REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Approve Budget Modification No. 2 for $187,000 to Fund the Website Redesign Project
Report
BACKGROUND
The City is undertaking the Website Redesign Project (WRP) to replace the current official website (Sunnyvale.ca.gov) with a vendor-provided and hosted Content Management System (CMS) and entirely restyled and re-architected website. The City's existing website is hosted on in-house servers and was updated over five years ago. Because of the lack of investment in new technology since that time, DotNetNuke (DNN) the City's current Content Management System (CMS), is now two full versions behind the most recent release and is no longer supported by the vendor. Not only does this create substantial risk for site failure and security breaches, City staff have to continually troubleshoot and resolve conflicts due to increasing incompatibility between the CMS and webpage templates. In addition, the website has not kept pace with rapidly evolving best practices - it has a dated appearance; lacks modern website functionality; has a site architecture that is not focused on users; and has content that has grown unwieldy, making navigation and search difficult. The new website is being designed to: be mobile friendly, include social media integration, be ADA compliant, allow content to be translated into multiple languages, have user focused navigation, and provide improved search capabilities.
The WRP is being led by the Communications Division within the Office of the City Manager; the City's Web and Communications Specialist is the project manager and is leading a large inter-departmental team to help complete associated tasks. The project has been underway since December 2014 and is currently anticipated to conclude in spring 2016.
The WRP has multiple components and is a significant undertaking as the site consists of approximately 650 pages and 12,800 PDF documents. In addition, the City uses a variety of third party ...
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