FRANK LEWIS
PDT Staff Writer
If you were a company or industry looking into locating in the city of Portsmouth, or if you were someone considering for applying for the job of city manager, what you have found over the past several weeks is that the city’s website main navigation and city directory has been unusable.
When clicking on any of the top navigation links or searches using the site’s directory at www.portsmouthoh.org, an error page appears, indicating that the requested document is not available, commonly referred to as a “404” error page. Although many other links on the city’s home page and other pages are functional, most web visitors use a website’s navigation to access information and to visit sections within the website.
When the Portsmouth Daily Times made a call to Dawgbyte Productions, one of the area’s best known website developers, Billy McClurg was surprised when he pulled up the city’s website.
“Wow, it’s a mess too,” McClurg said. “The banner is completely off center. I’m refreshing and I’m trying to get it to load. Either someone is in the middle of maintaining it, which, in the middle of the day is not what I recommend. I can’t tell what’s going on with the (web) site, but it’s pretty whacked out.”
McClurg was asked how a non-functioning navigation and city directory affects the city’s ability to operate within the realm of business or inquiries.
“It hurts tremendously,” McClurg said. “Just to break it all down, it affects commerce. It affects any number of things. People honestly believe that when they build a website, they say, ’ I only want to market to my region.’ Sorry, it’s the world wide web. Everybody sees you. You are immediately expanded throughout the world - throughout this universe - people can see you. And it reflects poorly on your community.”
“(City Director of Engineering and I.T.) Crystal (Weghorst) is overseeing that,” Portsmouth Mayor David Malone said. “In fact, we are in the process of changing companies doing our website. That might be the issue. I don’t know. Crystal Weghorst is the one in charge of that.” Weghorst was out of the office Thursday.
Malone, who said he has no problem navigating through the site, said the city’s site had been maintained by City Plus, out of Kansas City, but now a local company, Yost Engineering is going to take over the operation of the web page.
McClurg said a non-functioning website can be a big problem for the city.
“In a nutshell, it reflects negatively on your entire community,” McClurg said.
Frank Lewis may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 232, or at flewis@heartlandpublications.com
FAR MORE IMPORTANTLY.. as far as spreading a negative image... The Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce website has never posted a list of contact names and officers for the organization. All other chambers post that type information.
The Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce has listed other entity's that are not members and they had no knowledge they were list as a member.
Also, the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce is the only chamber that has proclaimed to be Fully Owned by another entity (The SOGP). All other Chamber of Commerces' stand on their own as an independent entity.
Lastly, it appears the careful wording to boast the Portsmouth Chamber is/was fully owned by the SOGP has been removed but yet at the bottom of each web page a copyright notice is still bannered claiming ownership via federal copyright law by the SOGP.
The Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce website (or is/was it the SOGP?) has practiced this type of subversion for many years.
Everyone, please review the Chamber website:
http://www.portsmouth.org
If you were investigating locating a business in the Portsmouth area, how would you interpret the lack of chamber officer disclosure??? And, not a single email address; just a contact submission form asking for all your personals but nothing listed for the Chamber.
To re-quote: "In a nutshell, it reflects negatively on your entire community," McClurg said.
Come on P-Town, time for all to get serious.
Gary Daniels
1. Give us a break, it's the Keystone Kops again, like the Civil Service Commission, and the whole list of dysfunctioning city operations, administration and management, total disaster, totally.
2. It's not the Website, it's the city's reputation, crime, drugs, no infrastructure in the city government organizational structure like a Master Plan and what unfolds with that.
3. That's the content that should go on the website, they have no content, so what's the website matter.
4. Go to the Athens Ohio Website, et al and see their Master Plan and all that that creates, etc.
5. Oh, Ptown has not an Economic Development and Growth planning and plan, etc. for when they would get inquiries but they won't. No worry there.
6, The towns reputation precedes it's website in the State of Ohio, so with the rest of the country they will know, not the website they will not bother looking at that. Maybe some students in their Civics classes, hah. Or is that domestic management now?
7. IT's the content not the website.
8. Now how long has the Mayor's office been changing companies for the Webpage, how long.
8A. How long has the city council meeting not been on TV? Same stuff, you missed that Frank.
9. The civil service commission has been two years or more replacing a Capt, and Police Chief. Typical for this government, it's not the website.
10. The city's problems is not the Website, the Website is just the tip of the iceberg and just one of the plethora of problems, hello...........It's a waste of time to list them here, the PDT"s publishes on them all year long. It's a lot of column inches.
11. Why has not the council who runs everything been on that? They been busy with, here's another list of Keystone Kops. Gay marriage, traffic stripes on Gay Street, making all those adjustments in the budget when the State of Ohio catches them with their Adult Supervision, like the SOGP, USDA PDT's Gampp-Gate thing? You make the list.
12, What a hoot this town is.