WESTFIELD–While snow delayed and hindered businesses, schools and travel Friday, the city’s new website was able to come to life earlier than expected.
The city of Westfield debuted the new website Friday morning, around 10 a.m., with the promise of better user interface and mobile abilities. The new site was created through CivicPlus, a municipal website design company that the city has contracted for the past several years.
“We’re very very happy with the way it turned out,” Lenore Bernashe, information technology manager for the city, said. “I’m very thankful for the people who worked on this, everyone was very helpful in all their contributions to getting it up and running.”
A screenshot of the city’s new website
Bernashe said that the design of the website was spearheaded by a group of individuals from the information technology department in the city, but they also worked with several others from various city departments for input and design and function suggestions. From there, CivicPlus created the website.
The update was part of the city’s contract with CivicPlus, who was obligated to create a new website after four years. The site took about six months to complete, which Bernashe said is the average timeframe for a municipal site. The website’s official unveiling was delayed due to glitches but they were fixed and the website debuted after just a nine-day delay.
The website now features improved access to a variety of functions, including reporting problems within the city, figuring out which department and forms to fill out for a number of functions and eventually a photo gallery, which will display user-submitted works for visitors to see.
