Out on the nemasket forum, as on many other web sites, there was some complaining going on about the Middleboro town web site. I had been planning for some time to put together a demo of a new town web site when time allowed. The forum gave me the impetus to make the time for it.

I put together this demo. Because I am inherently lazy, I’ll include the post I put on the forum when it was created:

I sent notification of the demo site into the email address on the Middleboro web site and Adam has been supportive – we’ve had several conversations about it but so far there has been no official response from the town.

It took somewhere around 20 hours to create the demo site. A good chunk was spent on evaluating different options, and probably 4 or 5 hours experimenting with the selected tool(Joomla) and maybe 8 hours importing data from the town web site so that the demo site would have enough data in it to make a meaningful comparison. If the town were to adopt it, I’m sure I’d spend 40-80 hours of my own time over the next year training and supporting it until the town felt ready to fly solo.

So why did I spend so much of my time and offer the town a free web site and training worth multiple thousands of dollars? Probably for the same reasons that anyone who serves on a committee, volunteers, or does anything to benefit the town and are not paid. But I think most of all to show that we can and should work together on things that would better that town – even as we disagree on the casino. Roughly the same motivation applies to nemasket.net and it’s forum.

Any thoughts on the demo would be appreciated.

A final note:. I would help the town get going, train(if asked), and support, but would have no access/control over the site.

3 Responses to “Town web site demo”

1. Anonymous says:

   May 9, 2008 at 7:14 am

   I would encourage town officials to accept your sound proposal. Your demo offers many advantages over the current town website. Thank you for your willingness to volunteer your time and expertise.
2. Anonymous says:

   May 9, 2008 at 12:07 pm

   What an improvement your proposal would create! It’s simple, user friendly, provides an understandable format.
   The Board of Selectmen should be jumping at the chance since money has always been their excuse.
   Your generosity is appreciated.
3. Bellicose Bumpkin says:

   May 9, 2008 at 12:26 pm

   I don’t mean to imply that the selectman are not moving on it – just that I haven’t heard anything.