Case Study: MonDo Title Co. Digital Modernization

The Request

The primary goal of the project was to migrate and modernize the existing MonDo Title Co. website. The objective was to create a secure, mobile-responsive, and customer-centric website on a modern technology stack. Key deliverables included migrating all existing content, implementing new features like a mortgage calculator and secure lead-capture forms, and launching the new site on the official domain with an active SSL (HTTPS) certificate.

Challenges Encountered

Throughout the project, we encountered and resolved a series of technical and design challenges:

• Initial Build & Deployment: The initial deployment of the Eleventy site to Cloudflare Pages failed, with critical CSS and JavaScript files not loading, resulting in a non-functional site.
• Go-Live & DNS Configuration: The final launch process presented a series of complex, sequential challenges:
  • Ensuring the client's Microsoft 365 email service would not be interrupted during the nameserver switch from GoDaddy to Cloudflare.
  • After the DNS switch, the live site was caught in a "too many redirects" loop.
  • After fixing the redirect loop, the site displayed a 526 "Invalid SSL certificate" error.
• Form Functionality on a Static Site: A core challenge was determining how to process form submissions (for the contact and title order forms) on a static website that has no backend.
• CSS & Layout Bugs: Several specific issues impacted the final polish, including a mobile menu being visually cut off, form fields overflowing their containers, and header text being unreadable against a background image.
• User Experience (UX): After a user successfully submitted a form and was sent to a "Thank You" page, clicking the browser's "back" button would show the form with all their old data still in the fields.

Solutions Implemented

Each challenge was met with a specific, targeted solution to build a robust and professional final product.

• Build & Deployment: We corrected the addPassthroughCopy rules in eleventy.js and fixed the "Root directory" setting in Cloudflare Pages, allowing the site to build successfully.
• Go-Live & DNS Configuration: A safe migration plan was created to copy all necessary DNS records (MX, TXT, CNAME) from GoDaddy to Cloudflare before switching the nameservers, ensuring zero email downtime. The redirect loop and SSL errors were resolved by setting the Cloudflare SSL/TLS Mode to "Full (Strict)" and correctly connecting the custom domain in the Cloudflare Pages project.
• Form Functionality: The contact and title order forms were successfully integrated with Formspree, providing a reliable serverless backend for submissions.
• CSS & Layout Bugs: The mobile menu, form field overflow, and header text readability issues were fixed with targeted CSS rules, including overflow: visible;, box-sizing: border-box;, and a ::before pseudo-element for a dark overlay.
• User Experience (UX): The persistent form data issue was resolved by adding the autocomplete="off" attribute to the <form> tags, signaling the browser not to cache and restore the field values.

The Result

By systematically diagnosing and resolving each of these technical challenges, we successfully transformed MonDo Title Co.'s outdated web presence into a fast, secure, and highly professional digital asset that instills confidence and effectively serves their clients.