The thing that stops most people from building their own website isn't the design. It's the deployment.
You build something locally, it looks fine on your computer, and then you have to figure out how to get it onto the internet — and suddenly you're reading about SSH keys, FTP clients, cPanel, build pipelines, and a dozen other things that have nothing to do with what you actually wanted to make.
This site doesn't work like that. Here's the exact setup that makes it simple.
What actually happens when I update this site
- I open the terminal and run Claude Code
- I describe what I want — a new article, a layout change, a new section
- Claude writes the code
- I run
git push origin main - Vercel detects the push, builds the site, and deploys it automatically
- It's live at aiwithbk.com in under two minutes
That's the whole thing. There's no step six where I click a deploy button. There's no dashboard I log into. There's no server I have to manage. The push to GitHub is the deploy.
The three pieces you need
This setup has three parts and each one does exactly one job.
GitHub holds your code. It's the source of truth — the canonical record of every change you've ever made. When you push to GitHub, Vercel sees it.
Vercel watches your GitHub repository. The moment you push to main, Vercel pulls the latest code, runs the build (for a Next.js site, that means npm run build), and deploys the result to their global CDN. You never touch Vercel after the initial setup.
Claude Code writes the code. You describe what you want in plain English, Claude makes the changes, and you push. That's your entire developer workflow.
How to set this up from scratch
If you're starting fresh, here's the complete path. This takes about an hour and you only do it once.
Step 1: Create a GitHub account and repository
Go to github.com and create a free account if you don't have one. Then create a new repository — think of this as a folder in the cloud where your website's code will live.
Give it a name (something like my-website), set it to public or private (either works with Vercel's free plan), and initialise it with a README.
Step 2: Create a Vercel account and connect it to GitHub
Go to vercel.com and sign up — the free Hobby plan is enough to get started. When it asks how you want to sign up, choose "Continue with GitHub." This is important: it links the two accounts so Vercel can see your repositories.
Once you're in, click "Add New Project." Vercel will show you your GitHub repositories. Select the one you just created.
Vercel will ask what framework you're using. If you're starting from scratch with Claude Code, tell Claude you want a Next.js site — it's what this site runs on, it's what Vercel is optimised for, and it's what Claude builds best. Select Next.js in the dropdown.
Click deploy. Vercel will build the starter project and give you a URL like your-project.vercel.app. Your site is live.
Step 3: Clone the repository and start Claude Code
On your computer, open a terminal and clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/your-repo.git
cd your-repo
claude
That last command starts Claude Code. From here, everything is conversation. If you want a full reference of what Claude Code can do, every slash command is documented here.
The day-to-day workflow
Once it's set up, adding things to the site looks like this:
You: add a contact form to the homepage with fields for name,
email, and message. keep the same visual style as the rest
of the page.
Claude: [reads the existing components, writes the form, wires
up the styling, checks it matches the design system]
You look at what Claude built. If it looks right, you push it:
git add .
git commit -m "add contact form to homepage"
git push origin main
Go make a coffee. By the time you're back, Vercel has built and deployed the change. Open the site. It's there.
That's the complete loop. Ask → review → push → done.
What you get for free
The part beginners don't realise until they've tried to set this up manually: Vercel handles a lot of things that used to require significant work.
HTTPS. Your site gets a free SSL certificate automatically. No buying certificates, no configuring them. Every Vercel site loads over HTTPS out of the box.
A real domain. You get a free .vercel.app URL immediately. When you're ready to use a custom domain (like yourname.com), you point it at Vercel in the settings and it handles the rest.
Global CDN. Your site is served from data centres around the world. A visitor in Tokyo gets the same fast response as someone in London. You don't configure any of this.
Preview deployments. Every branch you push — not just main — gets its own temporary URL. So if you're trying something out, you can push it to a feature/new-nav branch and Vercel gives you a preview link. The live site doesn't change until you merge to main.
Instant rollback. Every deployment is saved. If you push something broken, you go to the Vercel dashboard, click the previous deployment, click "Promote to Production." Ten seconds, site is back to how it was.
The one thing that protects you from breaking things
Here's something that sounds scary but is actually a safety net: if your code has an error that causes the build to fail, Vercel doesn't deploy it.
The current live site stays exactly as it is. Visitors don't see anything broken. You get an email saying the build failed, you fix the problem (usually by describing the error to Claude and asking it to fix it), and you push again.
Compare that to the old way, where you'd upload broken files directly to the server and your site would just be broken until you fixed it manually.
Build failure as a deployment gate is one of the most underrated features of this setup.
Common beginner questions
Do I need to know how to code?
Not really. Claude Code writes the code. You need to be able to describe what you want clearly, read through what Claude built to check it looks right, and run the three git commands to push it. That's it.
What if I break something?
Roll it back in Vercel with two clicks, or ask Claude to revert the change. Either takes under a minute.
What does this actually cost?
Vercel's Hobby plan is free and covers most personal sites and small projects. GitHub is free for public and private repos. Claude Code requires a Claude subscription (around $20/month). The whole stack costs roughly the price of a streaming subscription.
What kind of sites can I build this way?
Anything that doesn't require a database on day one: personal sites, portfolios, blogs, small business sites, landing pages. This site — with its full blog, case studies, product pages, and animations — runs on exactly this stack.
Why this is the right setup for beginners
The traditional path to putting a website online has too many moving parts. Hosting accounts, FTP clients, SSL certificates, DNS records — each one is a potential point of confusion that has nothing to do with building the thing you actually want to build.
This setup collapses all of that. You connect GitHub to Vercel once. After that, deploying is just pushing code. Claude handles the code. You handle the ideas.
The constraint is learning two things: how to describe what you want clearly to Claude, and the three git commands (git add, git commit, git push). That's a reasonable learning curve for having a fully deployed, HTTPS-enabled, globally distributed website that updates whenever you ask it to.
Start with a simple Next.js project. Tell Claude what you want the homepage to look like. Push it to main. Watch it go live.
The rest follows from there.