We Rebuilt Our Website With AI

Marketing Alpha

• 30 min

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We tell clients not to build their websites with AI. Then we rebuilt the whole WolfPack site with it. In this episode of Marketing Alpha, Aaron Shishilla shares the real numbers behind the rebuild. He covers why our page-builder WordPress site stopped scaling, the almost-year we spent testing (and dropping) "WordPress killer" platforms, and the setup we finally picked: headless WordPress on Kinsta, an Astro front end on Cloudflare, and Claude Design handing designs off to Claude Code. Once the design system and setup were locked in, the full build took under two weeks instead of the usual 3–6 months. It cost about $3,000 in AI spend, and 600 URL redirects took a couple of prompts. Speed isn't the whole story, though. Aaron explains why he still cringes when clients rebuild their sites with AI, and covers the three things that make AI-built websites crash and burn: generic AI copy, stock or AI-made images, and skipped URL redirects. AI didn't replace the expertise. It changed how fast the experts can work. In this episode: - Why page builders like WP Bakery, Elementor, and Divi stop scaling - Custom post types, custom fields, and why headless WordPress won - How we used Claude Design + Claude Code to ship in under two weeks - What it actually cost: AI spend vs. a $10–15K+ build from a typical agency - The URL migration step most AI rebuilds miss - Why schema markup isn't the SEO game changer AI says it is - What to lock in first if you're rebuilding with AI anyway If this was helpful, leave us a rating and send us your questions.