I Built a Blog with Claude

I'm not a developer. For real. But I made a blog from scratch.

Bought a domain, deployed it. Looking back, what I actually did was almost nothing. I just kept asking. Claude.

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Why I Wanted to Build My Own

Tistory, Brunch, Naver Blog. I've tried them all. They're fine at first, but after using them, I start feeling constrained.

Design is limited, hard to change into what I want, and there's the feeling of being stuck inside a platform.

So at some point I thought: "I want to make my own." Nothing grand — just something with the structure and feel I want.

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What I First Said to Claude

Make me an MDX blog with Next.js.
Keep it minimal.
With multilingual support.

Honestly, I barely knew what Next.js was. I'd just seen it used a lot and typed it in.

But Claude generated the folder structure and all the code. I was a bit skeptical at first. "Is this actually going to work?" — It did.

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I Got Stuck a Lot in the Middle

Errors kept happening. Tailwind version mismatch, dates showing up wrong, deployment didn't work on the first try.

Each time, I just took a screenshot and sent it over. Claude would pinpoint what the problem was and explain how to fix it.

What was great was that it explained the reasoning. So instead of just following along, I was able to move forward while understanding a little more each time.

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Question Patterns That Actually Worked

A few patterns that made a real difference.

When fixing code errors Don't just send the error message — paste the related file too. "Why do you think this error is happening? Check this file." That gets much more accurate answers.

When adding features Instead of "do X for me," try "I want to do X — what's the right approach for this structure?" It helps align on direction together.

When completely stuck Just describe the situation: "What do you think might be wrong here?" It narrows down the possible causes to a few candidates.

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How Long Did It Take?

From buying the domain to deployment: about half a day. Faster than I expected.

There were stuck points, but overall it felt like I kept moving forward without stopping. If I'd been Googling everything myself, it probably would have taken days.

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What You Need If You're Not a Developer

Honestly, if you have zero code knowledge, you might get stuck in the middle. If you don't know what error messages mean at all, you won't know what to ask.

That said, these three things are enough to get started:

• A rough understanding of file structure (the concept of folders and files)
• Ability to copy-paste terminal commands and run them
• Ability to copy error messages and paste them in

With these three, you can work through it in conversation with Claude.

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This blog is that result.

The more specific the question, the much better the result. At first I asked vaguely, and as I made things more specific, the output visibly improved.

You can start without knowing code. But you need to explain what you want a little more clearly. That difference is quite significant.