Town web site demo

Out on the nemasket forum, as on many other web sites, there was some complaining going on about the Middleboro town web site. I had been planning for some time to put together a demo of a new town web site when time allowed. The forum gave me the impetus to make the time for it.

I put together this demo. Because I am inherently lazy, I'll include the post I put on the forum when it was created:

I've created a mock up of a new town web site. I've imported much of the content from the current town web site so that the new site would have enough content to be a meaningful demonstration.

Note the search box on the top.

The web site was created using a proper CMS (Content Management System) that is totally administered through a point and click web interface. It allows for roles such as author, editor, and publisher and is capable of far more complex sites than the one I created. The software is called Joomla and is free and open source(a good thing for the technically inclined).

My offer is this.

If the town has interest in this, I will assist them in setting it up. training, evaluation, etc. I sent notification of the demo site into the email address on the Middleboro web site and Adam has been supportive - we've had several conversations about it but so far there has been no official response from the town.

It took somewhere around 20 hours to create the demo site. A good chunk was spent on evaluating different options, and probably 4 or 5 hours experimenting with the selected tool(Joomla) and maybe 8 hours importing data from the town web site so that the demo site would have enough data in it to make a meaningful comparison. If the town were to adopt it, I'm sure I'd spend 40-80 hours of my own time over the next year training and supporting it until the town felt ready to fly solo.

So why did I spend so much of my time and offer the town a free web site and training worth multiple thousands of dollars? Probably for the same reasons that anyone who serves on a committee, volunteers, or does anything to benefit the town and are not paid. But I think most of all to show that we can and should work together on things that would better that town - even as we disagree on the casino. Roughly the same motivation applies to nemasket.net and it's forum.

Any thoughts on the demo would be appreciated.

A final note:. I would help the town get going, train(if asked), and support, but would have no access/control over the site.