Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Digital Services topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Urbana unveils new .gov city website; staff say launch set for mid-December
Summary
City IT staff told the City of Urbana Committee of the Whole that the city’s redesigned website will launch in mid-December, move to a .gov domain, consolidate content and include accessibility scans and analytics; staff warned bookmarks will break and asked for public feedback during an initial internal go‑live.
Urbana city IT staff told the City of Urbana Committee of the Whole on Dec. 2 that the city’s redesigned website will go live in mid-December and will use a .gov domain.
The site is scheduled for an internal “go live” during the week of Dec. 9 and a public launch on Dec. 13, IT Manager Thomas Webb said. Webb said the project’s goals are to “make it more accessible, more responsive to community needs, make it more useful to the people we’re serving.”
City staff said the new site will use a standardized template and design system and will consolidate content. Kate Levy, who led the content audit, said the team started with an audit of the city’s most‑visited pages, then met with each department to decide what to keep or update. Levy said the current site has about 14,500 pages and attachments; the new site will contain about 600 pages.
Mac Patel, who presented technical details, said the new site will use a content management system (Drupal) and the city is working with CivicPlus as the developer. City staff will keep the old site on the back end for archival access but public links will redirect to the new site after launch. Patel said analytics and an automated scanning product (Monsido) will be used to monitor spelling, style and ADA/WCAG compliance; Kate Levy said Monsido “verifies our ADA compliance on this new website so we are aware of any issue going forward.”
Staff warned that condensed pages will change URLs and existing bookmarks may break. Webb said items that are currently hosted on other platforms — meeting packets and videos hosted on the Municode/Agenda vendor and other external hosts — will continue to be linked rather than migrated into the new site. Darcey Sanderford, city clerk, confirmed meeting minutes, agendas and packets that were migrated when the city moved to Municode/Agenda in 2021 will remain available there.
Council members asked about WCAG 2.2 compatibility, cloud hosting, search and monitoring. Webb and Patel said vendor scans indicate the site will meet current accessibility standards and that the site will be cloud hosted; Patel said the vendor will manage the Drupal platform and that annual hosting/management costs are expected to be about $14,000 per year. Staff encouraged public testing after the internal go‑live and said the site will include a web form for feedback.
The presentation acknowledged prior work by former IT Director Sanford Hess and said staff will continue refining the site after launch using analytics and user feedback.
