Claude CMS is an AI-native website builder where you describe your site in plain words and Claude builds the real pages, files and database behind it. The fastest route from an empty site to a live one is to design a single page properly, then roll that template across the rest — pages, functionality and testing, in that order.
Your site exists, Claude can see it, and there is probably a placeholder homepage sitting on it doing nothing. This guide picks up from exactly that point and ends with a finished site on your own domain. For a straightforward business site, allow about an hour.
If you haven’t connected yet, start with creating or editing your site basics — five prompts, about five minutes — then come back here.
In a hurry? The prompt generator further down asks you five questions and writes the brief for you. The rest of this page explains why it asks what it asks.
The temptation right now is to type “build me a five-page website for my plumbing business” and hit send. You will get five pages. You will also get five pages that share the same header you don’t like, and you’ll spend the rest of the afternoon fixing it six times over. The next section is ninety seconds long and it is the whole article.
Four steps, in this order, every time:
Get a single page looking exactly right. It becomes the template every other page is built from.
Roll that approved design across About, Services, Contact — whatever the site actually needs.
Contact form, shop, bookings, blog. Added once the pages exist, so you can point at where things go.
Click everything, on a phone as well as a laptop, before you tell a single customer about it.
The trap is doing all four at once. A design decision made across six pages has to be corrected across six pages, and every correction costs you a message and a wait. Made on one page, it costs you almost nothing.
You don’t have to invent a design from scratch. There are two sensible ways in — pick one.
Give Claude the address and, more importantly, say what you like about it.
That is influence, not a photocopy. Don’t ask for a straight copy of someone else’s site; you inherit their brand along with their layout, and it will never quite fit you.
If you would rather not stare at a blank page, browse the ready-made designs in the examples gallery, pick one you like, and name it.
Either way, Claude still needs to know what the site is for. This is the highest-value thing you will type all day, so give it thirty seconds of thought. A weak brief reads “I need a website for my business”. A good one reads like this:
Everything downstream gets better because of that paragraph: who it’s for, what it does, how it should feel, and what people came to find out.
This is the step people skip, and it decides whether the next hour is enjoyable or annoying.
Your homepage isn’t just your homepage — it is the template. Get it right and every page after it arrives already correct. What gets locked in here: the header and menu, the footer, your colours and fonts, heading sizes and how big the body text sits next to them, button shape and colour, the space between sections, and how images are treated.
So build the homepage, look at it, and react — in plain words. You don’t need to know any CSS, and you certainly don’t need to know what a <div> is.
Then look again, and react again. Three or four rounds of that is normal, and it is the fastest part of the whole build.
It is ready to become your template when:
There is a second half to getting one page right, and it isn’t about looks.
The parts that repeat — your header, your menu, your footer — should live in one place that every page pulls from, rather than each page carrying its own copy. That is how a Claude CMS site is normally built, but it is worth asking for out loud, and worth checking before you have six pages instead of one.
The difference shows up the first time something changes. Get a new phone number and, with shared includes, you change it once and it is correct everywhere. Without them you change it six times, miss the seventh, and a page quietly hands out your old number for the next two years. It is easy to test:
If the answer isn’t all of them, they aren’t shared yet. The same goes for anything else that recurs and might change — opening hours, your address, the call-to-action panel at the foot of every page, a price list that appears in two places. The rule of thumb: if it appears more than once and could ever be edited, it should have a single home.
Only then do you ask for more pages. Ten minutes of fiddling here saves an hour of the same correction repeated across six pages.
Do this while you still have only one page, because the way images are treated is part of the template.
Start with the image library. There is a collection built into your account at image collections — already there, already licensed, nothing to download.
Then add your own. Ask Claude for an upload link and you get a one-time link that opens in your browser. Drop your photos in and they are on the site — no folders, no FTP, no fighting with file sizes.
One piece of advice worth more than any design tweak: on a small business site, a real photograph of you, your premises or your actual work beats the most beautiful stock image every time. Use stock for texture and backgrounds; use your own for anything that proves you are real.
With the template settled this part is quick — nothing is being designed any more, it is being repeated. And because the header and footer are shared rather than copied, new pages arrive with the chrome already correct instead of being a snapshot of whatever the homepage looked like at the time.
Then check three things: the menu appears on every page, the footer is identical everywhere, and there is no page sitting there that nothing links to.
Keep it small. Four good pages beat twelve thin ones, and you can always add more next week. If you aren’t sure a page has enough to say, it is probably a section on an existing page instead.
Only once the pages exist. It is far easier to say “put the form at the bottom of the Contact page, under the map” when there is a Contact page to look at.
The usual first additions are a contact form, a booking enquiry, a shop or a news section. Most of them are already built and tested in the block library, so they arrive in one message rather than an afternoon. Shops have a bit more to set up — start with the ecommerce guide rather than this one.
Everything above, as one thing you can paste. Answer five short questions and you get a brief written the way this guide recommends — homepage first, header and footer shared, functionality after the pages are settled, and your business details wired into your local SEO.
The name is all that’s required. Leave the address blank if you haven’t chosen one yet.
Give the website a name so Claude knows what to call it.
Tap anything that fits, then add your own words. Describing a site you like works well here too.
The building blocks of your pages. Pick as many as apply — you can always add more later.
Pick at least one section, or describe one in the box.
Functionality, as opposed to content. Each one you tick goes into the prompt with an instruction to use the tested block library rather than build from scratch. Leave everything unticked for a straightforward brochure site.
These go in the footer, on the contact page and into your structured data, which is what local search runs on. Skip any that don’t apply.
That email address doesn’t look right — check it, or clear the box.
Copy the whole thing into Claude with your site connected. It asks for the homepage first, on purpose — that is the one page worth getting right before the rest.
Nothing is sent anywhere — it is assembled in your browser. Go back and change any answer before you copy, and treat what comes out as a starting point: the more you add in your own words, the better the first draft.
Ten minutes, and it catches nearly everything.
When something is wrong, describe what you see, not what you think caused it. Claude can find the cause; it cannot see your screen.
Titles and descriptions. These are what show up in search results, and they are a two-minute job.
Site details. Site name, footer text, contact details and social links are set once and appear everywhere. Your own domain. Point your domain at the site and it stops being a subdomain and starts being your business.
Before you tell anyone:
It will, occasionally, and none of it is permanent. The most useful sentence you can type is:
Backups are taken automatically, so a bad change is a reversal, not a disaster.
Two habits help. First, change one thing at a time when something is misbehaving — three changes at once and you won’t know which one fixed it. Second, know when to stop negotiating: if a section has been wrong through three attempts, don’t keep nudging it.
Starting fresh is usually faster than arguing.
Do I need to know any code?
No. It helps to know what you want, which is a different skill and one you already have.
Can I edit things myself later?
Yes. There is a built-in admin panel for quick changes, and anyone without a Claude account can raise an edit from the site itself. Most people end up using both.
I already have a website. Can I move it?
Point Claude at your existing site, say what you want to keep, and rebuild from there. Keeping your text and photos is usually the right call; keeping the old layout usually isn’t.
Who owns the site?
You do. Real files, a real database, your own domain — nothing locked inside a proprietary page builder.
What does it cost?
Plans start at £6.99 a month for a licence you run from your own Claude account and hosting. £9.99 a month adds installation, routine edits and phone support, and hosting can be added for £9.99 a month if you don’t have your own. Full breakdown on the pricing page.
How long does this actually take?
About an hour for a simple business site, if you follow the order above. Considerably longer if you don’t.
Prebuilt functionality for when you need it.
A branded, category-filtered blog — listing page, article template and pagination, wired to your colours and navigation.
Content Explore blockRole-based sign-in with Google Authenticator two-factor, session handling and rate-limited attempts — ready to drop in.
Security Explore blockHeadless store deployment — product catalogue, stock, hosted checkout and an order admin, with payments landing in your own account.
Commerce Explore blockScroll-driven reveals, hero particle fields and UI motion — tested components that stay smooth and honour reduced-motion.
Motion