Over the last few months, I've been working on a project called Niriv, a custom WordPress-powered internet portal that goes far beyond a traditional blog or news website.
What started as a WordPress theme gradually evolved into something much larger:
Search engine features
News aggregation
Business directories
Knowledge panels
Weather information
Horoscope sections
Classified listings
Chatrooms
Movie content
Event pages
Custom archives and search experiences
Various portal-style services
The project currently contains hundreds of files and thousands of lines of PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and WordPress integrations.
What makes this interesting is that a significant portion of the development was accelerated using Cursor AI.
Why WordPress?
Many developers would immediately ask:
"Why not Laravel, Next.js, Django, or a custom framework?"
The answer is simple.
WordPress already provides:
User authentication
Content management
Media management
SEO foundations
Plugin ecosystem
Admin dashboard
Database abstraction
REST API
Instead of rebuilding those pieces from scratch, I focused on building custom functionality on top of WordPress.
Features I Built
Some notable features inside the project include:
Search Portal
Custom search templates and search-related functionality designed to behave more like a portal than a traditional WordPress search page.
Knowledge Panels
Entity-style information panels similar to what users expect from modern search engines.
Business Directory
Custom archive templates and business listing functionality.
Classified Marketplace
A separate content system for classified ads.
Community Features
Chatroom functionality and user interaction components.
Information Services
Weather
Forex rates
Event calendars
Horoscopes
News content
Performance Optimizations
While building the project, I also spent time optimizing:
PHP compatibility
XML sitemap handling
Custom caching logic
Frontend rendering
Asset organization
How Cursor AI Changed My Workflow
The biggest surprise wasn't the code itself.
It was how much faster development became with an AI IDE.
Instead of:
Searching Stack Overflow
Reading documentation
Writing boilerplate
Debugging manually
I could often:
Describe the feature
Let Cursor generate a first version
Review the code
Refine and test
For example:
Creating custom archive templates
Generating WordPress hooks
Building admin interfaces
Refactoring large PHP files
Creating CSS systems
Generating repetitive code structures
became significantly faster.
What AI IDEs Are Really Good At
After using Cursor extensively, I think AI performs best at:
Boilerplate Generation
Creating WordPress templates, hooks, classes, and repetitive code.
Refactoring
Improving existing code without manually editing hundreds of lines.
Code Discovery
Understanding large projects and locating where features are implemented.
Rapid Prototyping
Testing ideas in minutes instead of hours.
What AI Still Doesn't Do Well
Despite the hype, AI isn't replacing developers.
I still had to:
Design the architecture
Make technical decisions
Review generated code
Fix logic issues
Handle security concerns
Optimize performance
Cursor can generate code.
It cannot reliably decide whether that code is the best architectural choice.
The Biggest Question
As the project grew, I noticed something interesting.
The faster AI generated features, the easier it became to keep adding more and more functionality.
At some point I started asking myself:
Am I building features because users need them, or because AI makes it easy to create them?
That's a question many AI-assisted developers will probably face.
Is This Good Practice?
That's what I'd like feedback on from the community.
The project is essentially a large custom application running inside WordPress:
Hundreds of theme files
Extensive PHP customization
Portal functionality
Search features
Community tools
Information services
Would you continue scaling something like this inside WordPress?
Or would you eventually migrate parts of it into a separate framework or microservices architecture?
I'm especially interested in hearing from developers who have used AI IDEs like Cursor, Windsurf, or GitHub Copilot for large projects.
Has AI made you more productive, or has it simply made it easier to accumulate technical debt faster?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. 🚀
Tech Stack
PHP 8.1+
WordPress
JavaScript
CSS
Cursor AI
Custom WordPress Theme (Niriv)
