Web conversion update April 16, 2008
Greetings fellow webmasters and webpage designers.
As you may have heard the Town of Franklin / Franklin Public School's website is scheduled for significant changes during the coming months. These changes are part of an overall plan to increase stability, ease of use and level of support.
The town and school websites will be hosted by two separate hosting services. The town will be hosted by the company Virtual Town Hall (VTH). This company provides website hosting exclusively to municipalities and towns. They are used by over 100 communities in Massachusetts alone and have gotten rave reviews by all of their current customers I have conversed with. The end user support and reliability of their service is impeccable.
The school district's website (pending final approval of service agreements) will be hosted by a unique company called Ednets. What is unique to Ednets is their ability to provide website hosting and a powerful content management system (CMS) to us at no charge. In future years the school also has the potential to generate revenue from our website as well. More details to follow on this as we get closer to an implementation schedule.
Most importantly and foremost, I would like to allay any fears as to the notion that the website will be discontinued and access shut off without giving all active users sufficient time to relocate current content.
As of yet I have not nailed down any firm dates as to when the new websites will go "live". Many variables still exist on the school side and preliminary "home page" planning has just begun on the town side.
Click these links for more information:
Finally, I would like to thank everyone in advance for tolerating any inconveniences experienced during this project. Change is not always enjoyable, but it is sometimes inevitable and our time on the current platform is coming to a close. The new hosting systems promise to provide better service and improved functionality for all.
Thank you all, and stay tuned!
Timothy Rapoza
Director of Technology Services
Town of Franklin and Franklin Public Schools
