Building this blog, part 2 — I handed it all to an AI and my first page went live

Last time I worked out what Cloudflare actually is.

This time, the blog that only existed inside my Mac goes onto the internet.

Written like that it sounds hard. Prepare a server, write config files, type commands into a black window called a terminal. And behind the scenes, that is what happens.

Except I didn't look any of it up or configure it by hand.

I handed almost all of it to an AI.

What I actually did

Broadly, this.

1. Tell the AI "I want to publish this blog on Cloudflare"
2. The AI works through the necessary setup
3. The Cloudflare login screen opens
4. I check what it says and approve
5. Open the published URL and look at it

So: ask the AI, approve the login, done.

Day to day I build this blog the same way: "I want a blog like this", "make the design more readable, like note", "I want a voxel character to show up in the middle of a post". I am not a programmer. And still, my blog is on the internet.

It got published even though I didn't understand it

Honestly, I did not understand what the commands the AI ran meant, at least not at first.

What I said to the AI was:

• "Publish this to Cloudflare"
• "Do whatever is needed"
• "Tell me when I have to do something myself"

That's it. Partway through, the Cloudflare login screen opened, I read what it said and approved. A short wait later, a URL reachable from the internet existed.

Anticlimactically easy.

npx wrangler login

npm run build
npx wrangler deploy

Understanding what the AI did, after the fact

You can leave the operation to an AI, but it's worth knowing what happened underneath. As a moving-house analogy:

At first this blog lived inside my Mac. Only I could see it. A manuscript sitting on my desk at home.

The AI carried that manuscript to Cloudflare's computers on the internet. Cloudflare stores what it receives and shows it to anyone who visits the URL.

Taking something you made locally and putting it somewhere it can be seen on the internet is called deploying. Intimidating word, simple idea: move the thing you made to the place where it's public.

What's the difference between "build" and "deploy"?

Read the AI's work log and you'll see both words. As a packed-lunch analogy:

• Build: cook the food and pack it into the lunchbox
• Deploy: put the finished lunchbox out on the shop shelf

Taking my text, images and characters and assembling them into something that can be displayed as a website is the build. Sending that to Cloudflare so anyone can see it is the deploy. Ask the AI to "publish" and it does the whole sequence.

Publishing gets you your own URL

Once it finished, Cloudflare issued a URL in this shape.

https://project-name.account-name.workers.dev

Opening that on my phone and seeing my own blog was a slightly strange feeling. Something that had existed only inside my Mac a minute earlier was now visible to anyone connected to the internet.

At this point I hadn't yet attached the proper address, hanageruge.com. This is a temporary address Cloudflare lends you for free. (I connected the domain afterwards. The DNS drama from that day is in the second half of part 1.)

You don't have to understand everything up front

Look up how to build a website and you drown in unfamiliar words. Server, terminal, command, build, deploy, Workers, domain, DNS.

Try to understand all of it before starting and you probably never publish. But now you can move forward while asking an AI about the parts you don't get.

• "I want to publish this blog on Cloudflare"
• "I'm a beginner, so only tell me when I have to do something"
• "Always check with me before anything dangerous"

That level of request is enough to start. You don't even need a fixed idea of what to build: "I want a profile page", "I want a page introducing my favourite AI tools" is enough to open the conversation.

Rather than understanding the mechanism perfectly and then building, build once and then ask "what was that doing?" With a working thing in front of you, the explanation lands remarkably well. I think that order is fine.

But approving things without thinking is scary

I've written "you can hand it all over", and you genuinely can hand over a lot.

One thing nagged at me though.

Is it fine to approve everything the AI shows you without understanding it?

This time it asked for permission to log in to Cloudflare and operate there. I read the screen and approved. But fundamentally:

• What is the AI asking for access to?
• How much will it be able to do?
• Are passwords and secrets safe?
• Could it delete something important by mistake?

Proceeding while knowing none of that is a little frightening.

You can drive a car without knowing everything about how it works. But you shouldn't drive without knowing what the traffic lights mean or how to use the brake. Building a website with AI feels close to that.

Words that came up

• Local: running only inside your own Mac. Nobody else can see it
• Build: assembling text and images into something publishable as a website
• Deploy: putting the finished site into a public place on the internet
• Wrangler: the official tool for operating Cloudflare from your Mac. The AI uses it too
• workers.dev: the temporary URL Cloudflare lends you for free

No memorisation needed. "The AI moved the blog from inside my Mac to Cloudflare's public place" is enough. These are in the AI glossary as usual (Japanese only for now).

I think it's fine to just build something

"Build a website" sounds like something you can't attempt until you've studied programming. In practice you can start from "I want a blog like this" and leave a lot of the detailed configuration to an AI. I did almost exactly that. And this blog is running.

Make one small page and publish it on the free URL. Learn the machinery underneath gradually, after that. That seems like a fine way to start.

Except — precisely because you're handing work to an AI, the safety conversation can't be skipped.

Next: part 3 — wait, is this actually safe? (the security one)

This series is the record of a web-development beginner building a blog with AI. Service specifications and screens change, so check Cloudflare's current documentation when you do this yourself.