recommendation as the basis for their sitemap.

Furthermore, you can expand this recommendation to make it more applicable to your site. For example, we asked the AI model to write homepage elements, including the hero title, tagline, and call-to-action (CTA) button.

Additionally, the AI model can help with some essential website elements like a web hosting provider or WordPress business themes based on your needs.

These website ideas can streamline the initial research process by narrowing your options. Remember to conduct further research before applying them to your web development project.

Design Your Site with AI

The next step is to test whether the ChatGPT bot can create code for basic web pages.

In this example, we asked AI to write lines of HTML code to create some of the pages we needed. The first prompt is to make a homepage using Bootstrap responsive design.

Prompt: Create a homepage template using Bootstrap responsive design. Include the menu for the homepage, services, portfolio, blog, and about us on the header.

The chatbot responded with lines of code for a homepage as asked. We tested this code to make sure it works properly, and this is how it looks like on a browser:

Sometimes, the chatbot may stop working midway when trying to write a longer script. When this happens, you have three options:

Continue the script – input this follow-up prompt to make ChatGPT continue from where it left off. We recommend using this method if possible to save time.

Regenerate response – click this button above the chatbox. This will make the chatbot rewrite the previous response from the beginning. However, you may get the same error.

New chat – press this button on the top left of the page if the previous methods don’t work. Note that using this method, you can’t rely on follow-up questions and must start from the beginning.

Next, we asked ChatGPT to create a blog page template with a card layout using the same method.

We intentionally omitted the details about the Bootstrap responsive design to check if it can understand the context from the previous prompt.

Prompt: Create another one for a blog page. This should list all blog posts on the website with a card layout.

The chatbot successfully answered a follow-up question and generated lines of code as prompted. This code also works when we load it on a browser.

Aside from writing code for web page templates, the chatbot can also generate specific elements. Here is an example of how the chatbot creates a simple contact form.

Prompt: Create a simple web page containing a contact form. Include the following fields: name, email address, and phone number.

Note that this code also uses Bootstrap, even though we didn’t specify it on the prompt. To make sure the code works, we have tested it using Replit:

Users may also use the AI model to generate CSS code to adjust specific design elements such as fonts, website color schemes, and element sizes.

Consider integrating the ChatGPT scripts with existing WordPress themes and templates. This way, you don’t have to create templates and layouts from scratch and can focus on adding new design elements to your pages.

You can insert custom CSS code into a WordPress theme, including using the built-in customizer feature, creating a child theme, or using plugins like Simple Custom CSS and Custom CSS Pro.

Generate Site Content with ChatGPT

Due to its language processing capabilities, using ChatGPT for website content generation is one of its most common uses. The AI can generate ideas and drafts in a matter of seconds, saving you time.

We will use the model to create content for static pages and blog posts.

Let’s start by asking ChatGPT to write static content like the About Us page. Make sure to include all important information about your website and business in the prompt to let the chatbot understand the context.

You can also use ChatGPT for blogging and writing blog posts for your website. You can include specific phrases based on your keyword research to make the blog more SEO-friendly. Here, we asked it to generate one about choosing a good domain name.

If you have a specific audience demographic in mind, tell the AI model to create the website content with a specific language style to match its characteristics and expertise level.

For example, you can ask the chatbot to explain the same topic in a simpler language for eighth-grade students.

It is also possible to use this AI model to help you create other content formats, such as videos or podcasts. This way, a user can quickly generate a script, although they may need to make some adjustments to the style and format.

Keep in mind that ChatGPT and other AI content generators can’t write perfect content for your website. Human proofreading and editing are still crucial to ensure high-quality posts.

Limitations of Using ChatGPT to Build a Website

Although it exceeds the capability of existing AI-powered tools, ChatGPT still possesses some limitations.

Currently, the most glaring issue is regarding information accuracy. The AI model can give a plausible-sounding but inaccurate answer to the user. This is because it is unable to check the information.

ChatGPT’s knowledge mostly comes from 2021 data. As OpenAI feeds information from 2022 into the model, it may produce false or outdated information for questions related to more recent topics.

Therefore, a user needs to fact-check answers from ChatGPT before they apply them to their project. Neglecting the human editing process for AI-generated website content can result in a bad brand reputation through the spread of misinformation.

The same goes for the technical aspect. When you make a website using AI, it’s best to test all the code it generates using services like Replit before adding it to your website.

Make sure to also double-check if ChatGPT gives you the same code you requested. Currently, the AI model tends to guess the user’s intention instead of asking a clarifying question for a vague query.

Conclusion

The significant advancement in artificial intelligence technology makes AI-powered website development possible today. ChatGPT can help create websites by generating necessary code snippets and giving various recommendations to speed up the development process.

The AI model is also accessible to everyone, making it a good option even for absolute beginners.

However, ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools, including AI website builders come with some limitations. For example, they can produce a false answer to your question or respond to harmful instructions.

Therefore, while using ChatGPT can help you save time, human editing is still essential in building websites with AI.