Town of Farmington

SITUATION

Farmington is the county seat of Franklin County, Maine with a town population of 7,760 as of the 2010 U.S. census. Farmington is home to the University of Maine at Farmington, the Nordica Memorial Auditorium, the Homestead, and the annual Farmington Fair. The town website was developed 10 years ago on an unsupported website platform making content editing and publishing difficult, time consuming, and costly. Town seeks a professional web design and development firm to design an attractive and user-friendly site that is Section 508/ADA compliant. Other website project goals include:

• Outsourced website and CMS hosting on secure server infrastructure with daily data backups.
• Ongoing website maintenance and technical help to support independent contractor town IT website administrator.
• Incorporate existing page content and incorporate separate police and fire department websites for a consistent graphical look and feel.
• Provide website administration training for 10 town staff employees.

SOLUTION

Town publishes a competitive Request for Qualifications (RFQ) inviting vendors to submit their qualifications and project bid. EzSite Content Management Systems submits qualifications and quotation emphasizing their popular open-source WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla platforms which rely on a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) technology stack. Site hosting is provided on a tier one website and CMS server that provides secure server redundancies, fast speeds, load balancing, and daily data backups.

RESULTS

Town successfully launches new website and content management system making content creation, editing, and management easy with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) content editor. EzSite helps migrate all existing website content and data to new site, maintaining town website presence and energizing public interest. Open-source platform and framework provide many longer-term benefits, including:

• Increased capabilities and ease for department and program managers to continuously update their specific content without technical support.
• Reduced operating costs through continued use of an open-source website and content management system platform.