June 04, 2003
New City Website Waits In the Wings
In a previous item, I mentioned being told that the city was rolling out a new website this coming Monday. Somewhere, this concept rang a bell, and I was sure it was from an old Portland Tribune article.
Sure enough, here is that article, which discusses a pilot website project (deemed "eVolvement") involving the Portsmouth community.
I dug up this old article mainly to see if the domain in that URL was, in fact, where the new city website was destined to be published.
Indeed, so it would seem. It's not Monday yet, and I've seen no announcement of its existence, but here is the new website for the City of Portland. Feel free to compare it to the current one (which at least maintains the geographical hierarchy in terms of domain, while the new one feels the need to make Portland into a .com).
Having only just confirmed its location and pre-rollout existence on the Web, I haven't had time to fully check it out, but now we all can. Kick the tires. Poke around. Of course, don't react too strongly if something doesn't work yet. Given that it's not quite publicly-announced anyway, it shouldn't be surprising if some element of the new site doesn't function.
It does appear, at this stage, that it serves as more of a portal to all the various existing city websites (bureaus, offices, commissions, etc.) rather than as a mass entity unto itself. Whether that's the intent, or merely the first stage, we will have to wait and see.
Comments (1)
Noah@AllianceWatch on 04 Jun 2003
I'm not to happy to see the city using a .com address and I really don't like the text treatment of "Portland Online" at the top of the page. The beveled and drop-shadowed text is a bit mid-90s and doesn't really speak to the "young creative" in me. I knew I had seen this text treatment before, and after a bit of investigating I found it at Portland Maps and CrimeMapper.
Just my first thoughts.