Sitka, Alaska
Sitka, Alaska
http://www.cityofsitka.com/
This is a small city and like a lot of the small cities it does not fit in to "city template" that I have found. This is not a good or a bad thing it just make it harder to do a comparison criticism of the site. I also understand that content production in a small city is much harder to get when a city has a small staff. I love the homey feel of the site it is not overly professional and feels like I can get a great understanding of the happening of the city from watching the news feed. (is there an RSS for that?) Love the pictures I know that it is beautiful up there would love to see more of that and I like the credits on the pictures. Here is were I could see a good place for growth in design. Things that I would suggest for a site like this is a clear separation between the site wide navigation and the divisional and topical menus. This allow for a greater ability to expand the site as it is need. The second thing that I would recommend is a search engine. Google custom search is great for a site like this. it is simple to set up, free to the government, more powerful then a keyword search and gives results in methods that is easy to understand by most people. (http://www.google.com/coop/cse/) I would also start working on some of the standard pages that most city websites have about there website it self, disclaimers, privacy, information collection and accessibility would be a good starting list.
is Designed as a
- Header
- 2 and 3 column content
- left 110 px with the site Navigation -- center 581px
- there is a footer that is 100% of the client.
- this is a this is a combination of table design and CSS and Div design
- Does not presents correctly in Lynx or text reader
- It simply spills out the information there is not a structure that is normally built from visual input.
- the page is not listed semantically -- such as there is no h1 the site uses an image as the h1 of the page and that image does have an alt tag but one does not know that it is the Title of the site or a decorative piece.
- I would recommend a tag that went something like (* = < or >) *h1 style="display:none;*Official web site of the City and Borough of Sitka*/h1*
- think about graceful degradation
Primary Navigation
Not a very standard menu names. No business, departments or visitor listing. Site navigation and Division Navigation is mixed together.
there is a quick link drop down that is not added to survey information.
City Page
Assembly & General Code
Municipal Clerk
Boards and Commissions
Election Information
Human Resources
City Staff Directory
Applications
e-gov is not working http://sitkaonline.com/sitka/cslogin.pgm Failed to Connect. broken link.
Mapping application.
Footer Information
Links
Contact the Webmaster
Text
City and Borough of Sitka, 100 Lincoln St. Sitka, AK 99835 (907)747-3294
Mayor
Not able to easily find the Mayor if there is one four clicks in and I am no closer.
Notes
no search engine google custom search is a easy win that is used by several cities.
No Accessibility Policy http://spiritofcitywebs.com/node/30
No Discliamer http://spiritofcitywebs.com/node/45
No Contact Us http://spiritofcitywebs.com/node/34
No Privacy Policy http://spiritofcitywebs.com/node/32