I did not create The ChatBuild Method because I wanted to add another fashionable “AI” name to the internet. I created it because I discovered a practical way to solve a problem that had followed me through many years of building businesses and launching ideas.
I am an author, consultant, trainer, and entrepreneur. Like many people with ideas, I have often needed websites. A new company needed a website. A book needed a website. A training programme needed a landing page. A service needed an online booking system. Every new idea created another digital need.
For a long time, website development felt like something that belonged to programmers. I could imagine what I wanted, explain it to someone, wait for it to be built, and then ask for changes.
Sometimes the result was good. Sometimes it was not. Even when the website looked fine, making a small change could become another project. I was constantly dependent on someone else to turn my ideas into working pages.
Then artificial intelligence entered the picture.
At first, I believed an AI website builder might be the complete answer. That led me to experiment with Hostinger’s Horizon AI Website Builder. That experience became an important part of the journey that eventually produced The ChatBuild Method.
My Experience With Hostinger’s Horizon AI Website Builder
The idea behind Horizon was attractive. I could describe the website or feature I wanted, and artificial intelligence would help create it. I did not need to begin by writing code or learning a traditional programming language.
That felt like a major breakthrough!
I used Horizon while developing Event Business Academy, an offshoot of one of our business. In the beginning, the front end made tremendous progress. I could see pages and features taking shape much faster than they would have through the traditional website-development process. Some important functions also worked well. I could create and edit blog posts. The system could handle blog comment moderation, and contact-form submissions could be viewed from the administrative area. These early results showed me that AI-assisted website development was not merely an interesting idea. It could produce something real.
However, as I tried to move beyond the front-end appearance and build the complete business system, the limitations became more obvious. The products and testimonials modules in the administrative backend began to misbehave. More importantly, customer orders submitted through the website were not appearing properly in the admin area.
That was not a small design problem.
If a button has the wrong colour, it can be corrected. If the spacing between two sections is too wide, it can be adjusted. But when a customer places an order and the order does not appear where the business owner needs to manage it, the website is no longer simply facing a cosmetic problem. It is failing at one of its most important business functions.
I wanted a simpler and more reliable dashboard. I needed the system to capture and display basic information such as the customer’s name, email address, WhatsApp number, city, and submission date. I also wanted practical functions such as search, date filtering, deletion, and data export.
These were not unnecessary technical luxuries. They were part of what the business required to operate effectively. The struggle taught me that a website can look impressive on the outside while remaining unreliable behind the scenes. The front end may create excitement, but the backend determines whether the business can receive information, manage customers, process requests, and respond to opportunities.
I continued trying to make Horizon work for my needs, but I eventually reached a difficult conclusion: it did not work out well enough for the kind of websites I wanted to build.
This does not mean Horizon cannot be useful to other people. My conclusion came from my own experience and the needs of my projects. I needed more control, greater flexibility, and a platform that could support content, forms, service pages, products, payments, blogging, search optimisation, and future expansion.
The Horizon experience did not end my interest in AI-assisted website building. Instead, it made me ask a better question:
Could I combine the intelligence and flexibility of ChatGPT with the established foundation of WordPress?
Moving to ChatGPT and WordPress
My journey moved through four simple stages:
- “I need somebody to build this.”
- Then, “Let me see if ChatGPT and I can build this.”
- After that came, “We can build this.”
- Finally, the question became, “Can we sell this?”
That progression became the foundation of The ChatBuild Method.
Unlike a platform that tried to generate and manage everything inside one environment, ChatGPT and WordPress allowed me to separate the roles clearly.
ChatGPT could help me think, plan, write, generate code, solve problems, and improve each section.
WordPress could provide the dependable foundation on which the website would live and grow.
I could describe the section I wanted, ask ChatGPT to create it, place it in WordPress and see the idea become visible. A section became a page. A page became a website. One website led to another. That speed was exciting. It reduced the distance between having an idea and seeing it online. Instead of waiting until I understood every technical detail, I could begin with the result I wanted and ask ChatGPT to help me work towards it.
But I soon discovered another important truth: generating code is not the same as building a professional website.
The First AI Output Was Not the Finished Work
ChatGPT could produce code quickly, but the first output was not always ready to use.
Sometimes a section looked too plain. It might work on a desktop computer but overflow on a mobile phone. Text could become too small. Cards could sit badly beside one another. Spacing could look fine in one place and awkward in another. Sometimes the code worked, but the result did not match the rest of the website. At other times, a correction to one problem created a completely different problem somewhere else.
This could be frustrating, but it also taught me something valuable.
AI could produce code, but it could not automatically provide judgement, business context, a clear brand identity, or a complete customer journey.
Someone still needed to direct the process.
That gap is where the method began.
I Needed More Than Random Prompts
Many people use AI like a vending machine. They type a short instruction, press Enter, and expect a perfect result to appear.
When the answer is weak, they conclude that the tool is not good enough. I learned that the quality of the result depended heavily on the quality of my direction.
“Build me a website” is not a serious website brief.
What business is the website for? Who should it attract? What problem does the business solve? What should visitors understand first? What should they do next? What proof will make them trust the offer? What must the website do on a mobile phone?
Without this information, ChatGPT has to guess. When AI guesses, the result may sound polished while remaining generic.
I began giving it more context. I asked ChatGPT to question me before producing a solution. I separated facts from recommendations. I instructed it not to invent information. I asked it to
TO BE CONTINUED!