Next Microsite: MCLPorsche.com

For the last week or so, I have been busy constructing the new Porsche Website for MCL Porsche. The idea is pretty much the same as the Jaguar Vancouver website in my previous post. The emphasis is on usability and search engine friendliness. Thank to the use of CSS and Dreamweaver template, the development time has been dramatically reduced.

Please check out the ASP.NET starter kits when you have time; Microsoft does provide a few fully funcitional sample web projects (called starter kits) on which you can base your (commercial or personal) website. I have done one for MCL for selling used cars in Vancouver

Visit ASP.NET for more information

I am looking to schedule my 70-536 test soon. Yup. Lots of reading and coding to do. I will post again if I find anything interesting.

UPDATE: the Porsche Vancouver site is up. So are Jaguar Vancouver and Land Rover Vancouver.

Fun with major re-construction of a relatively large static website

In the last couple of weeks I have been working on re-structuring a luxury car dealer in Vancouver. MCL Motor Cars of Vancouver is actually our sister comapny. It sells high-end luxury cars such as Aston Martin, Bentley, Porsche, Jaguar and Land Rover. The dealer has two locations in the greater Vancouver region. The main MCL building focuses on Jaguars, Aston Martin, Bentley and Land Rover while MCL Porsche Vancouver specializes on Porsche.

The management of the dealer is actually quite happy with the current design of the website, but it also finds it difficult to navigate; the search engine result is also not optimal. Our plan is to streamline the whole project

Our solution? We are building a few microsites for the dealer, with each microsite focuses on a particular brand. This allows us to put brand-focused content and navigation system to allow better experience for site visitors. The first of such microsites is Jaguar Vancouver. The site will contain information about all Jaguar vehicles as well as the contact information and current promotions.

The site is pretty much completed as of now and it is ready for launch. It is written in standard compliant XHTML + CSS--except for the front page. I have found a few hacks to get flash embedded on a website in a standard compliant ways, but I would like to do further research so that I am using the best possible way in this scenario. Oh well, it is my first blog and my first entry. I thank you for those who actually spend time reading my blog and hopefully I can provide more technical information and good tips / hacks on web development to all of you.