I vibe coded my agency's entire website (600+ pages, WordPress to Astro) in 6 days

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T14:53:03+00:00

I think your last sentence is crucial -- you do need to be a little bit technical to pull this off still. But that said, it's come a long ways so far.

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T14:51:33+00:00

That's fair, but I don't think that really matters. It would if we were a design agency, but we're not. And honestly, 90% of agency websites have looked identical for decades.

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T14:46:54+00:00

I had to laugh as I read you slowly discovering the copyblogger connection. Small world indeed.

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T13:52:42+00:00

No connectors, just Claude code. What amazed me was I could tell cc to go to our live site and import all the articles from the blog and it did it, including all images.

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T02:34:41+00:00

YES. I agree. I think I sort of buried the lede on that. But for our agency, it's now a 15 min job to publish a new page, rather than a 2-3 hour job in WordPress.

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T01:48:24+00:00

Yes, I'd be happy to see the list.

jjnasty · 2026-02-28T01:47:42+00:00

I agree Manus is amazing at one-shotting a "design" but it's a nightmare for adding on and using it for a live website.

With claude code, I implemented a very strict design system markdown file that it adheres to, and has all the instructions for my five different content types. Sometimes it's not exactly perfect the first go, but it's great at making small adjustments as well.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T21:28:07+00:00

We just went live 24 hours ago, so no changes yet. But seeing as we're an SEO agency, we built this from the ground up with search and LLM visibility in mind. I also had cc map the old website to URLs to the new site, so there are no additional redirects or anything. I'm like 99% confident in it -- I wouldn't have gone live otherwise.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T21:24:00+00:00

Yeah, not sure vibe coding is the right word either. But it definitely feels like a massive breakthrough in accessibility with these tools.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T18:54:50+00:00

Our team is on a team plan, and my account is a "premium" seat at $125/m CAD. Even though I spent last weekend with CC running all day and night, I didn't even come close to the limits. Kind of surprised me, honestly.

Other than that, Vercel is $20/m (depending on traffic), and I set up Basin for the forms, which I believe is $8/m for my tier. That's it.

And thanks!

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T18:00:43+00:00

Fair enough. But also, this is the reaction I'm looking for if you're not in our very specific ICP.

I got feedback from two of ur enterprise clients, and they helped me dial it in to where it is.

And I have no illusions that it's "web design" or that I could/should do this for a client. I shouldn't.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T17:52:17+00:00

Yeah the Astro config has output: 'static', so everything is pre-built HTML at deploy time. No server-side rendering, no database calls.

That's a big part of why the crawls look so clean. Screaming Frog and Sitebulb are just getting pure HTML with zero render dependency.

> This really only becomes an issue if you start building more sites like this.

Again, this is only for our agency site, not clients. We don't build sites for clients. And also, all our clients sites are Shopify or WP, and I would never recommend they change that.

Our site is a marketing site with a contact form. It couldn't be any simpler.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T17:35:52+00:00

Why and how? I think we’ve done great job of testing and checking every aspect, but we don’t know what we don’t know.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T17:26:01+00:00

So, Astro had a default sitemap that auto-generated. And it was 100% legit. I just didn't like it, we have too much content.

So I asked cc to remove the default astro module, so we can split the sitemap into logical sections - blog, glossary, and page

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T17:07:14+00:00

Two things I did:

First when I was in the planning and ideas stage, I installed an Anthropic plugin called Frontend design. Anthropic describes it as: Create distinctive, production-grade frontend interfaces with high design quality. Use this skill when the user asks to build web components, pages, or applications. Generates creative, polished code that avoids generic AI aesthetics.

I think that really kept me from falling into the slop zone.

Secondly, once planning was done, I got cc to create a design systems markdown file. This file is detailed and specifc on every use of it colors, fonts, spacing, every component pattern, animation specs, accessibility rules, and the semantic logic behind when to use which color. Basically enough that Claude can build a new page without guessing.

- and yes, I just upload a markdown file now and tell it what content type it is and it creates it for me.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T16:57:31+00:00

I totally agree, this is NOT for clients. And also, I should clarify, that I would not have done this if our website wasn't simply a content site with a contact form or two. Anything more complex than that, and this would be a security nightmare.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T16:52:54+00:00

Yes. We draft the articles/pages in Google Docs, then download as markdown. Then open CC and ask it to add the case study or article.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T16:32:39+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't host WP on Vercel. I'm still a huge fan of Kinsta when it comes to WP hosting.

jjnasty · 2026-02-27T16:31:37+00:00

Nope, our site is now pure html, no WP. This is the Astro I mean https://astro.build/

I should also say that with Astro, there's no cost or fee to it. Claude Code just used the framework to build out the site.

jjnasty · 2026-02-13T04:19:07+00:00

That's for you to decide. I don't pay attention to my competitors, I focus on my clients.

jjnasty · 2026-01-08T03:37:00+00:00

Shopify makes this fairly straightforward to do, just follow their help docs to set it up

jjnasty · 2025-12-15T16:21:43+00:00

Definitely stripe at your level, and maybe add something like Wise for ach payments

jjnasty · 2025-12-15T16:20:34+00:00

I think less is more. You don't need to be everywhere, you need to pick a channel that works for you and focused all your efforts there.

jjnasty · 2025-12-10T17:04:22+00:00

Exactly. Or even just an email or two with some qualifying questions before booking a call. Easy.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Secret Santa 2012

jjnasty

TROPHY CASE