Websites Made Simple: How to have a successful website design business27 Huhti

How AI and Vibe Coding Puts Your Website Design Business At Risk

AI is everywhere — and so is everyone telling you to use it for everything. But when it comes to your website, your plugins, and the work you ship for clients, the wrong AI shortcut can quietly become a serious liability.

Check out my Sparks Group Training for anyone and everyone involved in the publishing of websites, from copywriters to SEOs: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/sparks-group-mentoring/ It’s a supportive group mentoring session for website designers and developers to bring their questions, roadblocks, ideas, and “is it just me?” moments.

Welcome to a special bonus episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie. (Quick note — my podcast mic was misbehaving for this one, so the audio is not quite up to our usual standard. My producer Neal at Podknows has worked his magic to clean it up, so please do stick with it. The conversation is genuinely worth your time.)

I am joined by senior developer Rob Fisher to talk about where AI actually helps in web design, where it absolutely does not, and the security and stability risks nobody is being loud enough about.

We get into:

Why vibe coding is not a shortcut, it is a stack of technical debt waiting to break

How LLMs really work, and why they hallucinate when you let them

Why your prompt boundaries matter as much as your prompt

The chatbot that gave a customer 85 percent off a 10,000 dollar order

What the October 2025 AWS outage tells us about AI first dev cultures

Why AI tools are junior developers, not senior ones, and what that means for your business

Why vibe coded WordPress plugins are a house of cards

How a “safe” plugin can become a Trojan horse with one auto update

What is actually changing in WordPress 7

If you are a designer or developer trying to work out where AI fits into your business without putting your clients at risk, this one is for you.

Come and find out more at https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk or email me at hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk

Skip to the good bits:

00:00 Bonus episode intro and audio note

01:18 Where AI fits in running a web business

02:34 Vibe coding and why it is a shortcut too far

05:12 The flip side, vibe coding as a learning tool

06:48 Tech debt: your vibe coded site is a liability waiting to break

07:45 What AI cannot do for user journeys and design psychology

09:20 How LLMs actually work, probability engines not brains

11:30 Hallucinations and the suspiciously short prompt

13:05 Prompt boundaries and staying on topic

15:10 What system prompts at OpenAI and Anthropic actually look like

17:00 The chatbot that gave away an 85 percent discount on a 10,000 dollar order

19:40 AI first dev houses and the October 2025 AWS outage

22:15 Microsoft layoffs and the AI replacement myth

24:30 Why generative AI is a junior developer, not a senior one

26:20 Vibe coded plugins, the house of cards problem

28:50 The WordPress plugin ecosystem and what it lets in

31:00 How a safe plugin becomes a Trojan horse overnight

33:15 WP Rocket, All in One Migration and the malicious update problem

34:50 WordPress 7 and the new AI APIs, and why it will not feel revolutionary

37:00 Block editor improvements and the abstraction layer problem

38:40 Final thoughts and how to get in touch

Mentioned in this episode:

Remember to sign up for our blogging masterclass!

Go to https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/masterclass

Blogging masterclass

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