Build a business website with AI, one step per page
Build it, host it, and secure it: the twenty-five steps from blank page to live site you actually understand.
A diagram of the mechanism, the classic mistake, and one thing to go try. That's a page.
Build a business website with AI, one step per page
Build it, host it, and secure it: the twenty-five steps from blank page to live site you actually understand.
Set in Space Grotesk, Inter and JetBrains Mono (SIL Open Font License).
Behaviour claims checked against MDN Web Docs (how the web works, domain names, HTTPS), Let's Encrypt documentation (certificates and renewal), Vercel and Netlify documentation (hosting, deployment, SSL), CISA data-backup guidance and OWASP Top 10 material (updates, authentication, backups). Tool names appear as interchangeable examples of their categories; choices change, principles persist. No statistics are quoted; costs are approximate ranges at the time of writing.
General guidance only, for building your own simple site. Not professional security or legal advice.
Your purchase is for personal use only. You do not have redistribution rights: please do not share, resell, or republish this book or its pages.
© 2026 Steve Hodgkiss. All rights reserved. Personal use only; no redistribution rights.
Edition 1.0 · stevehodgkiss.net
Contents
The pieces
Before you build anything: the files a browser fetches, the address on the house, the phonebook that translates it, the rented land the files live on, and the one-page plan that saves the whole project.
- 01A website is just files
- 02The domain name is the address
- 03DNS is the phonebook
- 04Hosting is rented land
A website is a folder of files: the words, the styling, the pictures. A browser fetches fresh copies and assembles them into a page, on every single visit.
A website is just files
Let's say the AI just handed you a page that looks finished. It handed you files: words, styling, pictures, nothing more mystical than that.
The classic mistake is thinking the site lives in the chat, or in the tool that made it. The chat is the workshop; the finished thing has to move out.
Every visitor's browser fetches fresh copies and assembles them, so a change you deploy is the change they see.
The site is files. Everything else is an address.
Ask the AI to name the files it just made for your page and say what each one does. If it can't list them, you don't yet know what you're holding.
A domain name is the human-readable address of your site. Computers reach each other with numbers called IP addresses; the name is the plate on the front of the house.
The domain name is the address
Let's say the quote treats website and domain as one thing. They're two: files are the house, the domain is the plate on the front.
The mistake is letting an agency register the domain under their own name; whoever is named controls it.
Register it yourself, in your own account; about a takeaway a year, at the time of writing.
You're renting the land. Own the address.
Look up your business name at a registrar's availability search. Register nothing yet. Just note which endings are free and what a year costs.
DNS, the domain name system, is the internet's phonebook. Your browser asks it to translate the name into the number, then dials. Pages of the phonebook are cached, so updates spread slowly.
DNS is the phonebook
Let's say you've pointed the domain at your host, typed it in, and got nothing. The phonebook still shows the old page; it updates slowly, by design.
The mistake is panicking and changing five settings at once. Now you don't know which change worked.
Make the one change, then wait; hours, not minutes, is normal for the world's caches to catch up.
The phonebook updates slowly. That's normal.
On any site you visit, ask the AI how to look up that domain's numbers from your computer, and try it. You've just read a phonebook entry.
Hosting is rented land: a company's always-on computer holds your files and serves them to visitors. The land is rented; the address plate and the house are yours and can move.
Hosting is rented land
Let's say someone tells you your site is "on the internet" now. It's on their computer, one that never sleeps, with power and backup you don't want to own.
The mistake is paying for a big server farm when a simple site needs a small plot. A five-page site is a cottage, not a factory.
Static hosting for simple sites sits on free or cheap tiers at the time of writing, and moving hosts later is a normal, well-trodden step.
Rent the land to suit the house.
Make a two-column list: what the host provides, what you still own yourself. If any row is unclear, that's your next question to the AI.
Building with AI
The prompt that generates a real page, the words before the polish, iterating like a designer, images that are free and legal, and the phone check most people skip.
- 01Context is king: brief the AI like a builder
- 02The mobile check: most visitors hold a phone
Context is king. An AI given your one-page plan, your audience and your voice drafts your site. The same AI given four words builds something that could belong to anyone.
Context is king: brief the AI like a builder
Let's say you type "make me a website" and get something beige and forgettable. The AI filled every gap with the industry average; you left it gaps.
The mistake is treating the prompt as the whole job. The prompt is the last line of the brief, not the first.
Paste the one-page plan, say who visits and what they should do, and name your voice in two words.
Brief like a builder: drawings first.
Write the brief message you'd paste before any website ask: plan in, audience in, two words of voice. Save it; you'll reuse it every session.
Most visitors hold a phone, so check on a real phone first: no sideways scrolling, text that fits, and buttons big enough for a thumb. The desktop view can wait.
The mobile check: most visitors hold a phone
Let's say the draft looks perfect on your laptop. Hold it: that's the shape most visits happen in.
Approving on the big screen only lets sideways scroll and tiny buttons through.
Open it on your phone; fix what you pinch or squint at.
If it fails in the hand, it's broken.
Open your draft on your phone and note three irritations, sideways movement, tiny buttons, unreadable text. Feed all three back to the AI as one fix list.
Going live
Choosing a host, deploying, pointing your own domain at it, getting the padlock for free, and the checklist you run before you tell anyone.
- 01Deploy: from laptop to internet
- 02HTTPS: the padlock
Deploying means sending your folder to the host, which publishes fresh copies that stay up while your laptop is closed. Two common ways: drag the folder into their page, or connect a repository they watch.
Deploy: from laptop to internet
Let's say the page is finished and still lives on your laptop. Deploying publishes copies to the host's always-on computer.
The mistake is waiting for a perfect moment, or thinking it stays tethered to your machine.
Drag the folder in, or connect a repository; every upload becomes the live version.
Your laptop can sleep. The newsstand doesn't.
Deploy your draft to a host's free temporary URL, before any domain. Send it to one trusted person and watch them use it on their phone.
HTTPS seals the envelope: the connection between visitor and site is encrypted. The padlock also means a certificate, an ID card issued after a check that you control the domain.
HTTPS: the padlock
Let's say your host mentions SSL and offers it as an extra. The sealed envelope should come standard, and mostly it does.
The mistake is paying a yearly fee for something the free certificate authority issues automatically, or shipping the postcard version and watching browsers flag it.
Hosts of simple sites issue and renew certificates through Let's Encrypt for free, the moment the domain points at them.
No padlock, no launch.
Visit three sites you trust and click the padlock in the address bar. Read what it actually claims. That's the envelope your visitors will check.