I’ve been hearing a lot about Cursor lately, but I haven’t actually used it yet and I’m a bit confused about where it fits in real workflows.
Most of the content I’ve seen (especially on YouTube) feels a bit overwhelming and assumes you already know how to use it properly.
I mostly work with basic HTML/CSS and WordPress (custom sections, small tweaks, that kind of stuff), so I’m trying to understand if Cursor is actually useful for that type of work. I really have no experience about Cursor. I want to learn how to use cursor to design really impressive, head-turning and converting. I’ve been developing custom html widgets the wrong way.
Primarily, I am using ChatGPT for it and giving it prompts. I do get to reach 40% where I want to be but the way I do is unprofessional and not at all scalable.
Would appreciate if someone could explain in simple terms how they’re using it, especially for web or WordPress-related work.
Simplest way to think about Cursor: it’s a code editor with AI built into your project. Instead of copy-pasting between ChatGPT and your editor, the AI sees your files and edits them for you. So Cursor knows more about your project than the Chat GPT web app does because it can see the scope of your full project and intelligently pass along that information to the model.
For HTML/CSS and WordPress work, the workflow looks like:
Open your project folder (e.g. your theme folder) in Cursor.
Press Cmd/Ctrl + I to open the chat — now the AI has context on your whole project.
Ask things like:
“Build a hero section with headline, subheadline, and CTA — modern and mobile-friendly.”
“Add a testimonial slider in plain HTML/CSS.”
“This looks broken on mobile, fix it.”
Review the proposed edits and accept or tweak them.
The big shift from ChatGPT: no more copy-pasting. You point Cursor at the file, describe what you want, iterate. That’s where the scalability comes from.
A few tips to start:
Try it on a small project first (a single landing page is perfect).
Be specific in prompts — describe the look, feel, and behavior (“bold headline, soft shadow, hover animation”).
I’m gonna be honest, I think I’m confused at an even more basic level than most people here
I’m not really from a technical/programming background. I mostly just mess around with WordPress, custom HTML/CSS snippets, Elementor, and ChatGPT until things somehow work.
So when I watch Cursor tutorials and they start talking about repos, local environments, opening project folders, syncing files etc, I get lost almost immediately.
I genuinely don’t understand the actual “starting point” yet.
Like if I already have a WordPress website running, what do I physically do first to start using Cursor with it?
Do I download files from hosting? Which files? Where do they go? How does Cursor connect to WordPress?
Sorry if this sounds super beginner-level, I’m just trying to understand the workflow in simple terms before diving deeper because right now most tutorials feel way too technical for me.
Totally fair question. Cursor is an AI code editor that help you build your projects as you describe what you’d like in natural language. It’s built for professional developers, but can still be approachable to beginner devs. What I would actually recommend is starting with a super basic static site before even moving on to wordpress but start with building a simple, basic HTML site with Cursor and get a feel for how it works.
You can even take a “Meta” approach and ask Cursor to describe how it works. You can ask Cursor to put together a tailored learning plan for you. The sky is the limit! If there’s anything you don’t understand you can ask Cursor to clarify for you - AI is infinitely patient!
There’s also lots of online resources on youtube etc, so it depends what you’re looking for.
Simply ask the Agent about this directly within Cursor IDE Chat, asking Agent to adhere to the Cursor documentation. In this chat, use Composer 2 or GPT-5.4-mini-high model.
Cursor IDE can be used for any computer work involving text data, documents, and images. For other types of data, you need to find MCP or OSS things through which the Agent can interact with the content. If you use advanced models, they will automatically select the right tools for you.
Lets start from the very basic. I dont know a word what to do. I am finding Youtube videso overwhemling and unpractical for a complete beginner. Therefore, I joined this forum so some subject experts can make it super practical and easy to help me start with cursor. Now I dont just need general stuff like do this or go here. I want a handful practical step by step instruction what to do where to go, how to set it up and how to configure settings if any. So i will provide you with some screenshots of my site and cursor, tell me what exactly where to click , which files to give to cursor, like explain it on a very basic level. guide me where to hover and how to start the chat with Curosr and how to upload or Open your project folder (e.g. your theme folder) in Cursor. i have uploaded two screenshots. now tell me how to navigate across them to start Delta project in Cursor.
For context, my project is basically a WordPress site around Delta Executor (Roblox scripts/executor related content, downloads, guides, landing pages etc). Most of the site is currently built using:
Elementor
custom HTML/CSS snippets
WordPress edits
ChatGPT generated sections
random frontend tweaks until things finally look decent
Now I’m trying to understand how people properly move this kind of project into Cursor/vibe coding workflows.
What files am I actually supposed to import/open inside Cursor first?
Do I:
download files from hosting first?
open the whole WordPress folder?
or only the active theme folder?
I mean which website folder or file to download or how to import to Cursor.
And once I download them, which folder do people normally work on inside Cursor for frontend/design improvements?
I think the thing confusing me most right now is understanding what the actual “project” is supposed to be inside Cursor for an already running WordPress website.
Active Theme - this is where you would typically make changes, however, it’s important to know that if you make a lot of customizations to a standard Wordpress theme (like Twenty Twenty-Four), then when Wordpress publishes an update for that theme it may overwrite some of your changes.
What most developers do is clone the chosen theme by making a Child Theme, which is based on the chosen one, but you can customize it. Basically, any files you want to change you copy to the child theme, and change them, and they “override” the matching file in the parent theme.
With regards to Cursor development, the “project folder” on your local computer would usually be the child theme. Then, after you make whatever changes you want to child theme files, you would then deploy those changes to the server that hosts your actual Wordpress website.
USE CAUTION
The normal Wordpress interface limits the changes you can make, thus it’s harder to accidentally break things beyond fixing. If you start dabbling with downloading and uploading files from your web server, there are many ways you could accidentally destroy everything. Regular backups highly recommended
It’s also a good idea to learn how to use Git / Github if you don’t know yet. In simple terms: You create a repository on Github and use it to store the files of the child theme. As you work you periodically save and “push” your changes to Github, so you have a version history. That way if you make some changes and screw things up, you have a good avenue for rolling back the changes to an older version.
As a side note, using Cursor to edit your theme files locally on your computer is difficult if you can’t test the changes in real time. Setting your entire website up as a test site that runs locally on your computer makes the process a LOT more easy. Use AI to help you set this up if you want, but the process is something like:
Download the site files (usually contents of your public_html folder. Even though you’ll only really be editing the theme files, you need all of them to host the local site)
Download the site database (this should be a .sql file)
Set up a local database server (MySQL or MariaDB) and import the SQL file that was downloaded
Update the wp-config.php file with the database credentials for the local database
Use something like Laravel Valet to “serve” the website. This let’s you access it at a URL like “yourwebsitedomain.test”
Then, you can use Cursor to open the child theme (in the website files), make changes, and see the reflected on your local test site in realtime.
To add on to my previous comment: it’s admirable what you’re trying to accomplish, but you do have a steep learning curve before you’ll start to feel comfortable. Fortunately, this is a LOT easier than it used to be in the age of AI… but as you’ve discovered, you still need to know what questions you should be asking AI to help you with in the first place
I worked for many years as a freelance Wordpress developer and am happy to answer more questions to help get you going. Feel free to DM me anytime!
This is honestly the first explanation that made the whole “project folder” thing click in my head a little bit
I think before this I was confusing:
WordPress website = Cursor project
Now I’m slowly understanding that people usually mean the child theme files specifically.
The local testing part still sounds scary to me though not gonna lie lol
Right now my site is already live and I mostly edit things directly through WordPress/Elementor/custom CSS snippets, so I’m trying to figure out the safest beginner path without accidentally nuking the whole site.
So if you were starting from absolute zero today, would you first:
learn local WordPress setup
learn Git/Github
or first just open the child theme in Cursor and experiment slowly
Don’t forget CLI. It is what makes linux user friendly. Something nerds were never able achieve. No matter what problem user has, Cursor CLI will fix it.
I would first spend some time to learn Git and Github. Very powerful tool that can save you a lot of headache in the future.
Once you get your child theme folder on your computer AND set up on Github, then I would open it in Cursor and experiment with it slowly. Once the folder is set up and linked to a Github repository, Cursor can manage a lot of the actual Github-related tasks for you. An example development cycle is something like:
Pick a specific focused thing to work on or change
Use Cursor to make changes to the code
Deploy the changes to the server, test it to make sure it works as expected
Once done, tell Cursor to commit the work to Github
This is a very basic cycle and works for small projects, but has some flaws.
For one thing, the only way to test changes is on your live website, so it might break things temporarily while you’re in the middle of making changes. This is where having a local test site is nice
Simply committing the work to the main branch of Github is fine if you’re working alone and on hobby projects, but for more serious work you need to learn about creating branches → doing code changes on that branch → merging the branch into main after work is done
While the local Wordpress setup is nice to have it definitely isn’t necessary. As long as you have a way to push or deploy your child theme changes from your local computer folder to the web server, you’re golden. (SSH is the best way to do this, but FTP is also common and is usually easier to set up. Cursor can help walk you through options).
I realized there is a newer tool for running the site locally which is called Laravel Herd, it’s basically a modern version of Valet that has a nice user interface and is a lot more user friendly. And it’s free!
Olá @mohammad ali o estou fazendo um curso básico do “cursor com python” da Open Academy Santander. Mas não sei se funciona para você, ja que nao é brasileiro. Mas a plataforma é bem legal e faz você fazer exercícios do básico ao avançado. Comece do pequeno, faça pequenos comandos para você ver como ele funciona.. ja ja vc ta arrasando mais que a galera.. porq vc ja tem uma base importante. Cursor é só um apoio de criação. Sucesso e bons estudos.
USE CAUTION 