Hill City gets new city website
By:
Esther Noe
The City of Hill City has a brand new website. Residents can now find all the pertinent information regarding local government at hillcitysd.org.
The previous website hillcitysd.com was jointly built with the Hill City Area Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) around 2010. This was a one-stop site for residents, visitors and those looking to move to the area.
“The theory was is that we wanted one place that people could go,” said city administrator Brett McMacken.
Over time, the chamber, EDC and city have all evolved at varying paces. Eventually, the chamber moved on to its own website, visthillcitysd.com, the EDC moved on to hillci
tyedc.com and the city continued with the existing site.
However, due to some recent server updates, hill
citysd.com can no longer be manipulated or changed.
“It’s old, and it doesn’t communicate well with the new software. So it was ready to be retired,” said McMacken.
The chamber and EDC were ready to make the transition since their websites were in place, but the city needed a little more time to switch to a new site.
McMacken said the normal methodology of the city is to look at what is needed, who can do it, the cost and the turnaround time. Since the city already had the content for the new website, McMacken looked at a couple of companies that specialize in building government websites.
The companies had a strong emphasis on design, stylistics, color palettes, visual presentation and the like. There was also a “significant” time delay as the city would have to work with a middleman of sorts to get things done.
“Knowing that the old website is going offline fairly soon, and it needs to go offline because we can’t update it at all,” said McMacken, “I was on a time crunch. And their timeline for these companies that do the work were several months just to collect data and have discussions.”
Then there was the cost. To have a website designed and serviced was a $3,000 to $5,000 annual fee.
“In my opinion, it’s not cheap,” said McMacken.
While researching this, McMacken realized it was fairly basic to provide the necessary information to the public and decided to try building a website for the city. He looked at a couple of different providers and decided on Wix because he had heard good things about them.
Hence, as the honorary tech guy at city hall, McMacken created hillci
tysd.org over the past few months by emulating a design from a municipal website designer so the old website could be retired.
“Building a website through their system is pretty easy to do,” said McMacken. “I lifted a lot of content from the current website and was able to just paste it into the new website.”
“Granted me doing this isn’t necessarily in my job description or my expertise,” said McMacken. “I just couldn’t see Hill City spending $3,000 to $5,000 or more a year for what I consider a very basic website.”
McMacken said the goal was to get the website functioning so residents could access the information. Then as time goes on, he can fine-tune it to meet the needs of the city and community.
The new website has all the information for the Hill City Common Council, Hill City Planning & Zoning Commission, Business Improvement Board, Park & Cemetery Board, Hill City Public Library and all other city departments.
There are also links directing people to the chamber, EDC and Hill City Center.
“I think it’s important that we still support and link between each other. So when I built it, I wanted to make sure that that component was still in there,” said McMacken.
Quick dots on the home page lead directly to agendas, forms, calendar, utility payments and ordinances. Other items can be found through drop-down menus.
Over the years McMacken said the city has received numerous comments about people struggling to find forms, agendas, minutes or the municipal code. As a result, McMacken tried to create multiple ways to navigate to the same content to make it easy for residents to find what they are looking for.
The calendar is still a work in progress, but McMacken is planning to embed a Google calendar that is mirrored on both the city website and the Hill City Center website. The updated calendar will also include meeting information for all the city organizations and departments.
McMacken is planning to make the ordinance section more user-friendly as well. Right now the ordinances are available as PDFs, but there is no effective search tool.
“The content is there, but it’s just not as functional as I would like it to be,” said McMacken.
The new website is compatible with phones and desktops for easy access. The only thing the phone view is missing is the drone video of Hill City that McMacken filmed during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally a few years ago.
“It’s amazing how you look at that view and how neat and tidy and beautiful the city looks from up high,” said McMacken.
Another feature of the new website is that it can be easily updated at any time.
“I can just go in there and deal with it,” said McMacken. “There’s lots of flexibility there.”
The city can either go forward with this website or use it as a stop-gap until something else is ready.
“If Wix can’t do what the public is wanting to do with the website, then obviously we’re going to have to look somewhere else,” said McMacken. “Personally, I think Wix can do everything that we need it to do and that we shouldn’t have to spend more than a couple hundred bucks a year. I’d rather spend less and focus more on making sure that content is up to speed.”
Either way, hillcitysd.com will be retired by the end of July. After that, it will redirect people to visthillcitysd.com since the chamber owns the URL. Residents will have to go to hillcitysd.org specifically to find the new city website.
McMacken said he hopes everyone can navigate the website easily and asked that they either call 605-574-2300 or email city
hall@hillcitysd.org with their feedback.
“At city hall, we hear the word transparency a lot. I think the website is an awesome 24/7 location for people to get information,” said McMacken. “If we can put stuff on there that’s helping inform people, or helping people make decisions, or making it easier to pay their utility bills or whatever, I think it’s important that it reflects the needs of the community.”