How I Rebuilt My Entire Website in 60 Minutes Using AI — And Now My Hosting is Free
I just rebuilt the entire Tech Seeking Human website from scratch. New design. New platform. New hosting. Total time: 60 minutes. The amount of time I actually had to do something myself? About 10 minutes.
Here's how I did it — and why my hosting bill is now $0.
Step 1: Exporting Everything from WordPress
The old Tech Seeking Human site was running on WordPress with SiteGround hosting. It worked, but it was slow, expensive to maintain, and felt like dragging a legacy system around.
The first step was getting all the content out. I used a WordPress export plugin to pull every post, page, image reference, and category into a structured JSON file. Podcasts, blog posts, metadata — everything came across cleanly in one export. No manual copy-pasting. No hunting through databases.
Step 2: Claude Rebuilt the Entire Site
This is where it gets wild. I handed the exported content to Claude (Anthropic's AI) and told it to rebuild the site as a modern Next.js application.
Claude didn't just dump content into a template. It:
- Parsed all the WordPress content and restructured it for a static site
- Built every page — homepage, podcast episodes, blog posts, about page, contact
- Created responsive components with Tailwind CSS
- Set up dynamic routing for all podcast and blog content
- Extracted episode links for YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts from the raw WordPress HTML
My role? I described what I wanted and reviewed the output. Claude did the heavy lifting — writing all the React components, the content management layer, the CSS, and the page layouts. This is what I mean when I say my actual hands-on time was about 10 minutes.
Step 3: Pushed to GitHub
Once the site was built, we pushed the entire codebase to a GitHub repository. GitHub hosting is free for public and private repos, so the code lives there at zero cost.
Every change I make going forward gets committed and pushed — and because the site is connected to Vercel, every push triggers an automatic deployment. No FTP. No cPanel. No manual uploads.
Step 4: Deployed on Vercel
Vercel is the front-end cloud platform built by the creators of Next.js. Connecting it to my GitHub repo took about 30 seconds — Vercel detected the Next.js project, configured the build settings automatically, and deployed the site.
Here's the thing: Vercel's hobby tier is free. Free hosting. Free SSL certificates. Free CDN. Automatic deployments on every git push. The site loads faster than it ever did on WordPress because it's statically generated and served from edge nodes worldwide.
Combined with free GitHub hosting for the code, my total hosting cost went from whatever I was paying SiteGround to literally $0 per month.
Step 5: Redesigned with Google Stitch
The original WordPress theme was functional but dated. I wanted something that felt premium, modern, and matched the vibe of the podcast — dark, cinematic, editorial.
[Screenshot: The original WordPress site — light theme, standard layout]
I used Google Stitch to generate a completely new design system. Stitch gave me a cohesive visual language — the dark navy background, the ice-blue accent colour (#8dcdff), the Space Grotesk headings, the glass-morphism card effects, the editorial grid layouts.
[Screenshot: The new site — dark cinematic theme with modern typography]
Claude then implemented the entire Stitch design system across every component and page. The before and after is dramatic — it went from a generic WordPress theme to something that looks like it was designed by a studio.
Step 6: Publishing with an AI Agent
Here's the part that really changes the game. I can now publish new content to the site using an AI agent. No logging into a CMS. No WordPress admin panel. I describe what I want, Claude writes the code or content, commits it to GitHub, and Vercel automatically deploys it.
This blog post you're reading right now? Written and published exactly that way.
The Numbers
| Before (WordPress) | After (Next.js + Vercel) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting Cost | ~$15-30/month | $0/month |
| Deploy Process | Manual / FTP / cPanel | Automatic on git push |
| Page Speed | Slow (WordPress overhead) | Near-instant (static + CDN) |
| Design | Generic theme | Custom Stitch design system |
| Publishing | WordPress admin | AI agent via Claude |
| Rebuild Time | Weeks with a developer | 60 minutes with AI |
| My Active Time | — | ~10 minutes |
Watch How I Did It
I recorded the entire process. If you want to see exactly how a WordPress site gets exported, rebuilt with AI, redesigned with Stitch, and deployed to Vercel — all in about an hour — check out the video below.
[Video: Full walkthrough of the rebuild process]
What This Means
We're at a point where you can rebuild an entire website — design, content, hosting — in under an hour, with near-zero cost. The tools are all free or nearly free:
- GitHub — free code hosting
- Vercel — free web hosting with CDN and SSL
- Claude — AI that writes production-quality code
- Google Stitch — AI-generated design systems
The barrier to having a fast, beautiful, professionally-built website has essentially disappeared. You don't need a developer. You don't need a designer. You don't need a hosting budget. You just need to know what you want and be willing to have a conversation with an AI about it.
The future of web publishing is an agent that deploys your ideas while you focus on creating the content that matters.
That's pretty human, if you ask me.