Prometheus Minds

Prometheus Minds had outgrown its Squarespace template. The existing site ran Squarespace 7.1 — all-caps headlines locked in by the theme, generic stock-photo layouts, and a content editor that couldn’t keep pace with the practice: scheduled posts, structured service pages with per-tier pricing, a real blog, a newsletter.

The performance ceiling was the platform itself. Squarespace shipped 20+ vendor scripts on every page load — reCAPTCHA, CSS runtime, component definitions, universal performance bundle — with no way to trim the bundle or preload the LCP hero. Each paid monthly dollar bought less and less control.

The ask: a fully custom site the practice could actually run. Their own brand, their own CMS, their own hosting, and a publishing cadence that didn’t require a Squarespace editor.

A mid-build pivot: tutor portal → CMS-only

The original scope included a tutor portal for post-session notes and a parent login. A week in, we pivoted: Prometheus Minds already uses TutorBird for scheduling, billing, and parent communication. A second portal would have duplicated work and confused parents. We dropped ~1,200 lines of portal code and rerouted "Portal Login" to TutorBird. That time went into a services CMS and newsletter backend instead.

Block-based CMS with 27 content types

Every public page is composed from blocks — Hero, FeatureGrid, PricingCards, Testimonials, ImageText, NumberedSteps, InlineContact, ServiceAreaBanner, and more. Philip can drag blocks into any order on any page, autosaving as he works. Each block has its own schema and its own React renderer, so the design and the CMS can never drift.

Three tiers of polish

• Tier 1 — fundamentals: dynamic sitemap, robots.txt, alt-text validation, WCAG AA contrast, silent admin fetches, dark-background auth pages.
• Tier 2 — UX: drag-and-drop block reorder with auto-save, duplicate block/page, required-image warning, per-post SEO meta, error boundaries per route.
• Tier 3 — advanced: RSS feed, scheduled publishing for pages and blog posts, live preview, page versioning, image focal-point editor.

A real performance budget

WebP logo, preload LCP hero image with matching fetchpriority, inline critical CSS, lazy-loaded admin portals and auth routes, responsive srcSets with Squarespace-CDN resize params for blog covers, and preconnect to image hosts. First paint ships <200KB of JS — down from the 1MB+ Squarespace sent on every page.

Auth with Resend-based password reset

HMAC-signed reset tokens with a one-hour expiry, delivered through Resend for transactional email. JWT plus bcrypt for the admin session. No plaintext passwords, no reset links that live forever, and no third-party auth platform to depend on.

Shipped in five working days — 56 commits from initial scaffold to production-ready, spanning Apr 17–22, 2026. Full design refresh, verbatim content restoration from the old site for SEO parity, and a CMS the owner actually runs.

• Typography rebuilt around Plus Jakarta Sans + a custom gold/parchment/ink design system (old site: Squarespace template, all-caps headlines).
• Home page rebuilt with 12 sections, strict image/solid section rhythm, photo backgrounds chosen by the owner.
• Four dedicated service pages (Neurodiverse Tutoring, 6-Week ADHD Reset, Online Tutoring, About) — each fully block-composed.
• Blog system with per-post SEO, responsive cover images via CDN params, and a dynamic RSS feed.
• Contact form with three placements site-wide, an admin inbox, and rate-limiting. Three-field inquiry routing: service, budget, notes.
• Newsletter signup with admin-side subscriber list export.
• Mobile sticky CTA, custom-eased smooth scroll, respect for prefers-reduced-motion.

The site now runs on a $12/month DigitalOcean droplet instead of Squarespace’s $36/month Business plan — and the practice owns the stack, the content, and the roadmap.