If you’re a crazy Web surfing addict like me, you may have noticed over the weekend that the Springfield city Web site was down on Saturday for maintenance.
You may also have noticed that it’s new and improved, with a sophisticated content management system.
How well are you able to navigate it? Can you find what you’re looking for? Are you sometimes surprised by what’s there after you have been hunting around for a while, and you can think of an easier way to get at that same information? Email the city’s Web admin, Eileen Foley, with your suggestions.
I’m honored to see a bunch of my own donated photographs on the site, across various sections, alongside Foley’s own wonderful pictures of the city. What other images do you think would represent Springfield well—in a positive way? Are the images familiar to you? What do you think about providing more neighborhood-specific photos, as well as images of City Council members, for example?
Is the site business-friendly? Easy for new or prospective residents to use? The elderly? Activists? Educational institutions? Journalists? Is there too much jargon on it? Not enough?
What else can the city’s Web site do to foster a sense of healthy civic identity? I invite lengthy manifestos on this subject, if anyone out there is just waiting to share them.
One of my favorite aspects of the refurbished site—a feature which has been available for a while now—is the ability to subscribe to various feeds for city meetings and events straight to my iCal software. Meeting agendas show up in the sidebar. This is one effective way to stay on top of certain current events from the city’s official point of view.
In other Web site improvement news, valleyvisitor.com recently got an overhaul—the site for the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau. George O’Brien wrote a piece about the change for the current issue of Business West. What strikes me about this site is how decidedly un-urban it makes our region appear, in stark contrast to the urban environment images on the city’s new site. In a way, duh, but at the same time, it just reinforces the notion that Springfield is just some little bubble in the region. Familiar refrain.
