By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Last September, the Great Bend City Council approved the city's switch to a new website provider. The goal: a more streamlined and easy-to-use way to check in on city business. IT Director James Cell said the city currently uses outside providers for some of the links on the city webpage. That will not change when the transition is completed by the end of May.
"The online utility billing, the online bill pay and stuff like that, it goes through a different vendor anyway," he said. "So the link will still refer back to that. Even on that, Shawna (Shafer) with the finance team, they're getting ready to go through a transition, also. The online bill pay will change, but on the back end they won't notice it. It's still going to go to another page. They'll still be able to pay online like they normally do."
The city's current website provider is Civic Plus. The new provider will be Revise, a firm that has helped create more than 3,600 government-related websites over the last three decades. The initial start-up cost for the switch was $20,060, which is half the cost the city pays annually to Civic Plus. Public Information Director Addi Crites has shouldered most of the transition work and will be in charge of keeping the new webpage updated. She's excited about the new look and some new features.
"Explore Great Bend is going to now be under our umbrella," said Crites. "Currently, with our Civic Plus platform, it's just us and the zoo. Now, we get to integrate Explore with it, too, which is nice because we'll all be under the same thing."
Crites is currently working with Revize on the new sitemap. Popular features on the current city website include utility billing, available bids for contractors, ordinances, the request tracker, and council agendas and minutes. Those items will remain on the home page, albeit with new icons to get there. The new homepage will also feature pictures of the current mayor and councilmembers so the public can better put faces with the names of their elected officials.