Built

A custom website for Fjona Cakalli

A custom WordPress theme for Fjona Cakalli's website, built with AI starting from her brand identity and from the sites Fjona picked as inspiration. From the bio to the videos, from the projects to the social media numbers: nothing is missing that is needed to tell who Fjona is and what she does.

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Type: Web
Year: 2026
Tools: Claude Code, WordPress, WordPress Playground

The question

Can you build a WordPress theme with AI that meets a professional's needs?

The experiment

Starting from Fjona's brand identity, the old site and a few references, I had Claude Code build first the homepage and then the whole theme, using WordPress Playground in the early phase and then a copy of Fjona's old site.

The result

Today the site is live and working, and it is designed around SEO and GEO best practices, so it can be found by AI search too.

The learning

For Claude Code, code is the easy part: the hard part is knowing what you want. With a clear direction and good references, a custom theme can go beyond the usual anonymous AI-made site.

The full story

The top of the homepage of fjonacakalli.net: a full-width video, the name Fjona Cakalli in large type, a short description and a menu with a call to action. — The top of the homepage: a video, her name, a short line about what she does. The site is in Italian.

The request

Fjona Cakalli, tech reporter, content creator and friend, wanted to refresh her website, which had looked the same for more than five years. So we wondered whether AI, Claude Code in particular, could do it.

Or rather, we knew it was possible. The real question was a different one: can AI build a well-made site that has little (or nothing) to envy a professional site? In short, is it possible to build a site that does not look like the usual anonymous site made with artificial intelligence?

The site takes shape

We started from 3 fixed points: Fjona’s brand identity, the current site (with what made sense to keep and what Fjona would have liked to remove or change), and a couple of websites whose structure she liked.

At that point I asked Claude Code to try creating the homepage, without yet knowing what the final result might be. And this is where Claude Code and a few design skills surprised us: the first version, created in a little over half an hour, was already very good. So yes, it could be done.

At that point a few decisions had to be made: from which platform to use to which elements to include, including video, photos, copy, moving elements and much more. It took quite a few hours of back-and-forth with Claude Code, just as many hours of testing on a staging site and finally a few hours to fine-tune the final version before putting everything online. In the end, everything was there: from the showreel to the episodes of the StoryTech podcast, from the brands Fjona has worked with to the YouTube Shorts, from the contact email to the structured data for SEO and GEO.

Two sections of the homepage: the About section with a portrait, and the podcast section with a row of playable episodes and a link to all of them. — The About section and the podcast, with episodes that can be played right on the page.

I expected building a theme to be chaos; with a clear idea, it was not. You can see the result at fjonacakalli.net.

What I learned

A custom WordPress theme is not all that different from the many other things I have built with AI: for Claude Code the code is child’s play, but as always you have to know what you want. A clear direction and functional references help set the line and go beyond the classic AI slop (the generic, anonymous content made with AI).

This does not mean the result equals that of a professional web designer, but it is not that far off. Not to mention that the only thing that matters is the satisfaction of the person who commissioned the site, and the feedback I have received from Fjona has always been more than enthusiastic.