St. Louis’ Website Is Behind the Times (and the Mayor’s Site)
Having recently upgraded my Mac PowerBook from Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther” to 10.4 “Tiger” I now have the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds (aka Real Simple Syndication for non geeks). This is simply a way of having the computer tell you when a particular site has been updated with new information. Most sites, including this blog, have RSS feeds available to notify you when it has been updated. It truly saves time when you look to many web resources.
So I find it interesting that St. Louis’ website is stuck in a late 90s time warp technologically speaking. Press releases are posted for viewing if you think to navigate and find them. Some parts are set up to register you to so you can receive email notifications circa 2002. Yeah I know, we don’t have any money. But would it really take that much?
The Mayor’s campaign site at mayorslay.com is actually far more useful and informative than the own city website. They have RSS feeds for “from the Mayor’s Desk”, “Latest News” and “Podcasts.” Given that if I had been elected to the Board of Aldermen in March I certainly would have kept a campaign website so I’m not going to suggest that Slay shouldn’t use the internet to communicate. I’m glad he is.
I’d just like to see the city website take advantage of some of the newer technology and clean up the city website a bit. It is dated and way more complicated than necessary. And please, drop the “CIN” acronym already. Why must everything in this town be an acronym?
– Steve
Well put Steve.
The CIN logo looks like toy blocks. If they don’t have the budget for a graphic designer I would be willing to lend my services, for free of course. Give me 2 hours with that site. How and/or why do they not have RSS?
I agree, time to enter into the 2000’s.
[REPLY – I’d love to see you or another designer get ahold of the site and give it a complete makeover. Your site is stunning! http://www.jyoseph.com/photoblog
Aside from the horrible visual aspect of the current CIN site I also find it quite cumbersome to navigate. Public meeting notices are in different places, news is in different places, just a mess. I’m sure it is tough for a department to get their portion updated. The website not unlike city hall itself, time for a good house cleaning! – Steve]