My AI-Generated Website: Bugs Found, Fixes Made
Alright, fellow tech adventurers! Gather 'round and let me tell you about the time I thought I'd found a magic wand for website development. You know, those shiny AI code generators that promise to wh...
r5yn1r4143
3w ago
Alright, fellow tech adventurers! Gather 'round and let me tell you about the time I thought I'd found a magic wand for website development. You know, those shiny AI code generators that promise to whip up perfect code in seconds? Yeah, I tried one. And let's just say my "magic wand" turned into a rather slippery, buggy spaghetti noodle. My first AI-generated website code was, to put it mildly, a glorious mess.
The "Eureka!" Moment (That Quickly Turned into "Oh, No!")
I was tasked with building a simple landing page for a new client. Nothing too fancy, just a few sections, a contact form, and a sprinkle of CSS magic. I'd heard all the buzz about AI coding assistants, so I figured, "Why not give it a whirl? This will be faster than my usual coding marathon!" I fed the AI a prompt, describing the layout and functionality I needed. Within minutes, it spat out HTML, CSS, and even a bit of JavaScript. I was ecstatic! I copied, pasted, and hit refresh on my browser.
And then… nothing. Or rather, almost nothing. The HTML structure was there, but the CSS was completely ignored. The contact form looked like it was designed in 1998. And the "sprinkle of CSS magic"? More like a complete void. My "Eureka!" moment quickly devolved into an "Oh, no, what have I done?" kind of panic. It felt like asking a chef for a gourmet meal and getting a plate of uncooked spaghetti.
TL;DR: I tried an AI code generator for a website, and it produced code full of bugs that didn't work as expected. Time for some old-fashioned debugging!
The Bug Hunt Begins: It's Not You, It's Me (and the AI)
My initial thought was, "Okay, AI, you've failed me." But then I remembered the Oops IT motto: learn from every mistake, even the ones made by our silicon buddies. The AI gave me code, but it didn't give me working code. The problem wasn't that I couldn't code; it was that the AI's output needed a human touch – a lot of it.
I started with the most obvious issue: styling. My CSS file was linked correctly in the HTML, but the browser just wasn't applying the styles.
The "Oops" Code (HTML):
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Client Landing Page</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"> <!-- This looked correct -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- Content goes here -->
</body>
</html>
The "Oops" Code (CSS):
/ AI-generated masterpiece /
body {
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
background-color: #f0f0f0; / Expected light grey /
color: #333;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}h1 {
color: #007bff; / Expected blue /
}
When I refreshed, the page was plain white with black text. The body background was still white, and the h1 was black. My debugger (the browser's developer tools, my trusty sidekick) told me the link tag was recognized, but the styles weren't being applied. I double-checked the href attribute in the link tag. It was style.css. The style.css file was in the same directory as my index.html. Everything looked right.
The Sneaky Culprit: A Simple Typo
After scratching my head for a solid ten minutes, I zoomed in on the link tag again. And there it was. A single, innocent-looking typo:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
The AI, in its infinite wisdom (or lack thereof), had generated stylesheet instead of stylesheet. It's a common typo, one I might have made myself if I was rushing. The browser, being the strict taskmaster it is, saw stylesheet as an invalid attribute for the link tag, effectively ignoring the entire line.
The Fix:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
This was my first "Aha!" moment of the debugging session. It wasn't a complex logic error; it was a basic HTML attribute mistake. I corrected it, refreshed, and bam! The page suddenly had a light grey background and a beautiful blue heading. The AI hadn't failed completely; it had just made a tiny, yet critical, error.
Tackling the Functional Flaws: JavaScript Woes
With the styling sorted, I moved on to the contact form. The AI had generated some JavaScript to handle form submission. My prompt included something like "validate the form fields and send a message."
The "Oops" Code (JavaScript):
document.getElementById('contactForm').addEventListener('submit', function(event) {
event.preventDefault(); // Stop default form submission const name = document.getElementById('name').value;
const email = document.getElementById('email').value;
const message = document.getElementById('message').value;
if (!name || !email || !message) {
alert('All fields are required!');
} else {
// Supposed to send data here
console.log('Form submitted:', { name, email, message });
alert('Thank you for your message!');
this.reset(); // Clear the form
}
});
When I tried submitting the form (even with all fields filled), nothing happened. The console.log message didn't appear, and the form didn't reset. The alert('Thank you for your message!'); also failed to trigger. The preventDefault() seemed to be working, but the rest of the logic was dead in the water.
The Console Logs Speak: Where the JavaScript Died
My first step was to open the browser's developer console. This is where the magic (and the error messages) happen. I saw this gem:
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'addEventListener')
at index.html:55:10
This error message is super common and incredibly helpful. It's telling me that document.getElementById('contactForm') returned null. Why? Because there was no element with the ID contactForm in my HTML.
**The "Oops" Code (HTML for Form):
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