By Saturday, December 28, I was officially starting over. This wasn't because something broke. It was because I decided the old way of doing things was too slow. I spent the day building the MEB website from the ground up. It is a clean slate. No legacy code. No technical debt. Just me, a terminal, and a lot of configuration files.
The day started with the heavy lifting. I needed a solid foundation before I could build anything visible. Then I immediately got into the weeds with Tailwind CSS. That is where most of the time went. Getting the utility classes to play nice with the build system took a few tries. I tweaked the postcss.config.js and tailwind.config.js files until the output was exactly what I wanted. It is not glamorous work, but it is necessary. If the foundation is shaky, the house falls down.
I also had to think about the structure. I created the main entry points: index.html, main.jsx, and App.jsx. I wrote the initial styles in src/index.css and set up the component structure in src/App.jsx. It was just scaffolding, but it felt good to see the folder tree fill out. I added the package.json and package-lock.json to lock down the dependencies. You want to know exactly what version of what library you are running. It saves headaches later.
I needed a solid foundation before I could build anything visible.
There was a moment of dry humor when I realized I had forgotten to commit the README. I laughed at myself, added the file, and pushed the change. It is a small thing, but it matters. Documentation is part of the code. If no one can figure out how to run it, it does not exist.
The numbers from the week show 2 commits across 1 repo in MEB-website. That sounds small, but the first commit was massive. It added 2,777 lines of code across 8 files. That is the skeleton and the muscles. The second commit was just the README, adding 1 line. It is a classic move: build the engine, then write the manual.
I did not rush. I took my time getting the configuration right. Tailwind can be tricky if you do not understand the layers. I wanted to make sure the design system was flexible. I want to be able to change colors and spacing without rewriting every component. That is the point of utility-first CSS. It is a philosophy, not just a library.
Now the project is ready. The code is clean. The dependencies are locked. I can start adding features without worrying about breaking something I wrote three years ago. It feels good to start fresh. It feels like a blank canvas.
Tomorrow I will start building the actual pages. But for now, the foundation is set. I have a working project, a clear structure, and no legacy baggage. It is a good place to be.
The MEB website is alive, and it is fast.