1 How do you make your own website?

I always start with pen and paper before opening a tool. Ponder about what your site needs. What would you put on it? Who will open it, and what will they be looking for?

Will you post writing? Are you the one posting? Then you need a separate role for yourself on the server. Should there be membership? Why should there be? Or will you collect a mailing list? Why? It helps to keep asking why.

Will you post writing?

A role tells the server what an account is allowed to do. Your account is the admin, so it can publish, edit and delete posts. A visitor can only read. The server checks this every time someone tries to publish. Hiding the publish button is not enough, because anyone can send the same request without the button.

Should there be membership?

Membership means people create accounts on your site. Then you keep their passwords safe, send password reset emails, and delete their data when they ask. If you cannot say why your site needs it, it does not need it.

Will you collect a mailing list?

A mailing list means you keep people's email addresses. That is personal data. In Turkey it falls under KVKK, in Europe under GDPR. Tell people what you will send, and put an unsubscribe link in every email. A mailing list service handles sending and unsubscribing for you.

Write a good prompt

Once you have a picture in your head of what it will be like, the first step is to write a good prompt. A good prompt tells the agent what you decided on paper. Which pages there are, what goes on each one, who can do what, and what you do not want.

"Build my personal website. The home page has my name, what I do and links to my projects. The projects page has a short part for each project with a screenshot and a link. The writing page lists my posts. Only I can publish, edit and delete posts, so give me an admin account and check it on the server. Visitors do not have accounts. Tell me which files you created and how to run it on my computer."

Run it on your computer and check it before the next step.

Deploy it

Deploying means putting your project on a host so it gets an address anyone can open. Until then it runs only on your computer, at localhost, and nobody else can open that link. You do not set up a server yourself. Hosts like Vercel and Netlify do that part. You connect your project, they build it and give you an address. If you buy a domain, you point it to the same place.

Add a database if you need one

Your posts, your admin account, the emails on your mailing list. Anything that is added or changed while the site is live has to be saved somewhere, and that somewhere is a database. If your site only shows things you wrote into the project yourself, you do not need one.

Take care that the design does not look like AI slop

AI slop harms your personal brand instead of helping it. You know the look. The same purple gradient, the same rounded cards, a big sentence about unlocking your potential. People who open your site want to see you and your work. Put your real projects first, choose the colours and fonts yourself instead of leaving them to the agent, and open the site on your phone too.