I built a website without leaving ChatGPT — and it only took one prompt

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Tran Mau Tri Tam)

I'm an avid reader and freelance on the side as a book reviewer for a variety of big publishers. Needless to say, I read a lot of books for both work and in my free time each month. However, I often find it hard to keep track of everything. Reviews end up in files and recommendations are forgotten in emails and text messages.So, when I saw that ChatGPT could now build and host websites from a conversation, I decided to try creating a website for books I've read. I started by uploading just four book reviews and told ChatGPT what I wanted, then I let Codex handle the rest. I didn't need to choose the template or even open a traditional website builder like I've done in the past. That ease is what makes ChatGPT Sites interesting and so very useful. With just an idea and a prompt, you can get a live website in under five minutes.What is ChatGPT Sites?

(Image credit: Future)OpenAI describes ChatGPT Sites as a way to create and share a live website or lightweight app from Codex. Available right on the process, Sites makes the website-building process easy with a single prompt. Just explain what you want to build, Codex creates it and you review the result. If something isn’t right, you can ask for changes in plain English before deploying the finished site.Hosting and access controls are included, so you aren’t left with a folder full of code and no idea what to do with it. Once everything is ready, Codex can deploy the site and provide a link. Of course, you'll still have to pay for the cost of the domain and hosting, but the hard work of building a site is done for you.Begin your site with a promptI started by uploading four Word documents. Each had a different book review. I was really just testing out what Sites could do, I wasn't sure what the outcome would be, so I didn't want to invest too much time at first. Since I had already written the book reviews, each of them covering a mix of genres, I wanted to see if ChatGPT could cohesively connect the dots. I wasn't sure what I wanted out of the site, but I figured once I uploaded anything, I could get a first draft.That said, my first request was almost comically simple: Make me a website about the books I’ve read this month.Building the site was as simple as a conversation