How to build a landing page from scratch in 8 hours (with zero frontend/design experience)
Hey everyone! I wanted to share my experience building my first website as someone with zero web development experience. I'm primarily a backend developer, but I needed a landing page for a new project. Instead of spending weeks learning web dev basics, I experimented with some AI tools and got surprising results.
You can read the [detailed journey on Medium](https://medium.com/@jocelin/how-to-build-a-landing-page-from-scratch-in-8-hours-with-zero-frontend-design-experience-65a9a64b57f5), but here's a summary for the community:
**Tech Stack Used:**
* Content & Planning: Claude AI
* Initial Structure: V0.dev
* Development: Windsurf editor
* UI Mockups: Galileo AI
* Deployment: Vercel
* Domain: GoDaddy
**The Process:**
Started with V0.dev for the initial structure. One prompt gave me a working website with all the code. While basic, it gave me a solid foundation to build upon.
The interesting part came when I needed to make tweaks. V0.dev struggled with minor adjustments (like fixing button text colors), so I moved to Windsurf editor.
Windsurf was a game-changer. As someone unfamiliar with frontend, being able to use natural language to modify code was incredible. Example commands:
```
"Add hover states to these buttons"
"Re-layout this section to be more compact"
"Fix the spacing between these elements"
```
For the product screenshots (since I didn't have a real product yet), I tried Midjourney but it was too artistic. Switched to Galileo AI which is specialized for UI mockups.
Deployment was surprisingly straightforward with Vercel's GitHub integration. Push to main = auto deploy.
**Time Breakdown:**
- Content preparation: 1hr
- Initial structure with V0.dev: 30min
- Branding (colors, icons): 30min
- Visual tweaks in Windsurf: 3hrs
- Screenshots with Galileo: 1hr
- Deployment setup: 30min
**Key Learnings:**
* This isn't no-code or pure coding - it's something in between
* AI tools are great for MVPs and quick prototypes
* You still need to understand what you want to build
* The tools handle the heavy lifting, but you maintain control
You can check out the result at [memory-anchor.com](https://www.memory-anchor.com)
Would love to hear your thoughts! Has anyone else experimented with V0.dev or Windsurf? How do you feel about this AI-assisted approach to web development?