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Short History of the Villa Lagoon Project
About the same time that the decision was made to build a vacation home in the family vacation spot, Gulf Shores, AL, the Wilder's took a bicycle ride across Italy. Seeing the ancient, strong, centuries-old stone houses all over Italy gave rise to the notion that a dry stack, large-block construction system might be the way to go. They thought it only made sense to build a storm resistant, low maintenance coastal residence. This was before the massive hurricanes of late, but the Wilder's knew the potential for a strong storm was always there. Low maintenance was important too as originally this was to be a part-time home in a salt laden, windy, bright sun environment.
It took some research to find The DAC-ART Building System. Lundy knew it was the perfect product for a coastal waterfront home with the classic look of great architecture. All the friends and family were excited, but lived a long way off. The Wilders were self contracting this project. Lundy had a successful scrapbooking website so she decided to make a small side folder on that URL for her family and friends to watch the progress.
What happened next is history....the small side-site began to attract large amounts of general web traffic. Architectural discussion groups linked to it, teachers linked to it, people blogged about it. The number of people reading the site word-for-word was astounding and it ranked very high in the search engines and still does.
Eventually, due to the number of people calling and emailing, additional information about the DAC-ART Building System was added to that site in an attempt to answer most people's questions. The little side folder site became the default source of information about the manufacturer's product, DAC-ART and contact links were changed to direct all the inquiries to the architect and DAC-ART staff.
The web address of the original site is difficult, if not impossible, for people to remember, ....but once a site is popular in search results, one dare not change anything. This original website still attracts high numbers of visitors and seems to have a great deal of search engine clout, partly due to its age now, as well as the inbound links and significant web traffic. http://www.ScrapbookScrapbook.com/DAC-ART
Due to the number of site visitors being a highly targeted population, Lundy Wilder added small advertisements in order to generate some revenue to help support the site and off-set the hosting fees, etc... Several times a week, Lundy gets a emails from manufacturers and suppliers asking how they can be included on her site. This is in addition to the hundreds of emails she has received from ordinary website visitors.
Flash forward four years...
When it came time to start the planning of the Phase II of this residential project, it seemed logical to use a new, better , domain name. www.ConcreteCottage.com was registered. Due to the amount of time before Villa Lagoon Phase II actually began, the ConcreteCottage site ended up being a showcase for a number of DAC-ART construction projects located in various communities. Web traffic to that site continues to grow.
The next logical thing was to create a new and totally separate website for Phase II of Villa Lagoon, hence www.VillaLagoon.com
The Villa Lagoon website will photo journal the step-by-step construction process of Phase I of Lundy WIlder's home and this unique building system. Additionally, it will showcase the products that are used in the home. There is every reason to believe that the web traffic to the new website will grow continuously as construction progresses, just as has been the case with the previous websites.
Due in part to the high web traffic to the original website and later, www.ConcreteCottage.com, there has been extensive media coverage of Villa Lagoon. An interesting twist, when major storms threaten, web traffic increases as people become more interested in hurricane resistance. The growth of the Internet and the added interest in eco-friendly, green construction methods result in even more web visitors.
We are glad you are here and hope you learn from watching our hands-on experiences in crating this handsome Italian style hurricane resistant residence.