City unveils new website design

City unveils new website design
By CHUCK CLEMENT, Staff Reporter

The city has a new look for its website located at www.cityofmadisonsd.com that includes noticeable changes in its design and, hopefully, easier online navigation for its users.

The redesigned website for Madison appeared online just Wednesday and some of the changes are immediately apparent as soon as the homepage shows up on the computer screen. Links to elected officials and city departments are located immediately under the heading along with a row of small photos that depict scenes from some of the city parks, downtown area, community center and library.

According to City Finance Officer Jeff Heinemeyer, Jen Eimers, the city's website manager, started working with GovOffice.com about three months ago to redesign the site.

Heinemeyer said GovOffice provides web hosting services to many cities.

"Visitors should find the new site easier to use, and it will contain all of the same information it used to have," Heinemeyer said.

A search box appears more prominently on the new web page design in the upper right corner of the homepage. The search box operates as the site's small search engine, allowing visitors to type in words such as electric department or zoning and find related information. Heinemeyer said the previous city homepage had a search box that was located less prominently at the bottom of the page.

The homepage also holds a traditionally-styled calendar in which visitors can click on a particular date to find city events or meetings. Users can also use commands to move back and forth through the months of the year.

Heinemeyer added that the separate city departments will have more flexibility in individually designing their web pages. The department personnel who work as webmasters will have more options in switching or adding photos and information.

GovOffice.com provides services to about 1,400 small and large communities across the United States. The company describes itself as as a website creation and content management resource for local governments. Its Internet products provide information to the public and make services more efficient

GovOffice is a subsidiary of Avenet Web Solutions, a Minneapolis-based company that provides its customers with industry-specific applications. Avenet has developed several products that include GovOffice, NonprofitOffice, CampaignOffice and Avenet eFolio.

Similar to GovOffice, the company's NonprofitOffice assists nonprofit organizations and CampaignOffice serves persons running for political office from county attorneys to U.S. House representatives.

Avenet eFolio operates as an online portfolio management system. The web product helps students, educators and job-seekers organize, manage and display academic and career information.

According to Heinemeyer, although the site is operational, Madison's website should remain "under construction" for about the next seven days.

"We're also always open to any information or suggestions that people may have that would make the website more complete or easier to use," Heinemeyer said. "So people should feel free to call us with their ideas."

Source: http://www.zwire.com

10 ways to prepare your website for Christmas

It's that time of the year again - with just 77 sleeps until Christmas, it's time for online retailers to start panicking about their key selling period.

While normal bricks and mortar retailers have the luxury of shutting up shop every night, the internet is open 24/7 and online retailers know their shopfronts require constant attention.

Good design, strong traffic infrastructure and perfect search engine optimisation are just a few of the problems online retailers face coming up to Christmas. Hal Pritchard, chief executive of online kitchenware retailer Everton Online, says e-retailers should already be thinking about their holiday strategies.

"Christmas is twice as busy as any other time, which makes it difficult from a logistical point of view. Preparations start during September and if you get that done, you'll survive. When you get into November and December, it's done, you can't change anything,"

Here are the top 10 tips from online retail experts in order to prepare your website for the Christmas season.

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How to Design a Website for Beginners

A webmaster, you say? Me? Yes, I did say web design master ...

A few years ago, when I was first introduced to the world of Internet site design, I thought it would be impossible to learn everything there is to know about building a website from scratch.

It all seemed so overwhelming! I still haven't learned "all the facts" about Web design or the Internet, but I did make one important discovery on this journey - I didn't have to know everything about designing websites to build a very effective and intriguing Internet presence.

The Webmaster Course website is living online proof that, with minimum Internet knowledge, beginners can design an efficient Internet site in just a short period of time. Throughout these web pages, you'll find the resources and step by step instructions you will need to design your own complete business or personal Website.

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Web Browsers Used In Professional Web Designing

The client software that allows you to display and interact with hypertext document hosted on the web server is called the web browser. When you access a document using a browser the document is transferred to the local host and the link is broken thereby reducing the amount of traffic on the internet. Viewing the web requires the use of any browser program to view files, download images and movies or listen to the downloaded sound files.

There are different kinds of text based and graphical user interface based browsers. Text based browsers are simple and require less sophisticated computers and terminals than graphic user interface browsers. The graphic user interface browsers are mouse or icon oriented programs that run under graphic user interface systems such as windows, Macintosh etc. most of these programs automatically display the formatted text with various fonts, pictures, sounds and movies, with a simple click of the mouse- they provide internet multi media.

The text based browsers also read the same hypertext markup language text files as graphic user interface browsers but they display them without formatting. They do not display inline pictures from the document being read, but allow some of the pictures and the sound files to be downloaded and viewed or played on the local computer at a later time, provided the computer has the proper software and hardware. Browsers allow you to directly enter a uniform resource locator to go to a specific document.

Also there are different types of text based web browsers like Linux. It is a text- only browser developed at the University of Kansas. Linux runs on the UNIX or VMS based host computers where you have your login id not on your PC. Therefore phone line access does not require a SLIP or PPP account with the internet service providers. Just as a shell account with internet access the presence of the Linux program

on the internet service providers system is sufficient. With Linux you cannot view graphics or listen to sound, but you can read hypertext, place the cursor on highlighted words and move around the web by clicking on the mouse.

The graphic user interface browsers are easy to use, point and click type that operate under the same graphical system like windows, Macintosh etc. when started, most of them automatically retrieves and displays a home page. This default home page is often the home page of the site where the browser was developed. You can also change this home page to any other page for which you have a universal resource locator. Netscape navigator and internet explorer are the most popular graphic user interface browsers.

Author Resource:- Kyle Newton is a Professional web design and ecommerce professional with 7 years of experience in the web development and internet marketing field. He has developed total online presence systems and has helped establish many successful online businesses.

Source : http://www.articleriot.com/