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Cheshire County picks Planetaria to redesign county website, citing scalability and third‑party integration
Summary
After reviewing bids, commissioners selected Planetaria to redevelop the Cheshire County website for its scalability, UX and reference sites; staff will begin a design phase with department heads and notify competing bidders.
Cheshire County commissioners selected Planetaria as the county’s vendor to redesign the county website and approved moving to a design phase with department‑head engagement.
In a presentation, staff reviewed proposals from several bidders, narrowed to Communicators Group (a local firm) and Planetaria (an experienced out‑of‑state vendor). Commissioners discussed requirements that included a scalable, secure CMS (WordPress/Drupal or equivalent), content migration, role‑based permissions so departments can manage their pages, and integration with third‑party data sources (the presentation referenced links to ImageTrend/NISER for EMS response data).
Several commissioners said Planetaria’s reference sites appeared more integrated and easier for residents to use; others praised Communicators Group’s local presence but agreed Planetaria’s capacity to scale with county needs made it the better choice. The board moved and seconded a motion to select Planetaria and voted unanimously to proceed. Staff said they will notify the unsuccessful bidders, schedule an initial Zoom kickoff with department heads and begin the design and content‑migration phases.
Commissioners highlighted the need to keep the homepage simple, enable routine departmental edits, and embed third‑party links rather than importing sensitive data. Staff said some third‑party integrations are hyperlinks to separate systems and would not store external data on the county site.
