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If you tried to access the borough’s official website yesterday you probably arrived at an, “Under Maintenance” page.

You may have also been met with a long line of coding on a white page that began with, “Fatal error”. I did that twice tweaking some coding. They were the, “Oh, S#!+” moments that required me to gain access to the website files from the hostserver account and find some small snippet of code I forgot to close properly with a, ” or > symbol.

For the last few years I’ve assisted Borough Manager Joan Heebner with some minor technical problems, or just explaining how to make small changes and navigate the administrative side of the website. Thankfully, Joan is a quick learner.

Back in 2016, when I first built the website I put up a preview of the site for the public to see. It wasn’t how the finished product was to be, but I did want the residents to know we would have a working website.

That original build took me about 100 hours to get a domain name, hostserver, and download what I needed to get things aligned correctly and configured on the administrative side.

I was actually relieved when a rogue resident complained that only the Council President should administrate the website and happily walked away from it, leaving it with the appearance we all suffered with, for the last few years.

Now, as Council President, it’s back in my lap, which should find no problem from the lone individual with the original complaint, as she got what she wished for. I’m sure she’ll be ecstatic that a Council President actually knows a little bit about how the website functions.

So, about 12 hours after starting into it, WestEastonBorough.com now has a new appearance.

The original borough information on the pages is still available, but I’m hoping the more simplistic appearance makes it easier to navigate. You also don’t have to see the large picture of the Municipal Building every time you visit the website, as you suffered with for the last 3 years.

I loaded about 6 different pictures that will appear randomly as you navigate the pages. They are all from events that took place in West Easton.

If you have a photo you would like to appear on the borough website, you can send it to via email to me at: mattdees1@gmail(dot)com. The image should be 1920 pixels x 500 pixels in size, if possible. If you only have a photo I may be able to work with that, but I’ll probably have to do some cropping of the image. Photos can be dropped off at Borough Hall, and addressed to me.

Pictures must be those taken in West Easton and will be returned.

I also added an additional page to the site.

The “Alerts!” page will provide residents warnings of situations that may cause disruptions in the borough.

During the coming weeks I’ll be working on the website some more, trying to make it easier for residents to find information posted by our Borough Manager.

I’ll try not to crash it. I wouldn’t want to be accused again, of planting a virus, or malware, or attempting to access nuclear launch codes.