After Delay, Launch Date Set for New Township Website
New website designed to have added features and be easier to navigate, officials say.
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Teaneck’s much anticipated new official website will launch in April after being delayed since late last year, Township Manager William Broughton said Tuesday.
Broughton said work had been delayed, in part because officials had to grapple with major storms that hit town. Users will be able to access the new site April 3, after content is added and town officials are trained on the new system.
The current website would not simply be copied over to a new design, with departments working on new site menus and content over the coming weeks, Broughton said. A group of town officials will begin adding new information in early March, after the latest version of the site is reviewed and training is conducted.
Teaneck’s efforts to improve its municipal website have been ongoing for more than two years, and been marred by a contract dispute with the firm responsible for the current site.
“I can’t remember a three month period over the last six years on council where we did not discuss our current website or our new website,” Deputy Mayor Adam Gussen said at the Jan. 24 council meeting.
In 2009, Teaneck hired website company Qualis Group but ultimately cut ties with the firm after officials said it did not deliver on deadline. The town has withheld payment of some of the contract’s $9,660 total.
Broughton has said Qualis used unsupported open-source software to design the current site, making updates difficult. The site frequently crashes and has often been called outdated. A Qualis representative could not be immediately reached Tuesday night.
Before Qualis, the township fired website firm C3, which had been the subject of subpoenas by federal authorities investigating former Bergen County Democratic Organization Chairman Joseph Ferriero. Teaneck was one of several municipalities subpoenaed in the probe. Reports at the time said the township ultimately fired C3 over performance concerns.
The latest version of the township website, being developed by Delaware.net, is designed to be easier to navigate and allow officials to better monitor service requests from residents online, according to a presentation Broughton gave to council. Officials reviewed more than 500 government websites before hiring the Dover-based web company.
Keith Kaplan
11:20 am on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
"Broughton has said Qualis used unsupported open-source software to design the current site, making updates difficult. The site frequently crashes and has often been called outdated. A Qualis representative could not be immediately reached Tuesday night."
That's simply a misleading. It based on the Joomla platform which works quite well for many other towns including Bergenfield (http://www.bergenfieldboro.com/) and even Presidential Candidates have used it (Dennis Kucinich used Joomla for his site during his 2008 run).
So let's not blame the medium for the poor implementation. The fact is that the township is running this off of a windows box with limited connection input to the php.ini file which causes random access violations. If they had anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of webite maintenance, none of this would have happened.
This is a screenshot I got last month - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/549854/teaneck%20website.jpg
It shouldn't be in a D:\ drive for starters.
Glad that you're fixing it, but please don't blame Joomla (joomla.org)- they have a great platform and it's opensource, which means it gets better all the time.
JamesTS
1:47 pm on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Even when the current Web Site was working it still was useless and outdated. I am not a computer expert like Keith but this site needs to go ASAP!.. The new site cannot come soon enough for me!!! Bergenfield and Englewwod both have nice sites.
Keith Kaplan
4:39 pm on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
James, the Bergenfield site is THE EXACT SAME SITE as we currently have - the only difference is where they keep it (a server vs a computer) and the people in charge of running it. Garbage in - garbage out, it doesn't matter that we are getting a fancy modern site if it's being run by people that aren't capable.
Keith Kaplan
4:43 pm on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
and I really do mean that these people seem incompetent. You want to know how to fix that error in the screenshot: http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Joomla+maximum+execution+time+of+30+seconds+exceded+in+&l=1
Michele Acquaviva Rookwood
4:24 pm on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
I agree very outdated website the Teaneck Library has a more modern site. I hope this happens as planned it would be beneficial to get documents on line instead of having to go to the Rec Center to pick up forms.
JamesTS
5:20 pm on Wednesday, February 8, 2012
OK but Keith I read old articles and the town's issues seem to be not having the tech support. Are you proposing they hire a full-time township employee to handle these Web Sites? It seems to me that having tech support on call/case by case makes more sense. With Training for Depts to upload new information. In a basic way I wouldnt hire an Apple "Genius" Tech full time when i can just call when I need them. Wouldnt using a system with tech support solve this problem? not hiring more staff to maintain the site. And sorry, I am not very computer savvy-- not sure what "Joomla" is but I assume it is Web Site software.
Keith Kaplan
10:25 am on Thursday, February 9, 2012
No, I'm not suggesting they get a full time webmaster (although I'm a little surprised they don't have someone already in the system with enough technical know-how to do the job).
What I think should happen is that someone in each department should be tasked with keeping the content for their own department up to date. Articles posted to the site have options galore, when posting something timely (like snow related procedures), they can set it to expire int he spring automatically, etc....
What I'm saying is that the technical aspect (keeping it running, applying patches (security, updates, etc...) can be handled by whatever company is hired to handle the site - but the day to day updating can be done by anyone in any department. If they are listed as a "publisher" they can only add content, modify content and remove content. Without admin rights they can't bring down the site or cause havoc.
What appears to have happened in the case of the current web site is that the departments didn't get the content going which hampered the timeline for the next phase of implementation. This is a managing clusterf@#k and I don't see how simply getting a new vendor and starting over with the same management structure changes the inherent flaws that kept this project from proceeding.
But I do with them luck.
Tom Abbott
1:25 am on Saturday, February 18, 2012
I couldn't agree more. As long as the new site is managed the way the current site has been managed, it will have the same problems. At the October 26, 2010 council meeting, Mr. Broughton did a presentation in conjunction with announcing that a new vendor had been selected. A time line was included concluding that, “Web site can be up and running in as little as 90 days, range is typically 3-4 months.” It seems instead it’s taken closer to 17 months. It’s nice to finally find out that this has all been weather related delays.
zizi
9:03 am on Thursday, February 9, 2012
Simple another way for Teaneck township to get into our pockets..... this is how I see it. Why can't we just merge our website with towns with a working website......
zizi
1:43 pm on Thursday, February 9, 2012
@Keith Kaplan: They just want to delay and spend more of our money..... you are talking sense..... they are seeing work..... connect the dots...... this will also fail or we will have a new site paid for by our dollars that is as useless as the one we have now... I would rather them keep the one we have........ and spare us some change......
Keith Kaplan
1:48 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012
I would offer to tweak the current website and get it server space for FREE. All the town would need to do would be to provide the costs associated with hosting it - but why take on all that headache if the underlying problem (getting departments to update the information) is still going to be such a problem?