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Covering Dallas, Monmouth, Independence, Falls City and surrounding areas since 1868

Revamped city website unveiled by Independence

INDEPENDENCE -- The city of Independence has unveiled its updated and redesigned website that town leaders believe will be a hit with Internet users.

Kurt Holland

August 21, 2012

INDEPENDENCE -- The city of Independence has unveiled its updated and redesigned website that town leaders believe will be a hit with Internet users.

The revamped website, http://www.ci.independence.or.us/, debuted Aug. 15.

"The old site did not provide the flexibility and modern tools that the new one does," David Clyne, Independence's city manager, explained. "This allows the city to be far more responsive to the needs of the public for information and communication."

Clyne noted that the upgraded website has a number of new features that visitors to the site will find useful. Among them:

* Greater search capabilities.

* More information about city services and departments.

* Easier navigation for the public when they are looking for forms, documents and the like.

* Far more current over time.

* Tremendous depth of information -- the Historic Independence pages are rich with materials, for example.

* Visitor resource pages are far more robust.

* A calendar feature provides easy access to information the public needs and wants.

* And much better organization in a way that people are able to access.

"I am most pleased with how accessible this will be to the public and how much more communication we can provide them," Clyne said. "Healthy communities are ones that have easy access to their governments and this webpage, when coupled with our new Facebook page, should provide just that."

Part of the reason behind the revamped website was to make the city's Internet page more user friendly. Clyne said the city occasionally received complaints about the old website and he, too, was frequently frustrated with the site.

The new website was designed by aHa Consulting, an Oregon company that does websites for local governments and chambers of commerce throughout the Northwest.

"I am hopeful that people will come to see the site as a central information site and let us know how we can keep it relevant," Clyne said. "I am also hopeful that the site will become a gateway to our Facebook page and vice versa. We really, truly want to hear how we can make this a better site."