City of Nanaimo

Overview

Nanaimo, the Harbour City, is located on the east coast of Vancouver Island, 111 km north of Victoria. The City has boomed over the past decade and now has a population over 78,000. With the added responsibility of becoming a quickly-growing city, Nanaimo has put itself on the forefront of municipal services for its constituents. They placed a high emphasis on a powerful, functional, service-based website that will make life easier for Nanaimo residents, visitors and businesses alike.

Approach to Development

The City of Nanaimo had already been experiencing great success with their website as a means of conveying information to residents, visitors and businesses alike; the site was popular and received a large number of daily visits. The site featured a wealth of user-friendly applications and was an excellent source of information. What they wanted was a website that streamlined the large amounts of information the site held, thereby making it easier to find. And they wanted this new, lean website inside a stimulating design that would accurately reflect the perpetual energy of the City. The layout also had to be clean and easy to use, as City staff would be updating the site themselves using a Content Management System, once the website had gone live.

Role in Development

Our team was fully responsible for the creation and integration of this comprehensive and dynamic municipal project. Our role was to provide a fresh new look, improve navigation to allow for future expansion of the site, upgrade the code to the latest web standards, integrate the new design into ElementCMS, integrate Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), convert 21 custom ASP applications to ASP.Net, and to migrate content. We also gave City staff CMS training and provided their employees thorough documentation for all aspects of the web upgrade process.

Project Plan

Our team began by devising a well-organized site architecture that would allow site visitors to find the information they sought in the easiest manner possible, and with the fewest number of button clicks. Our broad experience with municipal sites has taught us that most visitors come to a site not to browse but to seek out a specific piece(s) of information. With that in mind, we knew it was important to let the locating of information be as simple as possible.

For the web and application development, our developers worked in conjunction with Nanaimo's IT department in order to convert their existing ASP applications that had a variety of backend database technologies. Our team upgraded and integrated over 20 applications into a single platform that was seamless inside the website and easier to update on the backend.

The City of Nanaimo selected ElementCMS as the Content Management System that would best suit theirneeds, due to its combination of robustness and ease-of-use. We gave City staff a comprehensive CMS training session and followed that up with ongoing technical support. The combination of a powerful CMS and detailed training permitted their staff to update the website themselves in a quick and efficient manner, and in a way that maintains the look of the site while needing little technical expertise.

Project Outcome

On top of a clean, contemporary and colourful new layout, it also included the seemless integration of 21 custom applications - including up-to-the-minute weather, property taxes, photo submissions, and more - and of Sharepoint, to ensure that all the City's documents and information are current, thereby improving the site for their constituents.

The site was honed for accessibility, allowing for font-resizing and enhanced accessibility for those using mobile devices. This will allow all users to enjoy the website, a key factor for municipalities: ensuring equal access for all website visitors.