On Sept. 8, the Town of Old Saybrook’s new Civic Plus town website, based on software that is small-screen friendly, went live. The shift is intended to give both internal and external website users more functionality and better site navigation.

“The old platform required special tools for editing,” said Information Technology Manager Larry Hayden. “It used an outdated method for updating content on the website and it was cumbersome to use. And it was old enough that the software on which it was based was going out of support.”

Further, one of the things the Virtual Town Hall website software could not do was to display content well on mobile devices like cellphones or on small-screen devices like tablets.

“The website did not have what web design professionals would call a responsive design,” said Hayden.

So it was time for a change.

Virtual Town Hall also had recently merged with the municipal website developer Civic Plus. As Hayden began to investigate new municipal website platforms the town could use, he decided that Civic Plus’s product would meet the town’s needs.

“The newer Civic Plus software automatically adjusts displays to match the screen size of different devices,” said Hayden. “The updating mechanism is completely different, too—with [appropriate] log-on credentials and permissions, a user can update content through the web from anywhere.”

Over the course of the past year, Hayden worked with Civic Plus to develop several new website mock-ups. Each was shared with town staff and officials to gauge their reactions. After town staff had agreed on a design template, on Aug. 9, data migration—moving the old website’s posted documents and other content to the new website—began. Data migration was made easier because the older Virtual Town Hall website software and the new Civic Plus software were under the same corporate umbrella.

The data migration process was finished by Sept. 7, and the new town website went live the next day.

With the new Civic Plus municipal website, internal Town Hall staff can more easily upload and update online content like meeting agendas and minutes. External users will see cleaner graphics and easier-to-read text, better site organization, and one-click access to government meeting videos and meeting minutes from board and commission webpages.

Website, by Design

Once a user lands on the Town of Old Saybrook’s new website (the website address www.oldsaybrookct.gov has not changed), several changes are immediately evident. Many items are available through drop-down menus, in which clicking on a topic header opens a box with menu options without leaving the page. Users viewing the calendar of town meeting can now click on the meeting notices to be brought to the respective board, commission, or committee webpage for more information and archives of meeting minutes and agendas. For boards that videotape meetings, users can with one click also access and view videos of recent meetings.

The new website has other new features, too. It is now more touch-screen friendly and, for the first time, is designed to better support software programs used by the blind. Previously, graphics and photos posted on the town’s website couldn’t be seen or read by software that serves the blind. Now, photos and graphics posted there have captions that identify them and can be read aloud by those software programs.

Hayden said that users that signed up on the old website to receive alerts and notifications should continue to receive them. This information was migrated with other data from the old to the new town website. For the first time, each notification and email from the town website also includes an “unsubscribe” message, should a user wish to no longer receive a notice or alert.

“The new website will be much easier to maintain, update, and support,” said Hayden. “It will also provide improved functionality and navigation.”

Town employees and board and commission clerks have already been trained and received the necessary log-in credentials they will need to update the website pages they manage and the transition from the old to the new is expected to be relatively seamless—and when it isn’t, Hayden said he’s ready to help.