EUGENE, Ore. (KMTR) -- After around two years in planning, design and development, the City of Eugene is just a few months away from launching a brand new website.
The website redesign was publicly announced in August 2011. Since then, Eugene city staff and a Kansas company called Civic Plus have been working on the site.
As of March 31, 2012, the City is just about two months away from launching the redesigned website. The goal is still to launch the site before TrackTown 2012, the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Track and Field Trials.
Developers are now working on creating more than 1,200 new pages for the City's website, which will have a completely different look than the original.
Sitting in front of the new website, Eugene Project Manager Johnny Medlin says, “What you see behind me is (what) we're working on - the functionality - but the data is not in there yet.”
“I think it just looks so much nicer,” says Medlin.
The City hopes the new website will be easier for people to navigate, that more residents can access services online, while City employees can concentrate their efforts on other work as budget cuts loom and staff levels have decreased in recent years.
“(There are) great possibilities in being able to have forms that a person would access online and fill out online and submit versus them having to come in to our offices,” says Medlin.
The goal is to launch the website by the end of May 2012. After it launches, the City will meet with Civic Plus again to discuss user feedback and any necessary improvements.
One of the biggest changes that people won’t see is how the website is hosted. Currently, the City of Eugene runs the website on its own servers. When the new site launches, the site will be hosted by a “cloud” server. Medlin says the benefit of the cloud server is that it will be more reliable in terms of accessibility, also faster.
The website is costing the City $175,000 to redesign. That money comes from a dedicated telecommunications fund.
(Read NewsSource 16’s August 2011 story about the new website at the following link:
http://www.kmtr.com/news/local/story/Eugene-city-officials-say-175-000-website/YBUJ-7JpwUu8w2kEmMSklw.cspx.)
