April 2, 2022

One of the things a realtor will often do for you when you’re selling a house is to set up a website for it. It’s often built by the people who take the photos, and is created to a set template. It turns out there are a handful of services that exist to do just that: host a single-page site that showcases your home.

We’re selling our family home in Santa Rosa - the one my parents lived in for a decade - and I’m a web developer. Don’t get me wrong, these are nice sites, and we’ll probably set one up. But I’m also going to set up my own. Because of course I am. It sounds like fun, and I want to have fun with it, but wouldn’t it be great if it brought in the buyer?

I’m giving myself a few restrictions:

It’ll be a hand-rolled static site. No frameworks for the HTML, JS, or CSS, and no pre-set templates: just me, a text editor, and some design tools. It’s a home with shared ownership - everyone gets a say on the content and design - but I’m going to build it.

It needs to get an A for SEO, site performance, and security.

And it needs to be up over the next two weeks. There’s a lot going on, so this is a bit of a challenge.

Wish me luck. And hey, if you’re in the market for a three bedroom, two and a half bathroom single-family home in the heart of wine country …