Parlez-vous français? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

No matter what you speak, we have got you covered. We recently changed from the previous translation service to Google Translate. It not only reduces our costs to $0; it provides numerous languages where as the previous was Spanish translation only . While we all know automated translations are not as ideal as bilingual humans, our bilingual humans did say that the Google service was a better automated translation.


In addition to new languages, we have a few more interesting updates:

• Landing page navigation links stay highlighted in blue when you are within a certain area (City Services, Arts & Parks, etc). We hope this helps user orientation within the site.
• Home page rotating headline images slowed to 8s allowing users time to read the subheading and see the image. The subheadings were enlarged and the hyperlink expanded for the rotating headline images as well as the large headline images on landing pages.
• Employment section has been simplified and all types of positions appear on one page. (Next addition to employment is making it an RSS feed for users and communication via twitter and fb)
• Our AddThis icons at the top of content pages that enable sharing via fb, twitter, email, print, etc have been updated. It also contains a count so you can see how many times the page was shared.
• We launched a Website Survey which appears on the right side of all the pages. The survey is fairly in-depth, but it allows us to get some information from users as we plan our next usability tests.

If you or someone you know might be interested in participating in one of our future usability tests, just fill out our participant form to get on our list.

Press Releases

In my previous post about Advanced Search I neglected to include Press Releases as an optional 'type'. Just as you can search within Documents, Minutes/Agendas, etc., you can search within Press Releases. Public Affairs has started to post the PDF versions of Press Releases to the site.

Search Changes

Within the last few weeks we have implemented some changes to search. We changed the search crawl method from file-based to URL-based as mentioned in a previous post. Why?

1. Google has some 180+ factors that comprise their search algorithm. Their URL-based search uses all these to determine the results while the file-based search only used a small portion. The URL-based search maximizes the search logic and most closely resembles google.com search.
2. The URL-based search starts at the main page then spiders its way through all the linked pages to determine all the content. The file-based search indexed all our content and documents, linked or not. The URL-based allows us to provide more relevant returns that are actually linked from within the website.

What? You enjoy all the nitty-gritty details within agendas, minutes and other documents?
Relax, we knew some of you existed! When we changed from file to URL-based search we also added an Advanced Search.

The Advanced Search provides two main levels of functionality:

1. As with most advanced searches, it allows you to craft the search by including words, excluding words, searching exact phrases or having at least one word. If you love queries, structured logic and boolean operations...you will be in heaven.
2. You get to select what 'type' of content to search within. Some of these types are actually doing the file-based search to find the content. The types and details:
• All -- URL-based -- searches all linked content
• Articles -- URL-based -- searches all html content, no documents
• Contacts -- URL-based -- searches just the staff contacts associated with content
• Minutes/Agendas -- file-based -- searches all boards, commission and cac minutes, agendas and documents, no html files
• Documents -- file-based -- searches all documents across all areas, no html files

 The Minutes/Agendas has quite an archive of documents...

• Appearance Commission, 2002 to current
• Arts Commission, 2004 to current
• Board of Adjustment, 2001 to current
• Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission, 2009 to current
• Budget & Economic Development Committee, 2001 to current
• City Council, 2000 to current
• Citizen Advisory Councils, current agendas
• Comprehensive Planning Committee, 2001 to current
• Historic Cemeteries Advisory Board, 2009 to current
• Law & Public Safety Committee, 2001 to current
• Parks Recreation and Greenway Advisory Board, 2002 to current
• Mordecai Historic Park Advisory Board/Parks Committee, 2006 to current
• Planning Commission, 2003 to current
• Passenger Rail Task Force, 2010 to current
• Public Works Committee, 2001 to current
• Raleigh Historic Districts Commission, 2002 to current
• Raleigh Transit Authority, 2005 to current
• Zoning Public Hearings, 2001 to current

If you use the Advanced Search or have thoughts on the change to the main search...let us know. Comment here...feel free to start the dialogue. 

Isn't the weather great?

Well, we can usually say that in Raleigh. Since our weather is one of the many things that makes Raleigh a great place to live, we decided to promote the temperature and conditions on the portal. The weather portlet links to the National Weather Service.

Did something else catch your eye? Perhaps it was the scrolling alerts. We isolated a set area to house all the alerts, be it 3 or 10. The alerts scroll through stopping when you move your mouse pointer into the region. You can't miss them now.

You may also notice some in page links on some of your favorite pages. We have pushed out a revision to some of the templates within our Content Management System. The changes make section headings a bulleted hyperlink list at the top of the page so you can jump to the section of interest. We have found this helpful on many of our long pages that cover FAQs, bus routes and similar.


More to come....we have some updates to search coming as well as some other usability changes. Search will also be getting an 'advanced search' option for those people who like to really maximize their search query. It will allow a user to just search specific types of documents and well as including or omitting terms from the search.