We launched the new website for Lambie Custom Homes this last week. Lambie has been a long time customer of Buider Designs. Their last site was one of our most popular sites we did in 2007 (an eternity for website design!).

The new site has a number of our standard homebuilder site modules including: jquery slideshow, content-managed communities, models & plans, inventory and photo gallery. Plus a number of other bells & whistles. None of that sets it apart from what we do for clients all over the country. What is special about Lambie Custom Homes is that it was the first all CSS/Xhtml site we have done. Granted, I did it 5 months ago (we had to wait till a certain date to launch the new site after loading the new homes / model & imventory info in) have learned a lot since then, it was where I finally said good-bye to tables. I have done 20+ sites since this one all in CSS but this is the one where I put it all together.

This being the first time I have built a site strictly in code view in DW, it was quite a different experience. I soon discovered after losing a closing div tag that it sure would be helpfull to add comments in the code to help me find where I was at. Spacing in the page and tabs were helpful as well. I became very close with Firebug during the process and checking on both mac and PC, I learned quite a bit about CSS and how it behaves differently in both platforms and in IE and Firefox. The thing my team and I decided a year or so ago was not to worry about hacks for IE6. That might not be popular in website design circles but all the analytics we have on current sites say that the number is so small, we shouldn't worry about it. I know I am not losing any sleep over it!

Through the process of this first site, I was able to learn from the mistakes I made and establish a process in which I have developed dozens of sites since. My aha moment was when I figured out the meaning of float and clear. Not easy elements to learn when you have been in a tables world for 4+ years. There is a lot I still need to learn but this site has turned out to be a pretty successful first.

In a future post, I will be going over the process of how I created the graphics for the site in my favorite image editor, Fireworks.

Check out Lambie Custom and let me know what you think.

Also, all renderings (well, most of them) were done by me through Home Rendering Design. If you are in need of b&w or color home renderings contact me.

Below are some screen shots of the site.