Building Nearself: How I Used Claude to Set Up This WordPress Blog From Scratch
The first post on a blog about AI-assisted work should probably be about AI-assisted work. So here it is.
The brief
I wanted a blog. Specifically, a place to document my experiences using AI tools in my day-to-day work — what works, what doesn’t, and what surprises me along the way. I had a domain name, a hosting account, and a rough idea of the aesthetic I wanted: dark, technical, clean. What I didn’t have was hours to spend wrestling with WordPress setup, theme configuration and SSL certificates.
So I handed the problem to Claude.
The approach
Rather than reading documentation or watching tutorials, I worked conversationally — sharing screenshots and describing what I was looking at. Claude responded with exact instructions for each step. When something didn’t work we diagnosed it together in real time and tried a different approach.
That back-and-forth is something I want to be honest about from the start. This wasn’t a case of typing one prompt and receiving a finished website. It was an extended, iterative session — more like working alongside someone than issuing commands to a machine. The AI didn’t just execute instructions, it made suggestions, flagged problems before they became bigger ones, and pushed back when something could be done better.
What we built
Starting from a blank hosting account, the session covered selecting WordPress as the right platform for a writing-led blog, choosing plugins carefully — keeping only what was genuinely needed and skipping the rest — and configuring the Astra theme with a dark, terminal-inspired aesthetic. Custom colours, typography and layout all set through the WordPress Customiser. Navigation, a contact form, an About page, a What is AI? page and a Topics index with five post categories.
The moment that stood out
The blue footer.
A starter template had left behind an Elementor-built footer — bright blue, branded with someone else’s name, completely at odds with the dark aesthetic we were building. Multiple approaches failed to remove it. Eventually Claude identified it as a template stored directly in the WordPress database and walked me through a targeted SQL DELETE query to remove it. Two rows deleted. Problem solved in minutes rather than the frustrated hour it would have cost me working alone.
What this blog is about
I come to AI from a position of digital experience — Video Game Artist, Animator, across disciplines from Sat-Nav to Holography — each one demanding a different kind of thinking. That habit of approaching problems from an unexpected angle is what drew me to AI in the first place.
Nearself isn’t about hype or fear. It’s about what happens when someone with real digital experience picks up AI as a tool and uses it seriously. What it can do, where it falls short, and what it changes about the way you work.
This is post one. There’ll be more.
— The AI Nomad