See our example website.
Our Local Government Package is suited for more advanced situations for local government offices. Local government offices may include counties, towns/cities, and utilities. Each tends to have many departments, elected officials, legislative bodies, mayors, professional staff, and multiple boards and commissions that contribute to or follow specific regulations and ordinances. GIS systems and detailed maps may also be generated.
Our estimated price of $4,000 is a good starting point, but your actual price may vary as you customize our mix of options to meet your needs.
This heavy-duty website is still agile and easy to maintain, but there's more to it. It still runs in Joomla, but we've added more extensions that more powerful business sites require. We beefed up the performance—you won't outgrow it. Your particular business site will have a unique combination of features.
Naming Your Website
Generally, the municipality's name and domain name have already been chosen. Many have chosen a name that ends with ".com." Google gives higher priority and authority to municipal domains that end with ".gov." We can help upgrade your domain name. We can even make your website respond to multiple names to eliminate confusion by changing names.
- Purchase. We will find and purchase domain names for two years. We will attempt to tie up alternative domain names to reduce the odds of competitors gaining similar names. While at it, we'll lock down the privacy settings for greater security.
- Link to Website. Activate and point the domain name to a web hosting account.
Email Addresses
Businesses need email addresses that are based on the name of their website.
- Accounts. We can easily create up to 20 email accounts using your domain name. Additional email accounts are $5 each. Many municipalities require far more email accounts from specialized email servers. We can also assist you in securing those services.
- Spam Control. Activate Spam Assassin on your email host.
- Reader Set-up. Set up your email in your web browser or email client depending on how many computers you use for your email.
Hosting Details
You need a reputable company to host your website on servers at a secure, high-performance data center.
- Account Setup. We have accounts on a very reputable website hosting company. We prefer to use a virtual private server for most websites, but for more complex sites, we can host you on a server with your unique account and IP address rather than typical shared hosting.
- Content Management System. Install Joomla, arguably the best content management system available for full-featured websites. We'll add these essential extensions:
- User-Friendly Editor. Configure our website editor for your use. (If you can use a word processor, use our editor.)
- Tools for Photo Upload. Install media managers to upload photographs and other images.
- Specialized Extensions. We'll load specialized extensions that bring real power to your website. We'll help you choose the best free and commercial extensions to meet your business needs. These extensions could include
- Event Calendar.
- Blogging tools
- Poll and survey tools
- Directories / Catalogs
- Document Management Tools
- Trouble Tickets for reporting problems
- Appointments booking
- Photo Galleries
- Backup Tools
Designing and Building
Most government websites need some specialized functions. Usually, that requires time for research and testing several alternative Joomla extensions. Some of those extensions may be "free," while good ones typically cost $50 - $300 for a few-month subscription. For budgeting purposes, figure on 6 - 8 hours of research at $50/hr.
- Templates. We'll help you choose and modify a high-quality commercial template for your website if needed.
- Article Organization. Define unlimited content categories for articles (stories) linking to menus.
- Email Contact Organization. Configure an unlimited number of email contact categories.
- Main Menu Structure. Configure a complete Main Menu and additional other menus as needed.
- Management Menu. Configure a private User Menu for website content development, photo uploading, etc. Additional specialized menus are available for $10 and $10 per menu option.
- Visitor Monitoring. We can install Analytics to monitor visitors and website errors. We can embed the analytics tools directly into the private part of your website.
- Search Engine Tools. We will create a sitemap for Google and other search engines.
- Dummy Content. Draft web pages for menu options with dummy text content and photographs. Dummy content allows you to visualize how your web pages will look.
- Logo. Text logo and slogan for all pages. Graphical logos require additional charges depending on the fees of our professional graphics artist.
- Page Footer. Custom footer for all pages with copyright notices and custom messages.
We'll provide training for you and your staff to use all parts of the website. While we will gladly help you add and edit your website's content, we'd really prefer that you be able to add your own articles and make changes to them.