A New Website and New Website Reflections

I just got done flipping through the pages of Wayback Machine - and what a trip that was. It’s pretty wild to think that I have been through 6 different versions of FunkyRabbitMedia.com (and since changed the domain to funkyrabbit.media).

My brand has always been a bit unique because I struggle with the idea of doing anything trendy and popular. Early versions of my website were really reflective of that. But that was my personality - bright colors and weird logos. Funky Rabbit Media was always a gamble of a business name. It was odd but I liked it. And I stuck with it, because changing it always felt like a step backwards from whatever online equity I built over that time. I launched my first verion in 2009 and now looking back at my past designs, It was a great reflection on how much I’ve learned and grown.

It’s also a great reflection on how much the web has changed. The early days of web design were all about flashy graphics and complex layouts, but now it’s more about simplicity, usability, and performance. Over time, like much of the web, my site got flatter, cleaner, and more focused on content. But funny enough, I made a lot of similar color and design choices over that time. Some things never change!

This website was almost 100% AI Generated with Cline

I have wanted to update my website for a while, but I never had the time to do it. I was busy with work and family, and my website was always on the back burner. But I recently heard about Cline Bot, and in giving it a trial I was able to create a new version of my site in just a few days. I thought it’d be a fun challenge to see how much of a website I could build just “vibecoding”. I have had this idea for a website for a long time and with some AI-powered muscle, I was able to bring this silly idea to fruition.

Cline is an AI-powered coding assistant that uses natural language processing to create / review / test code. It lives right inside VS Code as an extension, similar to VS Copilot. You can write a description of the functionality or the features you want, and Cline will generate and test the code for you. Off the back of Anthropic’s LLM Claude Sonnet, The front end testing it did as it created new features was super cool to watch as it would sometimes detect a problem and iterate through issues until it got it right. And Cline does an exceptional job of providing thourough code explainations for all the choices it makes. The plan / act switch for toggling between ideation and implementation is a really nice touch.

I hit the ground running with Cline by prompting it to re-use content from my existing Live website. I needed my website content without WordPress, and BOOM it automatically pulled in any text and images.

I was able to easy prompt it to wrap everything in my favorite framework Astro, and everything just worked.

Because I have painstakingly written code, I understand how badly these tools can harm your end product. For example, AI is great at adding, but struggles to subtract. This means bloat can be real. Across multiple prompts, AI struggles to see the project in it’s entirety and it’s easy for code to become disconnected, lost, and forgotten. It also definitely doesn’t keep maintenance in mind, so I did some massaging to structure components the way I wanted them.

Also, I’ve noticed a lack of awareness for important features like accessibility and SEO. Until you specifically ask to consider these types of things, AI models generally glance over them.

I’ve been expirimenting with ChatGPT and VS Copilot a lot lately. I can confidently say I never forsaw the rise of AI in web development quite like this. At first I was hesitant to believe these tools were game changers, but in a few short months these tools have evolved drastically. It’s almost overwhelming how quickly the role of a developer / engineer is changing. It’s very exciting but also a little bit scary. I’m here for it but I legitimately wonder what the future holds for web development and the role of developers in general.

Anyways, thanks for checking out my updated website! This Windows XP-inspired design is a fun throwback and there’s plenty of easter eggs to find. I hope you like it. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to reach out to me. Enjoy some screen shots I snagged from my Wayback Machine travels below.