[HN Gopher] Our New AI Website Builder
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Our New AI Website Builder
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 65 points
Date : 2025-04-11 14:36 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wordpress.com)
| nadermx wrote:
| Speaking of WordPress, hows the entire WordPress debacle going
| with Matt Mullenweg?
| cabalos wrote:
| Development has dropped off a cliff over the last couple of
| months. The release cycle has moved from quarterly to yearly.
| He's basically taking his ball and going home. My guess is
| we'll see more internal initiatives like this AI builder
| instead of focusing on the core product.
|
| This would be an okay strategy if his core product wasn't in
| such a state of disrepair. I've seen multiple issues on Github
| projects from Automattic developers saying "this would be easy
| to fix upstream but we're not allow to fix anything in
| WordPress right now." It's pathetic and actively harming his
| own business.
| molochai wrote:
| Disrepair is too right. 5k issues and 1.7k open PRs on the
| Gutenberg GitHub repository.
|
| I wish this all had happened before Full Site Editing was put
| into .org.
| throwawaymatt wrote:
| They're still battling out in court, with a timeline that
| extends into 2027. Meanwhile: (very quick summary) Matt's
| pulled his developers off the project, and the release schedule
| has slowed. Some commercial vendors have increased their
| support, while others have pulled back. Meanwhile the ecosystem
| of devs and agencies basically shrugged it off. If we need to
| get rid of Matt we will (with big vendor support), no big deal.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| I believe it is actually Pretty Big Deal(tm).
|
| No big deal on splitting the community in half? Matt will not
| go and you will have half the people supporting him, half
| forking the project. Actually less than half on each side,
| when you count in the people that will completely leave the
| ecosystem...
| throwawaymatt wrote:
| Splitting the community in half? Nah. If Matt needs to go,
| the community who is more interested in just making money
| (we're not "post economic" like Matt) will move
| aggressively to cut him out like cancer.
|
| Sure he controls a scary amount of the ecosystem NOW, but
| we've seen big vendors express interest in hosting
| repositories, and major plugin vendors move quickly to
| secure their distribution and update models.
|
| My tiny agency has already mitigated many risks and shifted
| our support towards developers who see a future
| PostMatt(tm)
|
| We'll be fine because WordPress belongs to us, not Matt.
| Implicated wrote:
| Copium. Wordpress is dead. Argue all you want. 5 years
| from now the trajectory of installs/users/commercial
| opportunity will show that the last year was more than
| enough to incentivize/motivate the current and potential
| users to reach for something else. I say this as someone
| who makes my primary income managing a very large WP/WC
| shop.
|
| Sure, WP isn't going away overnight. But it's dead in the
| water at this point. Literally like a dead whale, still
| going to support an ecosystem for some period of time.
| Though, it's peak is behind us and the unwinding was
| accelerated immeasurably.
| webspinner wrote:
| I love how you used the phrase "Wordpress is dead," and
| not the really trendy term everyone has been throwing
| around since January of last year.
| fragmede wrote:
| WordPress is so dead. Vibecoding a page using next.js and
| using something like sanity so they can make their own
| changes gets clients so much more for less than WordPress
| ever did.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| IMO in my experience wordpress, as a project regardless of
| hosting, is coasting but in audience acquisition and new
| feature production.
|
| They aren't acquiring new customers faster than they are
| losing existing customers. Squarespace and similar products
| are to eating it's proverbial lunch among a large portion
| of their audience (small to medium businesses who just want
| a website that is easy to update).
|
| If some of the biggest hosters forked wordpress and started
| adding features that their customers are asking for, that
| wordpress the organization were ignoring or slow to
| produce, I think it would be a good thing. Providing
| wordpress the org with some motivation to compete.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| For 99.99% of the people, it doesn't matter. Even if Wordpress
| stopped getting updates today, the code already works and it's
| open source, thanks in part to Matt for maintaining it for 20
| years.
|
| It was just the weekly Internet drama of the programming niche
| probably pumped by Youtubers and influencers in need for
| content to drive views and then by memes. Barely anything of
| substance was actually written about it.
|
| After all, if Matt were such a negative factor in the project,
| it would be trivial to just take all the code and fork it and
| then for all the developers to just move to the new project.
| The fact that this didn't happen shows that there is non-
| trivial infrastructure being provided that is separate from the
| open source project. How do such smart people as programmers
| fail to understand this when they repeatedly conflate the open
| source project with the whole trademark/plugin hosting thing is
| beyond me. Does nobody question the whole thing before pointing
| fingers and picking their pitchforks?
|
| I've seen a Youtuber who interviewed to Matt in one video and
| the Youtuber himself raised the point of hosting costs, and
| then in a next video they conflate the two concepts as if they
| had completely forgotten about everything they said and heard.
| It's surreal.
| pluc wrote:
| They just laid off 16% of workers
|
| https://www.theverge.com/news/642187/automattic-wordpress-la...
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't help but feel this is a solution in
| search of a problem.
|
| I feel like "building a simple website" has been a solved issue
| with templates for decades now. The only thing you need to add is
| the text, and for a useful website, you're already going to have
| to be typing 90% of that into the prompt anyway - most of what an
| LLM is going to add will be more of a value-subtract than a
| value-add.
|
| Sure, that still leaves the tweaking and customization, but I
| feel like that's the part most people enjoy the most? Humans love
| decorating.
|
| Maybe I'm seeing this the wrong way, and I'm forgetting truly
| non-technical folks exist, and this is for the people who would
| otherwise be forcing their nephew to help them make a basic
| website, and that's the role the LLM is playing here, as a
| conversational interface. I think the marketing copy for this
| announcement is total bullshit, then (plastering "AI" all over
| the announcement is more for marketers than customers), but I can
| at least see that use case.
| frereubu wrote:
| I have no idea about the quality of the sites this produces,
| but I think your comment about non-technical folks existing is
| on the money. There are many people who really don't understand
| how to properly structure even a simple website, and being
| walked through a conversation with a series of pertinent
| questions will be a much more satisfying process.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I am one of them. Without help from a capable and kind
| developer friend back in 2004 I never ever would have been
| able to create mine.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Going from a basic template to all the little changes you need
| to make to build the basic shell you need for a new site is
| still a lot of work. Think of all the best practices cruft
| required for the pages typically linked to from the footer. A
| sporting good site is different than a directory blog is
| different than a single serving social media aggregation site.
|
| I think it's plausible for AI to help with the tedious setup
| stuff and get you to the part where you start making it your
| own.
| rchaud wrote:
| An AI website will look about as unique as a Facebook profile
| in 2004. Even the most non-technical people can tell a
| designer "make it look like this other website that I like".
| An AI won't be able to understand that, because it can't surf
| the web, locate the site and analyze what makes it good in
| the eyes of the customer.
| IanCal wrote:
| > Even the most non-technical people can tell a designer
|
| The vast majority of people who want to make a site don't
| have a designer, and if they could get one the comparison
| is something that's near instant and costs pennies.
|
| > An AI won't be able to understand that, because it can't
| surf the web, locate the site and analyze what makes it
| good in the eyes of the customer.
|
| Perhaps ignoring the "what makes it good in the eyes of the
| customer", although I'd argue that point for many things,
| these systems often can surf the web, can locate sites, can
| take images as input and already know many major themes and
| major sites.
| fragmede wrote:
| > An AI won't be able to understand that, because it can't
| surf the web
|
| We've given the AI the ability to scrape websites, so I'm
| not sure that holds.
| Nckpz wrote:
| I signed up out of curiosity and it looks like it's supposed to
| complement the manual editing UI so you can get things done
| without digging through menus. After the initial prompt and
| wizard, it's a chat box that sits in the corner of a typical WP
| admin page.
|
| But in its current state, it seemed pretty broken to me. I just
| wanted it to add text to the top of the front page, and it kept
| saying "I couldn't find the block you mentioned. Describe where
| it is on the page or select it and try again." no matter how
| many different ways I attempted to describe it.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > Sure, that still leaves the tweaking and customization, but I
| feel like that's the part most people enjoy the most? Humans
| love decorating.
|
| Even if that were true (which I heavily contest), people might
| like the idea of "I want the sidebar nav moved to the right
| side", not opening up template.css and template.html and
| figuring out which html/css they need to change.
|
| The LLM is the thing that lets us do the fun part.
|
| But let me disabuse you of the claim that technical people
| enjoy fiddling with html/css/design especially on their
| Wordpress website when they just want to make some changes, and
| somehow nontechnical people are the only ones who might have to
| circumvent all that fun-having by letting an LLM do it for
| them.
|
| It's like saying that you don't see how LLMs could be useful to
| software developers because don't they enjoy writing code?
| Aside from the answer being no, most code isn't fun to write,
| you're forgetting the goal day to day is to get something done,
| not dick around with your Wordpress theme or software Jira
| tickets because it's fun.
| nottorp wrote:
| Jira tickets: depends on what metrics your management is
| using?
|
| It may well be your life goal.
| addicted wrote:
| This is a solved problem even in the sense that nearly all the
| Wordpress competitors already offer this.
| rchaud wrote:
| another term for it is "investor driven development".
| IanCal wrote:
| > I feel like "building a simple website" has been a solved
| issue with templates for decades now
|
| I did this recently for a friend and 1000% no. It wasn't easy
| to find a good template or edit it, and things we tried
| (including various builders) were a massive pain in the arse.
|
| I asked sonnet for a site and had it right in a few minutes. I
| asked for changes and they just worked. It wasn't a complex
| site but it was drastically easier, quicker and more fun than
| dealing with the nuts and bolts of it all.
|
| > Sure, that still leaves the tweaking and customization, but I
| feel like that's the part most people enjoy the most? Humans
| love decorating.
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| _Choosing_ customisation? Sure!
|
| _Making_ the customisations? Nope. I 'm sure some do, but I
| and many others I think just want a thing.
|
| Just asking for some changes and seeing them was great.
| throwawaymatt wrote:
| _yawn_ Pretty much every major WP builder has an AI component. I
| 'm sure this one is as half-baked as all the others.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Wordpress: create your own website in minutes!
|
| Wordpress new AI: create your own website in minutes!
| fragmede wrote:
| The bus, when you live on the route: Get to work in 30 minutes!
|
| A car: Get to work in 30 minutes! (you still have to live and
| work in the right locations for that to be true, but you now
| also have deal with traffic)
| rchaud wrote:
| So they finally gave up on making "Full Site Editing" a thing, I
| take it. I maintain that trying to transition the product away
| from PHP into a React-ridden mess for the "Block Editor" in 2017
| started us down this path of ruin.
|
| Clearly they felt threatened by site builder plugins like
| Elementor Pro, Beaver Builder, Bricks and others that massively
| improved the WYSIWYG experience to the point where WP was
| relegated to the role of invisible scaffolding, a dumb pipe.
| Considering how badly they botched the redesign into the block
| editor era, and the madness about WpEngine, they are struggling
| to shake investor worries.
| frereubu wrote:
| I run a WordPress agency and while I think the block editor was
| foisted on wordpress.org far too quickly, it's been a godsend
| in terms of allowing our clients much more control over their
| content. The prospect of going back to the TinyMCE WYSIWYG
| editor and templates makes me shudder.
| thetwopct wrote:
| WordPress.com [?] WordPress
|
| Conflating the two is like mistaking GitHub for Git.
| rchaud wrote:
| They are much more similar to each other than Git as they share
| the same plugin ecosystem, core developers and the base layer
| CMS is identical. I imagine there are many more feature
| differences between Git and Github.
| thetwopct wrote:
| Feel free to insert an analogy that pleases you.
| WordPress.com is a hosting company that has its own staff and
| contributes approx 40 hours per month to the WordPress open
| source project. WordPress core development is made up of
| contributors. The AI builder is not available for WordPress,
| it's exclusively for the hosting company WordPress.com.
| WordPress.com on their basic plan restrict any plugin usage.
| There are no usage restrictions on the open source software.
| This is just a taste of the distinctions. The title of this
| post has now been updated, but regardless, WordPress.com is
| not WordPress.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I deal with WordPress a lot, and at least for my set of clients
| they just don't even have time for this, even with AI. They just
| wants leads. AI currently is good I guess for a standard 3-5 page
| site just like some of the other standard builders, but clients
| with hundreds of pages and heavily reliant on getting leads
| through campaigns and SEO, I currently don't see any danger (or
| use) here. Great for SMBs that just need something up quick
| though.
| rustc wrote:
| WordPress.com launches would be a better title. This builder is
| not available in WordPress (the open source software) but only
| WordPress.com (a hosting company owned by the creator of
| WordPress).
|
| For a moment I thought they added AI integration to the open
| source Gutenberg plugin.
| throwawaymatt wrote:
| A very important distinction indeed. Wordpress.COM is not the
| same as the self-hosted version at WordPress.ORG
|
| While they've made recent changes to .COM to bring it closer to
| .ORG mostly as a knee-jerk response to the Matt v WPE scrap,
| they are still very different experiences.
|
| I rarely advise clients looking to DIY solution to go to
| WordPress.com
| pluc wrote:
| It's funny that the whole lawsuit thing started because
| Mullenweg was claiming wpengine was confusing customers, when
| .com and .org is way more confusing.
| webspinner wrote:
| I keep them straight usually. However, I don't have to. I
| just use Classic press.
| webspinner wrote:
| Very true! Oh and I would hope not.
| dang wrote:
| Since wordpress.com is displayed next to the title above, we
| can fix this by reverting the submission title to that of the
| article. I've done that now. (Well, I used the minimally baity
| substring.)
|
| (Submitted title was "WordPress launches new free AI website
| builder")
| croemer wrote:
| Original title: "Just Say the Word--Try Our New AI Website
| Builder for Free"
| dang wrote:
| Yes. I've replaced the submitted title now - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43657916 for more details.
| webspinner wrote:
| Personally, I wouldn't use anything coming out of there right
| now!
| Apfel wrote:
| If anyone's interested in the prompts they're using here, they're
| viewable via devtools.
|
| Full dump of what was showing on my end here:
| https://gist.githubusercontent.com/furnivall/aa95e8d9dc330f3...
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(page generated 2025-04-11 23:01 UTC)