Website Design and Hosting Services

The Vendor is required to provide for a website design and hosting that will refresh the public facing resource, support better constituent communication, and provide efficiency in use.
- The platform is funded by the office and monitored in partnership with the software provider.
- The platform should incorporate multimedia components (e.g. video storage, photos) natively without the use of third-party systems to backstop features.
- The platform should incorporate email-based distribution for agendas, minutes, news and other similar content types.
- The platform should contain the option to leverage third-party systems where they make operational sense to the Town through the user of iFrames, API calls, or similar methods, managed through the Town.
- The platform should be 100% web based without the need to leverage external applications.
- The content management solution should support the functionality in the existing website.
- Content Management
•    The solution should provide a secured browser-based interface that allows named users to edit the page with a WYSIWYG style interface. 
•    The interface should support standard text/image/table formatting that has become customary in content management systems.
•    The solution should allow for the ability for a single piece of content (e.g., text, images, documents, media) to be placed in multiple locations across the website without requiring duplication or cloning. 
•    Updates made to the original content item should automatically propagate to all locations where that content is displayed, ensuring consistency and reducing manual effort.
- Content Approval and Notification 
•    The solution should allow at least two levels of content approval before a piece of content can be displayed on the web site. 
•    The solution should provide for notification at each posting to required approvers.
- Web Site Page Creation 
•    The solution should not limit the number of pages. 
•    Users should be able to create new pages from pre-defined templates or submit completely new pages using an external editor.
- Web Site Page Management 
•    The solution should allow Content Editors to modify page titles and Meta keywords for all of the editable pages in the site. 
•    Additionally, advanced editors should be able to rename and move pages in the site hierarchy when necessary, and all links in the managed site should be updated with the new path information. 
•    History of these changes should be tracked and managed by the Content Approval process.
- Image and File Uploading 
•    The solution should allow multiple file types to be easily uploaded to the site. 
•    File types include PDF, Microsoft Office files, graphics, audio, video, etc. 
•    Once on the site, these images and files should be able to be renamed (with the change going through the Content Approval process), and any pages linking to the renamed file should be automatically updated with the new link. 
•    A page should be able to display/process multiple images and/or files.
- Video Uploading and storage 
•    The solution should allow the Town to upload video and audio of public meetings that have been recorded in other platforms (Teams predominately) for public viewing. 
•    The Standardized links to other information sources on the web.
- Web Application Integration 
•    The solution should allow integration with other web applications in order to maximize the types of information and functionality supported by the site. Web application integration should support the ability of web applications to maintain context as the user navigates the application while still presenting the user with the navigation and style elements of the website.
- Dynamic Navigation Bars 
•    The solution should provide hierarchical navigation bars that can be easily managed by adding and removing pages and external links to the navigation bar. 
•    Any changes to the navigation bars should follow the same approval process that is used for Content Approval.
- Search Engine Support 
•    The solution should maintain its content is such a way as to maximize the ability of third-party search engines (i.e. Google or Yahoo) to index and categorize the site. 
•    For example, database-driven content management solutions should not rely on query string parameters to determine the content to render because the query string information is often truncated by the search engines when indexing the page.
- Performance and usage reporting
•    The solution should provide insights in several forms.
•    First, standard analytics views similar to Google Analytics for page utilization, visits, and similar. Second, the system should provide internal reporting for user account activity, logins, etc.

- Contract Period/Term: 3 years