It was a number of years ago when I first was asked whether I would produce a website design for Nicholas Vanburgh Ltd, an architectural firm in Norfolk specialising in historic architectural developments. The website project was put on hold whilst the company gathered content to put on the site. I produced a website design that worked and posted the contact page to the website so that the website wasn’t completely empty during construction.
It wasn’t until recently, however, that the website design came into the forefront again and I have been beginning working with the company to create a website design that suits their needs, both visually and practically. It needed to look professional and elegant, but not fussy, and to evoke the feeling of the company’s ethos, which is essentially that of respecting traditional design and construction whilst still progressive and professional.
I decided to completely redesign the layout – my old design didn’t really suit the new content, nor did it have any dynamic content to give it a lift. The new design is again written in html with a css stylesheet, but uses a completely different layout and also features dynamic content using javascript.
Nicholas Vanburgh Website Screenshot
The thing I have found most hard in writing the code for this website is the fact that the different browsers render quite differently. I find that the one which is least cooperative is Internet Explorer, doing things which are totally unexpected and, in my view, illogical. Unfortunately, it is still the browser which most of the world use and it may well stay that way for quite a while, unless you tell ALL your friends to switch to Firefox or Google Chrome! 😀
The live version of the website is visible at www.nicholasvanburgh.co.uk.
UPDATE 21-4-14: I have now transferred the website to be based on the WordPress CMS. The appearance remained mostly unchanged, but moving to WordPress added a lot more functionality that has made the website easier to be updated by the client.
If you would like to consider my services as a web designer, please send me an email.