DotNest is Lombiq’s managed Orchard Core hosting platform where users can create and run Orchard Core sites without handling infrastructure, updates, or maintenance themselves. We recently rebuilt the site to give DotNest a clearer presentation and a more modern user experience. By looking behind the scenes of the DotNest site rebuild, you’ll see how a website redesign can become a broader modernization project: improving how landing pages are structured, introducing Tailwind 4 into an Orchard Core front-end workflow, simplifying asset handling, and using AI-assisted tools in a practical way while keeping developers in control. Why the rebuild mattered The previous site served its purpose, but it no longer matched what we envisioned for DotNest. Beyond a more modern design, we needed clearer messaging, and a content management structure that would be easier to maintain as the site evolved. This was especially important because DotNest is more than a marketing website. It also reflects how we approach building maintainable Orchard Core platforms. If the site itself is hard to update, every future improvement becomes slower and more expensive than it should be. So we treated the rebuild as more than a visual refresh. It became a chance to rethink the site’s structure, front-end workflow, and development process in a way we can reuse on future Orchard Core projects. Building landing pages around reusable sections One of the main changes was how landing pages are structured in Orchard Core. Previously, the DotNest pages used simple Liquid widgets for page sections. This was quick and flexible while most changes were made directly by developers, but it also meant that the page structure was less explicit and harder to evolve consistently over time. Around the same time, the Orchard Core community was also moving toward more reusable “Blocks”-style page structures, which aligned closely with the direction we already wanted to take for DotNest. The rebuild became a good opportunity to apply a similar pattern in practice. For the new site, each landing page section now has its own content type, and the sections are composed on the landing page through Orchard Core’s BagPart. This keeps the flexibility of section-based pages while giving each section a clearer structure and purpose. The result is a landing page system that is easier to understand, easier to extend, and less dependent on ad-hoc template changes. At the same time, the reusable section-based approach gives content editors flexibility within clear guardrails, making it much harder to accidentally break layouts or page structure. For a marketing site that will keep evolving, that maintainability matters as much as the initial design. Modernizing the front-end workflow The rebuild was also the point where we introduced Tailwind 4 into our internal front-end workflow for Orchard Core projects. Previously, we used a BEM-style approach with custom CSS files. While this worked well for years, it also created more manual structure and coordination as the site evolved. With Tailwind 4, we could build UI components faster, keep styling closer to the markup, and work more consistently with our design system. As part of the rebuild, we removed the old Node.js-based asset pipeline and integrated Tailwind directly into the .NET build workflow. That led to Lombiq Tailwind Targets, our open-source MSBuild integration for Tailwind CSS. With Lombiq Tailwind Targets, Tailwind compilation runs as part of the .NET build process, making the front-end workflow feel like a natural part of the Orchard Core application instead of a separate toolchain to maintain. This also aligned with a broader direction we had already started exploring at Lombiq: simplifying front-end tooling and moving away from Node.js-based workflows where they add unnecessary maintenance overhead. We wrote earlier about this approach in Step away from that Node.js. Using AI where it helps, with developers still in control AI-assisted tools became part of the rebuild mainly in the UI and front-end workflow. We used Magic Patterns to explore UI directions and generate Tailwind-based starting points from our design system. Since the generated code was not always aligned with Tailwind 4 or the final Orchard Core implementation, we still reviewed and refactored it before integrating it into the site. To support this workflow, we also created two open-source repositories: Tailwind Agent Skills and Orchard Core Agent Skills. These agent skill collections give AI tools more project-specific context around Tailwind 4, Orchard Core theming, content modeling, shapes, and recipes, making the output far more useful than generic prompting alone. The goal was not to automate development away, but to make AI-assisted work more practical and reviewable for real Orchard Core projects. AI helped speed up repetitive and exploratory tasks, while developers still made the architectural and implementation decisions needed to keep the final result maintainable. What we gained from the project One of the biggest takeaways was how much easier Orchard Core landing pages become to manage once reusable sections and clearer content structures are introduced. The previous setup had gradually accumulated friction over time, while the new approach already feels easier to extend and work with. The rebuild was also our first larger Tailwind 4 project, and it significantly changed how quickly we can build and adjust UI components. That experience directly led to Lombiq Tailwind Targets and helped shape how we want to handle front-end workflows in future Orchard Core projects. We also learned a lot about practical AI-assisted development. Working on a real-world project made it much clearer where AI tools actually help and where developer oversight still matters. That experience ultimately led to the Tailwind Agent Skills and Orchard Core Agent Skills repositories. Most importantly, we validated different development approaches for future Orchard Core websites. If you’re planning an Orchard Core website, a redesign, or a modernization project, reach out to us. We’re always happy to help teams build Orchard Core solutions that remain easy to evolve as requirements grow over time.
