I got a request from my frequent collaborator the other day. They only design -- and outsource the development work to agencies or freelancers. They said one of their client's contact forms had stopped working and asked if I could take a look. It was a basic four-page site with a typical Home, About, Services, and Contact layout -- no Blog. Seemed pretty standard as far as simple local business sites go. But things got interesting when I asked where the code was hosted. I was given access to the Google Cloud Console (Cloud Functions), Firebase project (Hosting), and a GitHub repo. When I opened the repo, I was shocked by what I found. The entire thing was built with React. Now, I have nothing against React - it's a great framework. But for this tiny website? It just seemed like over-engineering. And that's not all. It was built upon Node 8, which is pretty dated. Plus, there were various other dependencies and configurations involved. The initial `npm install` took me to the netherworld. This was no longer a simple site - it had become a Frankenstein's monster of a React nightmare. The culprit? An expired SendGrid API key. Begone SendGrid. Removed bloat. Used a simple method to power the contact form. Huge props to my brother and smtp.gmail.com. Hosted it on Vercel and sent it for review. >image: remix of a flork of cows comic panel.