Launching a new web portal and content management system in less than a year was a huge undertaking, of that, we were aware. When we launched Raleigh’s new portal August 2010, we knew it wasn’t perfect. As with any design project, we could have continued changing, updating and revising…never reaching perfect and delaying the launch.
We went live.
We have heard a lot of feedback, some positive, some constructive and some great ideas. We have been listening to all of it, and we have implemented some changes and we still have more to come. We hope to use this forum to communicate our site changes and gather constructive feedback for future changes.
Recent Changes:
- Back by popular demand…the department list dropdown. Located in the upper right corner is a short cut to a specific department’s page. If you already know the department you want…go there.
- Search improved…the search was horrible at the start. It wasn’t behaving as scoped and was pulling old content that very few people wanted to access. We have reworked the search and it is better, but we are not finished here.
- Current Council Agenda is located on the main page below the news headlines.
- Parks and Recreation have been creating individual facility pages.
Did you notice:
- Most Popular in the bottom left...it contains the top pages, documents and searches which are coming directly from our site analytics.
- Maps in the upper right…want to know your police district, recycling day or polling place? Want to see nearby schools, parks or libraries? Enter your address, get this and more.
- Related Information along the right side…content pages have links to associated documents, forms, web sites and contact information.
In the works:
- Adding dates to the News headlines on the main page.
- CSS changes to make the site more uniform and readable.
- Changing the site search to a Google Search Appliance to bring a more familiar search interface to the site
- Upgraded “News” functionality with more RSS feeds for your particular interest
- A mobile-friendly view of the website
- Some “under the hood” improvements…like an upgrade to our JBoss and Alfresco platforms
We want to hear from you. What is something you’ve tried to find lately on the web portal but were not able to?
