The Wallingford town website

[gunderstone]

So there was another response to the town website in the letters to the editor in the Record Journal Thursday morning on the 15th.

Are there more important things to be discussing in these trying times? There are I suppose, but along the top of my list is following the law because if our elected officials do not set the right example then who will?

I really hate to pick anyone's opinions apart because I feel everyone is entitled to them but there are some items I wanted to highlight because I do not view them in the same way as the author.

Additionally as well, I do not know the author personally (I know of him) and this has nothing to do with him – it has to do with the comments made that I look at differently; nothing more, nothing less. Too many times others spin these things like one person attacking another – I don’t feel like I was attacked. Points were made, quite respectfully, and I am offering mine back in the same manner.

“Interesting that at the time the articles were published, one website had not been updated for some time and the other site (after 100 hours of development) still had many links under construction”.

The other site, “(after 100 hours of development) still had many links under construction” is mine and this statement is true – my “Elected Officials and other appointees” page and my “Town Departments” page are still not 100% complete and it does note on those pages “This page is still in the process of being built and updated”.

Each weekend I try to set aside a few hours to get them completed but with three kids the time often gets away from me. I probably need a total of 10 more hours to get it done and I’ll try again this weekend but I have errands to do and my daughter’s 3rd birthday to celebrate on Sunday (her birthday is today the 15th)

I am offering my site as a best effort – only. It’s all I can do with a full time job in operations and support for a multi-billion dollar company. The Town of Wallingford now must comply with the law as outlined at House Bill No. 6502 – this can be done by putting up the required information or by taking down the website. Either way the mayor / administrative branch of our local government should take action.

The points made with respect to “other issues include security, hackers and maintaining updated information” – I don’t know if the town’s present website has ever been hacked but if they are maintaining the site backed up it’s easily restorable if it ever is. You delete the compromised data from the server (after you figure out where the security breach occurred and “seal” up the “hole”) and you upload the backed up data. “Maintaining updated information” is part of the responsibility of having a website – any website. If you’re not going to do it then you might as well take the site down as it becomes dated and often due to that, useless, as the information is historical only.

I have mentioned before, I have always wanted the information made available on the town website. If I can walk into town hall and request it during business hours I should be able to get it at 11PM on any given evening if I want it.

It is now beyond that. The mayor / administrative branch of our local government is not complying with the law and they should – one way or the other.

Post the information or take the site down and satisfy the law.

[iwantwallingfordbetter]

1) it pretty cool that you have taken on the responsibilty of doing a town like
web site and have the talent to create it..and spend your cash on it.
2) the town should hire you part time to maintian yours and theirs wed site...
3) You have just shown how lacking out towns web site is.
4) Anyone who does not like what you are doing does not have to look at
your site(but i bet they will because you have more information then
the towns)
5) Keep up the good work and don;t let the town off the hook..
keep the pressure on them...
6) those who want to complain lets see their work or ideas...
if the only thing you have to complain about is someone
in wallingford trying to do what the town officials should be doing...
move on and pick another topic.....
this town has far greater problems then a townlike web site....

[gunderstone]

So I wanted to provide some additional feedback - again my points of view and just to provide a little additional information (which is a lot of what this has been about over the past few years):


"it pretty cool that you have taken on the responsibility of doing a town like
web site and have the talent to create it..and spend your cash on it."

I spent $30.00 to register the domain name for 1 year - I've spent no other money. In the case of the town, the domain is already registered so they are spending no additional dollars. The town already has someone that maintains the current site as part of their responsibilities so there’s no additional dollars there.



“the town should hire you part time to maintain yours and theirs web site...”

The town shouldn’t have to spend any additional dollars to comply with this law for the reasons I outlined above.

If they need help I would be more than willing to assist and I have offered it to a couple of people close to the effort. It was done informally and I have not been asked. Additionally I never asked for anything – I just offered to help. Perhaps I need to be formal about it.



The town DOES have a great many other things to turn their attention to than the website. They do need to comply with the law however and by doing this there may be some additional time and effort required upfront to get it fully up and running (and in compliance with the law). Once it’s done perhaps other people that are addressing townspeople's requests for information can go about those other things that are more critical rather than referencing the information, printing it out, putting it in an envelope, weighing it for postage, and getting it out into the mail.

[iwantwallingfordbetter]

so the 100 hours you spend developing the site is worth nothing...i disagree....100 hours is a lot of time...what is 100 hour of your time worth....that's 100 hours you did not spend with your three kids and wife...100 hours that you could have spent on home repairs (if needed)....thats 100 hours of time you have not spent on yourself....that is worth something.....so to say you only spent 30 bucks if modest at best....

[Meridenborn]

Why is your mayor such a Luddite?

[gunderstone]

I suppose that up to this point, being that way has served him well.

Why did my grandfather always swear up and down there was only one way to do things the right way and that was his way?

[RC12L4]

You should look in to using a CMS (content management system) for your website, you can set one up in under 5 minutes and everything is created for you. All you have to focus on is the content.

http://www.e107.org

This is a decent CMS and it's free.

[flatrat]

I find the Wallingford volunteer websites poorly formatted, and difficult to read. Hopefully they are a work in progress. The site owners mean well and can provide an important service to the community. But try using smaller fonts.

I always wondered why Dickinson avoided technology like the plague. Businesses, who are in it for profit, embraced all the computer technologies years ago, because they improved efficiency and saved money.

Why should I have to drag my car to town hall to pick up a form when I could download the form from the website. Not very "green" of Wallingford.

Mayor "Dick" still screams about some town employee who may visit a "no-no" website. I wish someone would educate him about corporate firewalls.

And more time is already wasted by town employees at various town coffee shops.

If Wallingford is going to emulate the Amish, we should at least promote it to tourists, so we can make money like they do.

Gotta run now, and go get ready to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.

[Meridenborn]

Mayor Dickinson should run Wallingford like the Town of Bedrock in the Flintstones if he's so anti-tech. Weird...

[RC12L4]

I find the Wallingford volunteer websites poorly formatted, and difficult to read. Hopefully they are a work in progress. The site owners mean well and can provide an important service to the community. But try using smaller fonts.

I always wondered why Dickinson avoided technology like the plague. Businesses, who are in it for profit, embraced all the computer technologies years ago, because they improved efficiency and saved money.

Why should I have to drag my car to town hall to pick up a form when I could download the form from the website. Not very "green" of Wallingford.

Mayor "Dick" still screams about some town employee who may visit a "no-no" website. I wish someone would educate him about corporate firewalls.

And more time is already wasted by town employees at various town coffee shops.

If Wallingford is going to emulate the Amish, we should at least promote it to tourists, so we can make money like they do.

Gotta run now, and go get ready to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.

I still can't believe that 100 hours of work produced that website. A prebuilt CMS would solve all the formating and layout issues on that site.

[Jim N]

I still can't believe that 100 hours of work produced that website. A prebuilt CMS would solve all the formating and layout issues on that site.
I saw Fairfield's web site the other day I needed information for my mother it's very nice.
I'm working on my own site nothing to do with a town I just don't have alot of time to spend on it but with the yahoo site builder program it's very simple. You don't have to learn HTML it is all user friendly for $10 -$12 per month. Also I can have 500 email address based on that web site they're included. If you buy your domain name at go daddy it's about $20 a year for the one that conceals your identity so the nuts can't find out who you are or the law without a warrant $10 without that and usually a basic site builder is included. Towns should be able to do this.

[gunderstone]

Thank you for the comments - I appreciate everyones candidness and the feedback, some positive and some not. Someone indicated that the formatting was poor and the site was difficult to read; I asked them offline to please give me some additional input so that I might do what I could to fix that.

Someone mentioned a CMS solution – thank you for the link, I will look into that. HTML is not my expertise so looking into these inexpensive solutions may help me quite a bit – most of the time putting the site together (the initial 100 hours) was setting up a format and then entering in all the data (gathering the information, re-writing some of it, edits, putting together links, etc).

It’s not as easy as it looks to get it setup – once you are setup however, keeping it up to date is a lot easier. As long as I am keeping up on it and keeping it up to date every day or every other day it is less than an eight hour commitment over the course of the week (so far).

The bottom line however is this site I’ve created and manage wouldn’t even be needed if the administration of the Town of Wallingford was complying with the law.