A Four-Year Journey of Learning, Hurdles, and Discovery
When I set out to create the Mozart Tea and Herbs website, I was under no illusion about my limited design skills, the time constraints, or the out-of-pocket costs involved. What I did have, however, was a vision, and a willingness to learn. I was also aware of the many AI tools available that could have easily helped me establish an online presence. Four years later, however, I realize that the most valuable lessons I learned were ones I had to chart for myself—lessons I could not have discovered any other way than by walking that path with its fair shares of hurdles on my own.
WordPress course
In the beginning, WordPress felt like a maze. With the rise of full-site editing, I had to completely familiarize myself with how block theme patterns and template parts work. Understanding how headers, footers, query loops, and individual template parts interacted took time. I spent hours clicking around, trying different layouts, and sometimes backtracked my steps to take detailed notes of how things pieced together.
Realizing that trial and error alone only gets me so far, I decided to take a structured approach with a WordPress Design course. This was a game-changer for how I interacted with every facet of the platform.
The course plunged me straight into mastering the core mechanics of the site Editor, teaching me how to manage global navigation menus, structure clean media blocks, and apply cohesive styles and settings. I learned how pre-designed patterns could speed up a workflow, while custom-built templates gave me absolute control over individual page layouts.
Diving into these features piece by piece transformed my workflow. First, mastering the Editor gave me a centralized dashboard where I could control the entire ecosystem of my site without hunting through confusing backend menus. Next, I learned to tame navigation, ensuring visitors could effortlessly glide through my content.
Working with media blocks taught me how to visually balance text and imagery, moving away from cramped layouts into clean, breathable spaces. I then tackled styles and settings, discovering how global color palettes and typography rules could tie every page together under a single, unified aesthetic. Finally, understanding patterns and templates unlocked a modular approach to design—allowing me to reuse pre-built layouts while retaining the freedom to customize individual pages from the ground up.
The course gave me direction toward better understanding the anatomy of posts and pages, shifting my perspective from a novice to someone who could intentionally manipulate global settings, fonts, typography, and media layouts rather than just guessing what looked good. There was an immense amount of information to absorb, and even more to apply. I found myself taking extensive notes throughout the design work of my website, treating each newfound technique like part of a blueprint that I would immediately apply to a new page or post.
Theme frameworks mismatch challenge
Of course, theory and practice rarely align perfectly. Even with my detailed notes, I encountered several unique challenges along the way. A major hurdle was that the theme I selected for my live website differed from the one used in the course demonstrations.
While the course was modeled around a clean, standard free theme with a straightforward, minimal layout, my live site was built on a robust, feature-rich paid professional theme. Translating concepts taught on a basic structure to fit an advanced framework required a lot of creative problem-solving and adaptable thinking. For instance, the course might show how to style a simple container block using default WordPress controls, but my premium theme came pre-packaged with proprietary wrapper styles, custom meta boxes, and strict CSS overrides that often clashed with standard block settings.
I had to learn how to peel back the layers of the paid theme, figuring out where its custom code ended and native WordPress block editing began. It wasn’t just about recreating a look; it was about bridging the gap between a generic textbook example and a complex, highly opinionated professional product.
AI
Along the way, I also experimented with AI as a digital assistant. I quickly learned that while AI is an incredible tool, the quality of the results depends largely on how accurate I worded my prompts. What I thought were simple inquiries seemed to have evolved into instructions I did not recall requesting. Here are a couple of partial examples in the early days that I kept records of as part of my learning process: “Build a site for my WordPress website of [name]. Design a soft-white, clean Home page with the title of [name] and in a background banner of a Japanese tea garden picture that is available in Media library. Make this title banner narrow and not too wide.” What I got back from this prompt was a generic page of a Japanese garden in light two-tones charcoal background overlaid with a random tea shop image, and several thumbnail images of tea selections. However, the introduction piece was quite impressive. Here is another partial example of my instruction to AI: “Generate a featured image for the inside of an Asian apothecary. The image should prominently display a beautifully arranged display of a lot of diverse herbs, a clear pitcher of herbal flowers tea with handle on the right side, an Asian clay tea pot, and tea utensils invitingly presented on a rustic wooden table.” What I got back was a page of an apothecary that did not have the look and feel of Southeast Asia, and the glass tea pot had no handle and the same goes for the clay pot. The wooden table did have the image of a lot of herbs and spices on it, but was too close to the front. There was even a book shelf in the back, and a window on the left side neither elements of which I had asked for. I also learned that the same prompts when copied and paste, would produce different images, and that many syntax and grammatical errors appeared when I reviewed my prompts.
To understand this, I had to look closely at the gap between vague instructions and intentional direction. For example, if I asked AI an unclear prompt like, “Design a good homepage for my blog with a header and some tea and herbs pictures,” the result was almost always a generic, misaligned layout that missed my site’s core identity. The likelihood of a successful homepage from that kind of prompt was near zero, leading to a failed-expectation layout. However, when I shifted to a concise, highly structured prompt—such as, “Generate a WordPress block markup structure for a minimalist blog homepage featuring a full-width hero section with a dark charcoal background, a 2-column latest posts query loop utilizing a grid pattern, and a muted typography hierarchy using sans-serif fonts”—the output was remarkably accurate. I quickly realized that when an AI-generated layout failed, it wasn’t a shortcoming of the AI itself; it was a shortcoming on my part as a designer. Unclear thinking produces vague prompts, which naturally yield unusable code and unintended layouts. More importantly, I discovered that the more I depended on AI to fix these gaps, the less I discovered in my own learning process.
Two years ago in April, I decided to take down the website because it did not give me that sense of authenticity and I’d loss my motivation to move forward. The thought of rebuilding it from scratch was overwhelming. By that time, I had canceled all paid AI subscriptions except the WordPress Business Plan and its affiliated email portal. But I was determined to design every part of my website on my own, and to take as much notes in every step. In addition, I continued to take more photos wherever I traveled and to talk with as many people as I could to hear their stories, which I knew would add color to my blogs. In late February of this year 2026, WordPress added AI Assistant to its subscription packages. Working alongside editor and my Media Library collections, it was a big plus to help me with editorial review, updating and rounding out the rough edges of my designs. It was also a wonderful learning tool—a true workbook for the WordPress Designer course.
Niche
The concept of a niche does not make sense to me because my work and life experiences have taken me across many disciplines. More importantly, I have more than one interest, and I believe I have developed more than one set of skills. Life experience itself is multidimensional—it is shaped by our encounters with different places, cultures, people, ideas, and circumstances. Reducing that experience to a single niche seems to place too much emphasis on one purpose or identity, perhaps making more sense for content creators or video bloggers whose success depends on a narrowly defined audience. For me, it is difficult to decide which part of my life and work experience matters most, because choosing a single niche risks diminishing the breadth of my accomplishments, interests, capabilities, and ambitions.
For example, when I traveled through Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan, I allowed myself to absorb each place as it was—its culture, food, people, traditions, and everyday life—without approaching the experience with preconceived opinions. I documented what I encountered through writing and photography, then brought those two elements together in a way that preserves the authenticity of the experience as much as possible. Rather than imposing my own judgments or interpretations, I sought to observe, listen, and present what I experienced with an open mind.
This direction of thinking brings another challenge to the core purpose of my web site design: “if I don’t have a niche, how do I keep my website from looking like it has no clear purpose and subsequently, serving no particular audience?” “Who is it for?”. So, I thought of the three most remarkable places in my travel that inspires me to structure my website with similar intention: St Peter Basilica, Italy; the Louvre, France; and Fujiyoshida, Japan. All three places have an entry point to wonderful discoveries that seem endless. St. Peter’s Basilica as the monumental heart of Vatican City and Renaissance architecture, but also as the grand gateway to the eternal wonders of Rome and a direct portal into a city layered with history—from the artistic treasures of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, to the ancient ruins of the Colosseum. The Louvre in Paris which serves as a stunning gateway to classical antiquity through its world-class collection of Roman sculptures, artifacts, and antiquities. Stepping past its iconic glass pyramid into the Roman galleries immediately immerses visitors in the grandeur of the ancient empire, offering a breathtaking portal to the artistic legacy of Rome. The town of Fujiyoshida located just next to Kawaguchiko on the northern slopes. This is the actual city where I’d find the iconic Arakurayama Sengen Park (the red pagoda viewpoint) and the main climbing trails of hundred steps. The concept of having an entry point to discoveries inspires me to create the hidden blog page under “The Louvre” title page where stories of people, work, and food are collected.
A Work in Progress: The Journey never truly ends
Building and refining my website is an ongoing evolution rather than a destination with a fixed finish line. My site is never truly “completed,” and I have come to embrace that reality. The more time I spend tinkering under the hood, the more new bits of knowledge I uncover. Every week brings fresh revisions—whether tweaking a spacing rule, restructuring a footer template part, optimizing typography hierarchy, or swapping out old media grids for cleaner patterns. Each adjustment teaches me something new about how the web lives and functions, proving that a business website is a living, growing canvas.
Looking forward
Reflecting on my website today, I see the cumulative result of years of persistence, continuous learning, and hands-on experimentation. While my exploration and professional development remain ongoing, that initial apprehension toward the blank canvas has been entirely resolved. Over time, my project notes have evolved into a structured blueprint—a practical reference guide answering the fundamental question: ‘How did I achieve that?’ Consequently, for anyone constructing a digital presence without a traditional design background: embrace the challenges, meticulously document your process, trust the methodology, and cultivate the problem-solving mindset necessary to navigate the unknowns independently.