By Kathy McCarty
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Those looking for information about the city of Presque Isle can now do so via a new website, www.cityofpresqueislemaine.com.
Librarian Sonja Plummer-Morgan officially unveiled the new site during a City Council workshop held Jan. 27.
“We set forth a year ago to simplify our Internet presence. We have a new, easier-to-use website, one that’s more interactive. Tonight you’ll see the internal workings of it. The old website (www.presqueisle.govoffice2.com) has been put to its final resting area and the new one is up and running,” said City Manager Jim Bennett.
Plummer-Morgan said the website was a collaborative effort.
“Thanks go to Town Square Media, Lisa Neal Shaw and city staff who worked on the project,” said Plummer-Morgan.
She said the site was designed with certain goals in mind.
“We wanted to increase navigability, increase findability and increase sharability. These are our three goals and they mean just what they sound like,” said the librarian.
The first references the ease of locating information and services on the website, the second relates to the ease of locating the city’s website at all, and the third talks about the ease of the city to share important events and updates with citizens and for citizens to engage with the city and each other on municipal matters, noted Plummer-Morgan.
The upgrade was necessary, she said, since the old website was often difficult to use.
“Challenges included the old website not being laid out well, resulting in phone inquiries. It wasn’t an efficient use of staff,” said Plummer-Morgan.
She said finding the city’s website had also been an issue, since it did not originally include the state in the listing. When searching for “Presque Isle” she said one might find themselves viewing information for Presque Isle, Wisconsin, for example.
As for sharability, she said the length of the old website’s links proved to be cumbersome, often too long for posting to places like Twitter.
She said the new website has a number of advantages.
“You don’t have to scroll over and over the page to find things. It’s easier to access. There’s increased findability and sharability,” she said. “It’s also visually pleasing and easier to browse.”
The site features a new banner, “populated with hundreds of photos taken over the years in Presque Isle,” said Plummer-Morgan.
Whether you’re looking for information on the latest council meeting, want to contact a specific department or need information on some other municipal matter, Plummer-Morgan said the new website is designed for easier use and accessibility. Pull-down tabs make it simpler to find and access information.
“We talked with citizens about what they wanted on the website. The map is important for mobile folks. When viewed on a mobile device, it has a nice presentation and syncs with Google,” said Plummer-Morgan.
“We only invested a couple thousand bucks in this thing. It’s not a lot of money. Hats off to Town Square Media and the library staff,” said Bennett.
“Town Square knew ultimately where we wanted to end up, as a designed website, and kept that in mind as it was set up,” said Plummer-Morgan.
Bennett said in the future there will be added benefits for those visiting the site.
“We’ll have the ability to set it up so a person can click on and watch council meetings. We’ll do some technology stuff in this room (council chamber at City Hall) to get to that point next, which is not budgeted at this point,” said Bennett.
The librarian said Town Square is hosting the new city website.
“The hosting fee includes maintenance, content management and technical assistance and will cost about $180 a month. Town Square Media officials worked with city staff designing and creating a website that is citizen-focused, migrating information from the old site to the new site and also worked with government regulating agencies to secure a .gov domain name,” said Plummer-Morgan.
She said there was no fee for design, consultation and creation of the website.
“Their fee stems from hosting the site,” Plummer-Morgan said.
Plummer-Morgan noted that the dot-com ending will soon transition to a dot-gov, once government approval is given to the site. When that happens, a slight change in the web address will be made to www.cityofpresqueislemaine.gov. Afterwards, anyone visiting the .doc site will be automatically forwarded to the new domain.
