The Ashland Website 2.0 is now available for viewing. The site features a new Home Page, improved navigation, and links to social networking sites. The Home Page has been completely redesigned around a picture of the Squam River taken from the Memorial Park. The design creates a feeling of openness and accessibility, and the balance of warm and cool colors - sky blue, gold, rust, and black - makes the page inviting and easy to to read. It is important to note that the entire site design has been completed. Much information remains to be added or updated.
Navigation has been improved dramatically. There is a horizontal, black navigation bar near the top of the page that contains the main menus: Home, Living, Visiting, Business, Town Government, and and A-Z advances search function. Clicking on one of these opens a drop down menu of choices. Under Business, for example, you will find two sub menus: Ashland Business and Community Organization. Moving the mouse over Ashland Business, you will see a cascading menu of The Cheney House Bed and Breakfast, The Common Man Restaurant, Mountain Laurel Florists, and Submit Your Business. This navigation system makes it possible to get directly to the information from the main menu in one or two mouse clicks. Navigating to information on the old website could take up to 5 clicks, and the menus were not always easy to follow.
Another nice feature of the new site is that most information about the town loads onto the home page. For example, if you click on Town Government and choose the Board of Selectmen, the information loads on the Home Page rather than in a new window. This means that the information in the top (header)and bottom (footer) of the page remains the same. In addition, the complete menu for Town Government appears on the left side of the page. If you click on the Cheney House Bed and Breakfast, however, you will be redirected to their website. The web designers might consider having the town website remain open while the Cheney House website opens in a new window.
At the bottom of the Home Page there is a relatively new navigation tool called a tag cloud. A tag cloud is a group of keywords and tags used in the site that appear in a cluster that moves in response to the mouse. Unlike the main menu, the items are not listed in a particular order but appear to rotate and swirl on the screen. Using the tag cloud may be a faster way to navigate the site for some users.
As mentioned above, the site has not been completed. Ashland Website 2.0 is the framework for the site. One of the main problems with the existing website is that much of the information is out of date. The town will need to add new information and keep that information updated, which is no small task. In keeping with the theme of transparency, the town needs to post all public information so that it is readily available to the townspeople. We support developing a searchable data base of public records beginning with current information but eventually including historical records.
We would like to thank Paul Branscombe, who is largely responsible for the project, as well as the people in the town who contributed ideas. Special thanks to Glen Smith and Keith, an intern from Plymouth State University, who did the hard work of developing the site.
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