The Town’s first website was created somewhere in the beginning of 2001. It was a simple layout on a light blue background and a menu on the left. This layout remained until 2004 with just a slight change in 2003 when the menu bar on the left was improved. In April 2004, the website was taken down temporary and a new site on a beige background was launched in May of 2004. This new design featured a new menu on the left and the main picture of the town hall changed from a black and white drawing to a picture. In 2007 there was another revision and we ended up with the same web layout as we have today. The content has pretty much remained the same throughout the years. See the bottom of this post for screenshots of how the website looked like over the years.
Now 10 years later, it is time to modernize and improve the Town’s public website. Not only does the current website look old and boring but the content is stale and outdated too. I’m writing this on September 9th and the last town council meeting minutes I can find on the website is from May 9th. The last newsletter was posted is from 2015. The site does not have any search capabilities.
Thankfully, there are newer technologies that makes it much easier to run a website today without having to be an IT guru or graphical expert. Millions of websites are using a product called WordPress and they host their sites in the cloud. For example, my website that you currently are reading is provided by Godaddy for $4 per month. Something like WordPress will separate the content from the layout so that both can be updated independently of each other. It allows for multiple users to work on the content and there are built in approval workflows before something is posted on the live site.
This is an area I look forward to contributing to if elected on November 7th.
Screenshot of Yarrow Point website year 2001 to 2004
Screenshot of Yarrow Point website year 2004 to 2007
Screenshot of Yarrow Point website year 2007 to current