A-101 · Cover sheet · Websites for architecture practices
A website for an architecture firm has to do what a set of drawings does: carry one idea at a time, in the order you chose, at a scale someone can take in. Detailed the way you'd detail a building — nothing structural we can't justify, nothing decorative that hasn't earned its place, and a first paint under half a second.
A-102 · Diagram 1
Four requirements. The rest of this set is how.
A-201 · The argument
You don't explain a building by putting sixty thumbnails on a wall. You explain it in order — the approach, the threshold, the section, where the light lands at four in the afternoon. A masonry grid of hero shots throws all of that away and leaves a visitor to guess.
A scroll-driven page gives the order back to you: one idea per screen, revealed as the reader moves, at the pace you set rather than the pace their trackpad picked. And it costs you nothing to be found — every screen is a real page with its own URL, its own title and its own line in the sitemap.
Weight: a page builder plus a plugin stack plus unoptimised project photography is measured in seconds on a phone, and the person who came from a search result doesn't wait through them. Sameness: a template makes your practice look like every practice that bought the same template — the precise opposite of what you're being hired for. Invisible work: projects behind a script-driven lightbox, or parked in a PDF, are work that Google and the answer engines can't read. Maintenance: an admin panel to patch, licences to renew, and a theme that breaks when its author moves on.
All four come free with the stack, which is why they read as normal. They aren't. A hand-coded site has no builder to outrun, no theme to inherit and nothing to patch — the page is the thing that was written, and it's the thing that gets served.
A-301 · Approach
You wouldn't specify a finish you couldn't source, or a cantilever you couldn't calculate. The same discipline applies here. Every animation on this page is written in CSS and driven by scroll position — there's no animation library, and nothing has to download and parse before the page can move.
That matters commercially, not just aesthetically. A prospective client on hotel Wi-Fi in a different timezone will not wait four seconds for your practice to load.
Scrolljacking overrides the scroll — it takes the wheel out of the visitor's hands and decides how fast they travel. That's what people hate, and rightly. Scroll-driven animation is the opposite: the scrollbar stays exactly where the visitor put it, and the animation is simply drawn at that position. You can stop, reverse or skim, and the page obeys. The full guide covers the difference, and what it does to SEO.
Every scroll animation here sits behind a feature query. In a browser that hasn't shipped scroll-driven animation, the page renders complete and static rather than blank — which is what happens when the animation is declared unconditionally and the browser applies the last keyframe on load. Doing it accessibly is the same discipline applied to people rather than browsers.
A-401 · Detail
Nothing is assembled on request. Your pages are built once and served from the node nearest the person reading them.
A project is a real page that can be indexed, linked in a press release and sent to a client — not a slide inside a lightbox.
Modern formats, generated at the sizes each screen actually needs, and everything below the fold waiting until it's scrolled to.
Semantic HTML plus structured data, so Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity can quote your practice accurately instead of guessing.
Animation is limited to transform and opacity. No layout thrash, no dropped frames while scrolling on a laptop.
If a visitor's operating system asks for less movement, they get a still document. Not a warning, not a modal — just the page, calm.
You send a change and we make it, usually the same day. No dashboard, no login, no plugin update at two in the morning.
A-501 · Scope
Three conditions, and it's better for both of us if they're said before the first call.
Condition 01 · The work
Twelve projects and an argument beats sixty thumbnails, every time. If the work is meant to be read in an order, there's something here to build. If it genuinely is a catalogue, a good catalogue is cheaper and I'll say so.
Condition 02 · The arrangement
We design, build, host and maintain it, and you never log in to anything — you send a change and we make it. There's no CMS and no dashboard. The counterweight: none of it locks you in. The domain is in your name, the content is yours, and if you ever leave you take a copy of your site files any developer can host, plus a grace period to move hosting.
Condition 03 · The horizon
Every build is scoped individually rather than picked off a tier menu, so the number comes from your project — pages, features, and how much of the archive is ready. Nothing to re-license, nothing to migrate off, and nothing that breaks because a plugin author moved on.
A-601 · Common questions
It loads before the visitor gives up, it presents projects in an order that makes an argument rather than a grid, every project is its own indexable page, and the photography stays sharp without making the page heavy. Everything else is taste — and the taste should be yours, not a template's.
It depends on pages, custom features and how much of the archive is ready to publish — every build is scoped individually, not sold off a fixed-tier menu. Send the project and you get a real number rather than a package price.
Where the content is genuinely sequential — a project walked through in order, a before and after, a section revealed one beat at a time — yes. On a page someone came to skim or search, no. Motion is a material with a load limit, and the rules are short.
No, and that's the arrangement rather than an omission: there's no CMS and no login, because we run the site for you. Send a change — new copy, a new project, a whole new page — and we make it, usually the same day. Your domain, your content, and a portable copy of your files if you ever leave.
Only if nobody handles it. Images are converted to modern formats, generated at the sizes each screen actually needs, and everything below the fold waits until it's scrolled to. The pictures stay as large as your work deserves; the download doesn't.
Yes. The studio is in Raleigh and knows the Triangle market well, but the work is remote by nature — drawings, photography and copy travel fine. Most of a build is reading your archive carefully and asking better questions about it.
A-701 · Contact
Tell me the practice, roughly how many projects you'd want online, and when you'd like to launch. You'll get a considered reply within two working days — from the person who'd do the work.
The Better Website is a one-person web design studio in Raleigh, NC, serving the Triangle and clients nationwide. Every site is hand-coded in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript — no WordPress, no page builders, no CMS.