There’s a new website for the City of Orlando.
As we mentioned the new CityofOrlando.net is built on the WordPress platform and provides a much cleaner and easier way to find what you are looking for.
The new website provides a main navigation for businesses, residents and visitors. There are links for development projects, events, government, services and a quick “I need to…” link.
The old website was built in 1996 and had not seen a major refresh since.
Michele Brennan, Director of Office of Communications & Neighborhood Relations, told the City Council members today, “we wanted to build a new site that would be better for our users.”
Brennan told the council that the new design is focused on:
- Clean design
- Easy access to news and events
- Mobile compatibility
- Unified page design
- Improved search
- Easier navigation
It isn’t just about a new design and technology, the new site also is the first time the site content had been reviewed and rewritten.
Brennan said that they took a site with over 10,000 pages and reduced it to just under 1,000 pages.
Unfortunately, all of the old URLs now result in a page not found error so you’ll have to update your favorite links and shy away from using Google to search the new site until the site gets re-indexed by Google.
The good news is the new site has a better search tool that you can use to find what you are looking for.
The website was built and designed by an internal team at the City of Orlando.
Let us know what you think of the new website.
flavorflav at least you know about that 25th Spring Fiesta thats coming up…
flavorflav welcome to bureaucracy.
Besides broken links, a ton of public documents are gone. I wanted to look at a Municipal Planning Board case from 2013. Previously, all MPB docs – minutes, agenda, reports – going back for a few years were online. All gone. I called the MPB and was told I had to make an appointment with the public records office and then visit city hall. When I called the public records office, I got voice mail. No one has called back.
Obviously whoever was in charge of the website “redesign” read about design on article they googled that was dated back to 2010… it would look amazing then, today… not so much.
That said i know people that can help, something to consider in 2015 budget 🙂
But please, fix ALL CAPS EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE, EVEN THE SITE TAGLINE. I feel like I’m getting yelled at before even reading anything. THANKS.
The new site is definitely better than the old site……but not by much. If you are going to invest the time and tax payer money into a new website, why not make the site more visually appealing.
I look at other cities of comparable size (like boulder, co), and their sites are visually stunning and capture the mood of their respective cities.
This new site says nothing about Orlando. There is no visual element to the site that speaks about the city we live and work in. This site looks like the thousand of other template wordpress sites that you can buy for about $10-$20.
Just a total swing and a miss by the city and their staff. Zero creativity for a city that is trying to sell downtown Orlando as a creative jobs hot bed.