Good afternoon!! Greetings from Mexico, I really like working with sitely to build my web pages but for some time I have been looking and researching AI example: chatgtp “sites” or claude “artifacts” where they can help us generate a site in minutes, now comes the question, how could we take advantage of these technologies together with sitely these alternatives give us the code buying the devolper license we could do it or what would be the alternative, personally I still like to have total control of the construction but the AIs can help us how to start, which is usually the most difficult
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I think you have identified one of the really interesting developments in web design at the moment. AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude can certainly help generate websites very quickly, but there is an important distinction between generating a website with AI and having full control over how that website is built.
If your priority is to use AI to generate the website and then have complete access to, and control over, the underlying HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other code, then I would suggest that Sitely probably isn’t the web development tool for you. Sitely is deliberately designed around visual website creation rather than requiring you to work directly with the underlying code.
However, I don’t think that means you have to choose between AI and Sitely.
In fact, I think AI can be extremely useful in conjunction with Sitely.
One of the biggest advantages of AI is that it can help you overcome the hardest part of starting a website: deciding what the website should look like and how it should be structured.
For example, you can ask an AI to create a complete visual concept for a website - including the homepage structure, navigation, sections, colours, typography, imagery, calls to action and even the desktop and mobile layouts. You can then use that as a visual blueprint and recreate the design in Sitely.
So instead of asking AI:
“Build me a website and give me the code.”
you can ask it:
“Design a professional website for my business. Show me exactly what the homepage should look like, including the layout, typography, imagery, colours, navigation and all of the sections.”
The AI can then produce a visual mock-up or prototype which gives you a very clear starting point.
You remain in control of the actual website construction in Sitely, but you don’t have to start with a blank page wondering:
“Where do I begin?”
That, in my opinion, is where AI can be particularly valuable to Sitely users.
You can also use AI to help with the other parts of the process — writing the website copy, creating page structures, suggesting navigation, developing SEO titles and descriptions, generating ideas for images, refining the design and even providing HTML/CSS snippets for specific elements where Sitely allows them.
So I would look at it as:
AI = your design and development assistant
Sitely = your visual website-building environment
You don’t necessarily need AI to replace Sitely. It can actually make Sitely much more powerful by helping you get from “I have an idea” to “I know exactly what I want to build.”
And for someone who, like you, still wants total control over the construction of the website, I think that combination can be particularly attractive.
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Thank you for your honest comment, I really enjoy the work involved in designing, searching, cutting, it takes hours or usually days before you start to assemble the page in sitely, I repeat I really enjoy it and I like it very much I am almost 60 years old and I do not stop learning, of course I do not want to replace that work with artificial intelligence, the question would be if I pay for the sitely developer license, “example” chatgtp that gives me the code I paste it in sitely developer, can I continue working with that site in sitely??
The developer options in Sitely give you the ability to extend your website with your own HTML, CSS and JavaScript code. These additions can be placed in the appropriate areas of your pages - such as the page <head> - or added as separate CSS or JavaScript documents. When your site is published, Sitely includes these elements in the resulting website automatically.
The important thing to understand is that adding code doesn’t mean giving up Sitely’s visual design tools. Your pages can still be created and edited using all the normal Sitely elements. Code simply provides an additional way of adding features or functionality that isn’t available directly within the standard Sitely toolset.
Adding third-party services
One of the most useful applications is integrating services provided by other websites.
For example, you might want to add:
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An online shopping cart or payment system
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A booking or appointment system
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A newsletter sign-up form
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A map or interactive location finder
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A customer support or live-chat widget
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An analytics or tracking service
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A social media feed
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A form or survey supplied by another service
These services will often provide you with a snippet of code that needs to be added to your website.
Some code is intended to go into the <head> of the page. This might be JavaScript that loads a particular service, establishes a connection with a third-party system, or defines styles used elsewhere on the page. Sitely’s developer options make it possible to add this type of code without having to edit the generated HTML manually.
Other code is designed to appear within the visible page itself. For this, Sitely’s Embed element is particularly useful. You can paste the code supplied by the third-party service into an Embed element and position it on your page just as you would any other Sitely element.
For example, an e-commerce provider might give you an embed snippet that displays a product, shopping cart or checkout button. You could place that snippet inside a Sitely page while continuing to use Sitely to design the rest of the page around it.
Using AI to create additional features
Code can also be useful when you want to add a feature that isn’t part of the standard Sitely toolset.
This is where AI can be particularly helpful. You can describe the feature you would like - for example:
“I want a button that reveals additional information when it is clicked.”
An AI tool can help you create the HTML, CSS and JavaScript needed to produce that effect. You can then add the resulting code to your Sitely page, often using an Embed element.
Other examples might include:
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A countdown timer for an upcoming event
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An interactive FAQ where answers expand and collapse
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A calculator or price estimator
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A custom image or content slider
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A simple interactive quiz
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A button that changes content on the page
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A custom animation or visual effect
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A dynamically generated list or display
This can be a powerful way of adding small, self-contained features to a website without having to build the entire site using code.
Code and Sitely work together
There is one important distinction to keep in mind. When you add an externally supplied or AI-generated component through an Embed element, that component is generally not converted into normal Sitely elements that you can edit visually. You are essentially embedding a piece of code inside your Sitely page.
However, Sitely gives you the ability to edit the code itself. This means that, if you understand HTML, CSS or JavaScript - or use AI to help you modify it - you can make changes to the embedded component without having to rebuild the rest of your page.
The real advantage is therefore that you can combine the two approaches: use Sitely for the overall design and structure of your website, and use code when you need something beyond the standard Sitely toolset.
You don’t need to become a professional programmer to take advantage of this. Even a small amount of HTML, CSS or JavaScript - or assistance from an AI coding tool - can open up many additional possibilities for a Sitely website.
Yes, me too. The quick and easy method was to use Sitely for layout and enjoy its great tools, like publishing over 30 pages on my server of choice. Then one goes to the ai and of their choice, to request a copy be made of the big site to fit the phones and other devices. This is ai’s value. It will provide you all the original layout plus content which now fits all devices. Next I imported this ai version to sitely and was pleased to see that yes, the phone view was automatically corrected for me. I didn’t have to do it manually. Now I could use Sitely’s Publish again, and presto, all is well.