I Knew I Could Do Better — So I Did
I built my website about sixteen months ago. For the first several months, it did what I needed it to do. But somewhere around the six-to-nine month mark, I started noticing what it wasn't doing — and I couldn't un-see it. The template constraints, the image cropping, the layout limitations. It worked. It just didn't reflect the level of work I was actually delivering for clients. My plan was to hire a professional webmaster this year and have a properly coded site built from scratch. That was the plan.
Then I went to ATD ALC.
I attended a session where the ATD Chapter DEIB Committee walked through using generative AI to review governance documents — bylaws, policies, the kind of foundational text organizations don't look at critically very often. Sitting in the closing keynote later that day, I took photos of my notes and a colleague's notes and asked Claude to organize them, identify the key themes, and pull out the top three takeaways and action items for each of us. It did. Cleanly. Accurately. In minutes.
When I got home, I checked off one of my own action items and had Claude review our chapter's bylaws for bias and ableist language. The results were eye-opening. Then I pushed further — I pulled together CSVs of member data, non-member data, event attendance records — and asked Claude to tell me what we had never thought to ask about our own data. What came back surprised more than a few board members. We weren't missing data. We were missing questions.
That shift in thinking changed my approach to a lot of things. Including my website.
I need to give credit where it's due. Last November at DevLearn, I attended a session by Jeff Batt where he talked about using vibe coding and generative AI to build learning experiences and websites — without knowing how to code. It planted a seed. When Claude's vibe coding capabilities expanded this year, a lot of instructional designers immediately saw the eLearning applications. I also watched what Tim Slade was starting to do with it. Their work gave me permission to stop waiting for the "right" solution and start building.
Instead of hiring a webmaster, I used Claude to rebuild my Squarespace site — and the difference is significant. Visually, in how content is displayed, in how the site actually behaves. One of my specific frustrations had always been images being forced to fit template placeholders rather than the other way around. That's fixed. I also used Claude to ensure the site meets GDPR requirements and includes proper cookie disclosure options. GDPR is more restrictive than U.S. requirements — and I made that choice deliberately. If I'm going to hold myself out as someone who builds accessible, professionally sound learning experiences, I should be holding my own web presence to at least the same standard.
Speaking of which — accessibility. I can't, in good conscience, tell clients I build accessible eLearning while running a website that fails basic accessibility checks. I used Claude alongside an independent online accessibility scanner to audit the entire site, identified the issues, and had Claude help adjust the underlying code to bring it into compliance. High-level: it's done, it's cleaner, and it's something I can stand behind.
The one area still in progress is the portfolio — honestly, the section I was most dissatisfied with from the beginning. I'm rebuilding it this week using Claude, Articulate Storyline, Canva, and Adobe Firefly, with a focus on making it genuinely useful for potential clients while ensuring every sample in it is fully accessible.
The rest of the site? Take a look. I hope you're enjoying what you're seeing — because for the first time in a while, so am I.