DEV Community: Maria John

I built a developer starter kit and discovered that building was the easy part

Maria John — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:06:04 +0000

Every developer thinks the hard part is building. You spend weeks writing clean code, perfecting the UI, making sure everything is responsive. You push it live, set up the Gumroad page, and feel that quiet satisfaction of finishing something real.

Then you try to sell it. And you discover the actual hard part.

I built a React dashboard starter kit; Login, Register, Dashboard, All Projects, Team Management and Settings pages, built with Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind + shadcn. The kit took real time and real effort. The dashboard, especially: the structure, the tiny details, the responsiveness across every screen size. When it came together, I was genuinely proud of it. It's a piece of work.

Then I put it on Gumroad for $19 and waited.

Nothing.

Not because the product is bad. But because nobody knew it existed.

Here's what I've learned in the weeks since:

Building a product and marketing a product are completely different skills. Building comes naturally to most developers; we're trained for it, we enjoy it, we know when something is good. Marketing feels foreign. Uncomfortable. Especially if you're someone who'd rather write code than talk about what you built.

I had to join communities I'd never posted in before. Write articles about my own work. Comment on strangers' threads. All things that felt unnatural for someone who's spent years behind a screen, solving technical problems quietly.

The product itself is the easiest part of the whole journey. A clean folder structure, proper component architecture, everything connected and ready to go; that I could do in my sleep. Convincing someone to spend $19 on it? That requires a completely different muscle I'm still building.

If you're thinking about building a starter kit or any developer product to sell... build it. Absolutely build it. But go in knowing that the moment you publish it, the real work begins. The code is just the beginning.

The distribution is everything.

Here's the kit if you want to check it out; six production-ready pages so you never have to set up a dashboard from scratch again.

react-admin-dashboard-starter.vercel.app

salihabala.gumroad.com

I built a dashboard starter kit so junior developers can learn by doing, not by guessing

Maria John — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 03:58:34 +0000

When I started building my React dashboard starter kit, I wasn't solving my own problem. I was thinking about every junior developer who opens a blank Vite project and immediately gets lost: not in the actual features they want to build, but in the setup, the structure, the routing, the components.

That confusion is where most people give up or build bad habits that follow them for years.

So I built something I wish existed when I was starting out.

The kit includes six pages: Login, Register, Dashboard, All Projects, Team Management and Settings - all built with Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind + shadcn. Every page is connected, every route is set up, every component is structured the way a real production project would be.

The dashboard was the hardest page to build. Not because of the charts or the layout, but because of the small details. Making every element responsive. Making sure things didn't break on smaller screens. Getting the spacing right at every breakpoint. It took real time and real iteration to get right.

That's exactly why it's valuable, because I already went through that pain so you don't have to.

But here's what I actually hope the kit does for anyone who uses it:
Beyond saving you a day of setup, I hope you open the files and read them. I hope you see how the components are structured, how the routes connect, how the folder is organised. I hope it gives you a real example of how a proper React project fits together, not a tutorial project, not a to-do app, but something that looks and feels like a real product.

That's the part no YouTube video really shows you. How everything connects in a complete project.

If you're building a SaaS app, an admin panel, or a client project, the setup is already done. Clone it, read it, make it yours.

Available on Gumroad for $19. Live demo included so you can see exactly what you're getting before you buy.

salihabala.gumroad.com

react-admin-dashboard-starter.vercel.app

Why I Stopped Using Create React App and Never Looked Back

Maria John — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 04:09:16 +0000

Last year my boss suggested I try Vite for a project. I was skeptical at first: Create React App was what I knew, it was comfortable, and it worked.

Then I ran npm run dev.

The speed was immediately noticeable. No waiting, no staring at the terminal hoping something would happen. Vite was just... instant. Compare that to Create React App, where npm run dev felt like it was thinking about whether it even wanted to start.

That was the moment I switched and never went back. Honestly, at this point, I can barely remember what Create React App felt like, and I think that's the point. When a tool is good enough, the old way of doing things just fades from memory completely.

Why Vite specifically:

Hot module replacement is significantly faster - changes reflect almost instantly in the browser.
Startup time is dramatically shorter - no more waiting for a full bundle on every start.
It's what the industry is moving towards - alongside Next.js, Vite has become the modern standard for React projects.

What this meant for my projects:

When I built my React dashboard starter kit recently, I chose Vite without even thinking twice. It made the development experience smooth, the build process fast, and the final output clean.

If you're still using Create React App in 2026, try Vite on your next project. You probably won't go back either.

And if you want a head start with a Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind + shadcn dashboard already set up with Login, Register, Dashboard, Projects, Team Management, and Settings pages, I packaged everything into a starter kit so you don't have to set it up from scratch.

Live Preview: https://react-admin-dashboard-starter.vercel.app/
Gumroad Link: https://salihabala.gumroad.com/l/nlgeie

Stop Setting Up The Same Pages From Scratch On Every Project

Maria John — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:40:43 +0000

Every time I started a new project, I found myself doing the exact same thing: running the same commands, creating the same pages, linking everything to React Router Dom, configuring the same tools. A whole day gone before writing a single line of actual product code.

And I know I'm not alone. Every developer goes through this. We just want to build the thing, but setup keeps getting in the way.

So I decided to do something about it.

I packaged all the pages I kept rebuilding into a single dashboard starter kit. Instead of spending a day on setup, you clone it and start building immediately.

What's included:

Why this stack:

I built it with Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind + shadcn. Vite is significantly faster than Create React App, and Shadcn makes building components much faster than writing Tailwind from scratch every time. The result is a modern, production-ready setup that doesn't slow you down.

This kit is for developers who are tired of the setup ritual and just want to start building. Whether you're working on a SaaS product, a client project, or a portfolio piece, the boring part is already done.

I put it up on Gumroad for $19.

Live preview: [https://react-admin-dashboard-starter.vercel.app/]
Link: [https://salihabala.gumroad.com/l/nlgeie]