Vernon Hills refreshes aging website
In the fast-paced digital world, Vernon Hills’ website has become ancient.
“It’s been a significant period of time, nearly 10 years, since we had a refresh,” said Will Rockwell, the village’s GIS coordinator.
That will change at 5 p.m. Thursday as the revamped www.vernonhills.org goes live.
Besides a visual facelift, the new site will be easier to navigate and offer new features to make it more useful to residents, Rockwell said.
At the “notify me” section, residents can sign up for email alerts in advance of garage sales or other events, for example.
Another feature will allow residents to report a streetlight that is out, submit a work or service order and receive emails when the request is submitted and completed.
Rockwell said the old site looked dated and its configuration made it difficult for staff to make changes. The village board last September approved a four-year contract with CivicPlus, which has designed websites for several communities, for a total of $53,995.
“We do try to push out as much information as we can, not only on our website but on our social media sites. We take that seriously,” Rockwell said.
Village-related agendas and minutes will be posted on the front page of the revamped site and quick links will be provided for the village’s social media outlets. Rockwell said CivicPlus does not use a boilerplate design.
“Everything from colors to layout, it was all at our direction,” he added.