Newport council previews redesigned city website, new logo and accessibility features

City communications staff and a contracted project team on Monday showed Newport city council members a proposed redesign of the city website and a new logo, saying the redesign aims to improve navigation, accessibility and online services.

John Fuller, communications specialist for the City of Newport, said the project will prioritize a streamlined user experience so "people can find what they need more easily" and that departments will be able to update their own pages to keep information current. Fuller said the project team is working with an outside developer, Reviza, selected through an RFP process.

The presentation outlined goals including faster access to contact information, an accessibility module with translation for more than 90 languages, a modern visual design built around a proposed color palette led by a shade the presentation called "Newport blue," and separate subpages for Parks & Recreation, the library and police. Fuller said the vendor will perform full site development and the city is doing a content migration and site audit to decide which of roughly 41,000 existing files must be maintained online and which should be stored elsewhere but remain accessible.

Fuller said the team is exploring adding e-notifications, online forms, business licensing and online payments but that the budget implications for those services are not yet finalized. He said a site-audit and internal testing will follow the design phase, and that external testing with community members is planned. "I personally think that [the site map user-experience work] will probably take the longest, in 4 to 5 weeks," Fuller said, and that a realistic public launch is "a few months from now" once testing and migration are complete.

The vendor, Reviza of Troy, Michigan, was described as the top-ranked bidder in the RFP process; Fuller and two staff who scored proposals said Reviza offered the strongest overall value and bundled features the team preferred. John Perez, the project's contract project manager, said Reviza is developing the HTML, CSS and overall site build and will provide orientation for city staff who will maintain content.

Council members asked about how the site will handle public records and ordinances. Fuller said the team is discussing how many records must remain directly on the website versus stored in a document-management system; he noted the city currently has about "41,000 files" and that public records will remain accessible but some documents may be served through a separate documents-on-demand system. On ordinances, Fuller said migration and search improvements should let users find laws and resolutions more easily even if the ordinance project uses a different vendor.

Other details discussed include the project's branding approach. Fuller presented a simplified, industry-inspired logo that he said is easier to reproduce for printing and digital use than the city's current, more-complex seal. Council members asked about imagery (sunrise vs. sunset), alternate configurations such as single-color or two-tone marks, and whether the existing seal would remain in use; Fuller said the current seal could continue as a secondary mark and the new logo would be introduced with the website launch rather than triggering an immediate citywide signage replacement.

Fuller said the city has accumulated roughly 3,500–4,000 email addresses that could be used for newsletters and that separate communications work is underway to integrate functions such as library and parks and rec notices. He also said the system will not be WordPress but that staff who can use WordPress should find the new authoring tools approachable; Reviza will provide staff training. The team said they are not including AI features at launch, noting the priority is to get the site "to a good place" before adding advanced features.

Council members responded positively to the color palette and to the bridge-only graphic presented as a flexible branding element. The council did not take any formal vote on the design at the work session; Fuller said staff will return with further timeline details as the site-audit and migration proceed.