The technology director for the Gainesville City School System told school board members this past week that it's time for an upgrade to the school system web site.
Keith Palmer said in a Wednesday afternoon work session at school board headquarters it's time the city school system had a consistent overall design among all schools and departments in the district.
"We cannot edit it [the web site] in house," Palmer said. "We can add information online, but the overall design we can't do in house. We have to farm that out."
He said he and his team also want the ability to integrate social media and a new mobile app with the website. That will enable a site administrator to get information to all technology platforms at one time, something that will save time, especially in the event of an emergency, such as a weather closing.
Part of Palmer's wish list for the new site is the ability to refresh the design of the site every two years.
"Web sites have trends just like anything else," Palmer said. "If you look over the 20 years that we've had one, it's changed dramatically just by new technology."
The Gainesville School System debuted a web site in 1994, becoming one of the first school systems in the area to have a web presence, according to Palmer. He said since that time, the system has undergone several iterations.
In his presentation, Palmer outlined the following criteria for the new site:
- A consistent overall design between all schools and departments
- The ability for individual schools and departments to update the content of their pages without altering the overall design
- The pages of all schools, departments, clubs, etc. will be housed under the same domain
- The ability to edit the website from any location that has Internet access without expensive or overly complicated software
- A design refresh of the site every 2 years to incorporate innovations in technology and trends in web design
- Website analytics
- Integration of social media
- Integration of a mobile app
- Possible web site hosting
Palmer said the plan for now is to collect bids for the new site. Once a bid is approved by school board members, Palmer said he hopes a site could be ready to go live in January 2018.
Technology staff with the Gainesville City School District want to upgrade the system website by January.
Gainesville City School System Technology Director Keith Palmer tells city school board members it's time for an upgrade to the system website.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2017/7/557033/gainesville-school-district-looking-at-website-social-media-revamp