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.

The Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) represents professionals in Ontario’s residential building industry and leads initiatives to foster innovation across the sector. Their public website runs on Orchard Core: it's a headless Orchard Core backend powering a separate Vue-based frontend application. But an issue had started to undermine one of the site’s most important functions: publishing up-to-date content. The problem: Homepage widgets showing outdated content The news, press releases, and blog post widgets on the homepage weren’t consistently showing the latest items. Immediately after publishing, everything looked fine. But over time, older items would start appearing again. For an organization communicating important industry updates, this was more than a minor inconvenience. It affected publishing reliability and trust. Understanding the architecture Since a different developer built the system originally, our first task was to understand and reproduce the environment. The application consists of: Orchard Core running as a headless backend. A separate Vue-based frontend. Lucene search indexing powering the homepage content widgets. Getting the frontend running locally required recreating an older Node.js environment. Node Version Manager for Windows made this possible by allowing us to install and switch between Node versions easily. The root cause The homepage widgets relied on data fetched from a Lucene index. Over time, the index became inconsistent with the database, resulting in outdated content appearing on the homepage. While fixing the indexing would have been possible, we stepped back and asked a simpler question: does this feature even require Lucene? It turned out it didn’t. The fix: Simplify, don’t patch Instead of investing in a lengthy Lucene investigation, we removed the unnecessary dependency and modified the widgets to fetch content directly via SQL queries. This: Eliminated a moving part, Reduced architectural complexity, and Resolved the inconsistency issue at its root. Sometimes the best fix is not making a system more robust, but making it simpler. Leaving the system healthier While working on the issue, we also enabled Orchard Core’s Audit Trail feature, allowing precise tracking of content changes. This improves governance and operational safety, particularly important for organizations publishing public information. We also performed smaller cleanups to ensure the application was in a better state than when we first examined it. That’s a principle we follow in every project. Collaboration We worked closely with Chris Ohan, IT Lead, and Grant Cameron, Senior Director of Public Affairs at RESCON. Since Grant manages much of the website’s content, his rapid feedback helped validate improvements quickly and ensure the publishing experience was restored. This is what Grant told about working with us: Lombiq stepped in to fix a problem with several widgets on our homepage. We met virtually, explained the problem and their experts went to work quickly and identified the issue. They explained the problem to us and corrected the issue. The team at Lombiq was efficient and professional. They got our site up and running and tweaked the Orchard Core setup to improve functionality. We were more than pleased with the result. Need help with an Orchard Core issue? If your Orchard Core application behaves unpredictably, whether it’s publishing inconsistencies, performance issues, or architectural drift over time, we can help diagnose and stabilize it. Get in touch and let’s take a look.