Holyoke, MA – Oct. 31, 2008 – The City of Holyoke today unveiled a comprehensive new municipal Web site that makes it easy for residents, visitors and businesses to access information about the city and its services. The new site was designed by Silvana.Net, a Northampton, MA, Web design firm.

Located at http://www.holyoke.org, the site has been completely revamped to keep pace with Holyoke’s expected growth. A customized Content Management System allows city departments to easily update pages. The new site is part of three-year commitment by Mayor Michael Sullivan and the City Council to significantly upgrade the city’s information technology infrastructure.

“We are very proud of the new Web site and believe it will be a real benefit to residents,” said Mayor Sullivan. “Silvana.Net did a terrific job in taking the mammoth amount of information we have available for people about our city and its government and making it easily accessible. The new site will be helpful as we market Holyoke to outside businesses, too; there is an entire section on doing business with Holyoke that will aid our economic development efforts.”

“Back in the 1990s, Holyoke was an early adapter of the Internet as a way to provide information to city residents,” said Silvana Gravini, owner of Silvana.Net. “Because the original site lacked a Content Management System, it grew without any real organization and became very unwieldy. Now, with the customized Content Management System we developed and the training we provided to the various municipal departments, it will be simple for each department to update pages in a timely fashion and with minimal computer skills necessary.”

Silvana.Net trained about 60 city employees on how to update information about their departments on the Web site. Formerly, all new information had to be provided to the City’s Information Technology Department for posting. “This new process greatly streamlines how new information gets on the site,” said Gravini.

The site features sections on every municipal department, along with information about tourism attractions for visitors. Among the other useful site features is one that allows snow days, changes in trash collection or parking bans to be easily and quickly posed on the site’s home page.

About Silvana.Net
Silvana.Net provides first class Web site Design and Search Engine Optimization services to clients throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut, reliably producing results with an exceptional client satisfaction record since 1996. For more information, visit http://www.silvana.net.