One platform behind every Creekside Communities website
Creekside Communities runs manufactured home and apartment communities in Michigan. We built one platform that gives every property its own website, with its own look, listings and pages. Three are live, with more Creekside Communities properties to follow.
- 3Communities live on one codebase
- ~200Lines of configuration per community
- 15 minBetween refreshes of homes for sale
- 100Lighthouse SEO score on every homepage
In their words
Working with Flare Web Design has been so easy! They’re communicative, flexible, friendly, and they adjust the website to perfectly fit our needs, while offering knowledgeable suggestions to optimize our options.
The challenge
Every Creekside Communities property needed a website of its own, with its own name, look and pages, without building and maintaining a separate site for each. And the homes for sale lived on MHVillage, shown through an iframe that did nothing for the communities’ own search.
One platform, every property
Every Creekside Communities site runs on the same code. What makes each one its own, from its name and colors to which pages exist, lives in one configuration file per community. Switch between them.
- Housing
- Manufactured homes
- Homes for sale
- Live from MHVillage
- Its own pages
- Specials
- Theme
- Meadow green
A new property is a file, not a website. Adding a community takes a configuration file, its photos and logo, and a hosting project. The pages, forms, search setup and accessibility come with it.
Every fix reaches every site. Each community deploys on its own, with its own domain, analytics, previews and rollbacks, but all of them build from one codebase, so an improvement made for one reaches them all.
No special cases in the code. Differences live in configuration, theme colors and feature switches, never in code that checks which community it is, so the platform stays clean as properties are added.
Search set up per property. Each site gets its own titles, descriptions, sitemap and local business details for search engines, from the same configuration file.
From an iframe to real pages
Creekside Communities lists its homes for sale on MHVillage, which had no API. The only way to show them was an iframe: a window onto MHVillage’s site, credited to MHVillage by search engines, with no page or link for any home. We worked with MHVillage until they built a feed of the homes at every Creekside Communities property. Now every listing is a real page on the community’s own site.
Every home for sale, filtered to the community 
Details, description and a quick inquiry on every home
Fresh, and still fast. Listings are read from the feed on the server and kept for 15 minutes at a time, so pages load quickly and stay current.
One feed, every community. The feed covers every Creekside Communities property. Each site filters it down to its own homes, so a new property gets its listings with no extra work.
A page for every home. Each listing has its own address, photo gallery, details and inquiry form. It goes into the sitemap, so search engines find it on the community’s site, and it can be shared as a link.
Inquiries to the right office. Forms are checked with hCaptcha and emailed to that community’s office, and the visitor gets a confirmation in the community’s own branding.
Pages only where they belong
Paint Creek & Village East are apartments, with floor plans instead of homes for sale. Huron Shores rents seasonal RV sites on Lake Huron, with an inquiry form of their own. Each is a switch in that community’s configuration, not a separate website.
The season, the rate and what is included, up front 
An inquiry form built for RVs: type, length and timing
On with one setting. A feature like RV sites is a single setting. The same setting adds the page, its menu link and its place in the sitemap.
Off everywhere else. On a community without it, the page returns a proper 404 and stays out of search, so no site shows another property’s features.
Apartments, not just homes. The apartment site has floor plans instead of a listings feed, and never asks MHVillage for homes at all.
Planning something like this?
Multi-location platforms start at $30k to set up, then $200 a month per site, with a fixed quote after a call.
Made to show off the place
People choose where to live by what it looks like. So every site leads with the community itself: aerial footage, photos, amenities and a clear next step, in layouts every community shares.
A gallery sorted by entrance, homes and grounds 
Photos and amenities, from the community’s configuration 
The next steps, in the order renters take them
Their own footage, front and center. Communities with drone footage show it on the homepage under their own title, so the first thing a visitor sees is the place.
Photos people can browse. Every homepage has a photo carousel, and galleries sort photos into categories like entrance, homes and grounds.
Amenities at a glance. Highlights like the beach, RV sites and fitness center sit under the hero, filled in from each community’s configuration.
A clear next step. View homes, get in touch, apply online: three steps in the order renters take them, worded for each community.
One design system, three themes
Every site carries a reference page for the design system it is built from, shown in that site’s own colors, so anyone adding a page builds it from the same parts.
Lapeer Meadows 
Huron Shores 
Paint Creek & Village East
Shared parts, own colors. Buttons, section labels, cards and motion are shared. Each community brings its own color palette, logo and photography.
For the team, not for search. The reference is left out of the menus and the sitemap and marked so search engines skip it.
Every community, on every phone
Residents and buyers mostly arrive on a phone, so the shared layouts were built for one first. Every community gets the same care.
Lapeer MeadowsThe shared hero, in meadow green. Huron ShoresThe same hero, over the lakefront. 
Paint Creek & Village EastTwo apartment communities, one site. 
Homes for salePrice, size and photos on every card. 
Floor plansOne layout to a screen.
Fixed once, everywhere. Because the layouts are shared, an improvement to the mobile menu or a form reaches every community at the same time.