SHARE THIS

A concern arose from resident Jamie Horinko regarding the official West Easton Borough website, WestEastonBorough.org at Monday nights council meeting.

Mr Horinko’s concern was that it was not operational and that no information was available on it.

While Council President Kelly Gross tried to answer his concerns by addressing the potential cost (approximately $4500) to get the website operational, I would like to take the opportunity to shed a little more light on what is involved in creating a good website and why we even see that particular website on the Internet.

One of the first things I did after moving to West Easton was to look for the official website for the Borough. I had become accustomed to finding information on any community I have lived in over the past 10 years by accessing the community website. Scheduled meetings, contact information for elected officials, minutes of meetings, town history, upcoming events, zoning ordinances, etc. are just some of the items that can be found on an “official” town website.

Like Mr. Horinko, I found it troubling to find a website that failed to change from its status of, “updating our information.”

What I found by asking questions was that the website isn’t actually owned by our Borough. Not in the sense that West Easton Borough has any rights to the domain name. It was offered as a free website to the Borough, but it turned out that it didn’t come with much technical support.

I’m sure that when the Council was told that the website was being offered for free the thought was there would be no harm in going ahead with it. Some basic information was provided to the person who made the proposal. There really was no harm done, other than now it just sits there with little chance of becoming a source of information.

I did a little more researching on my own.

The domain name, westeastonborough.org is actually owned by Clear End Solutions, though official registration information returns the vague term, “Borough Manager.” The contact information is actually that of Clear End Solutions.

Clear End Solutions is registered to Robert Rowe of Breinigsville, Pennsylvania. Apparently, it isn’t much more than someone who decided to start a web design business, offering “free” websites to anyone who would take them up on his offer. This type of offer was common years ago when the business model was to offer “free” for a basic website and then charge for extra pages and work to the site that was always requested down the road.

Accessing some coding information, I found the basic page building was done using a program from Microsoft Front Page. MFP is a little used program these days, but was once considered the best website building program for amateurs about 15 years ago.

It’s a basic program that allows links, and displaying images, but requires a significant amount of html (hyper text markup language) coding knowledge to perform more advanced features. It’s quite limited in what it can easily do. To put it bluntly, the design and coding is junk, when compared to what is available today.

They use Bluehost web hosting services to carry the website. In essence, it’s all done on the cheap.

That’s not to say a basic cheap website wouldn’t serve the needs of West Easton. Bath has a website that is built entirely using html coding and the basic information about Bath Borough is available.

With regard to Clear End Solutions, I don’t think their business model is working. Their own website, ClearEndSolutions.com has the same “updating website” notice that West Easton Borough enjoys. I suspect the only reason Mr. Rowe keeps renewing the registration of the borough domain name for only 1 year at a time (as was done just today) is the hope that West Easton might buy it from him in the future. If they pay him more than $20 for it, they will have spent too much.

So, let’s look at the possibility of having a “real” West Easton Borough website. That is, not a website like this one that is privately owned by me, which allows me the ability to go beyond a basic information site and write on a variety of subjects. Rather, a website owned and controlled by the Borough of West Easton.

The least expensive part of it is buying a domain name. That’s about $10/yr. After that it gets only a bit more expensive, but a little more involved.

A hosting service is needed. The best option is to pay for a server that allows access to the server itself, setting up firewalls for protection and allowing changes to be made in settings. However, that option means having someone on staff that actually knows what they are doing.

Because I have nearly 300 websites running on the Internet (some for myself and others for clients) I use a VPS type of server. That costs me about $100 each month, but it allows me remote access to the server and the bandwidth required to run those websites without having them crash.

West Easton could easily get away with a far less expensive and safer setup using Godaddy.com’s website service (among many others), paying for their best service that normally costs about $15/mo. I would offer hosting their website on my own server, but I feel it would be better if I could never be accused of tampering with the site.

So, now that West Easton has paid for a domain name and has a website design up and running, the hard part seems to be done. Not so, because the real work and some basic understanding of creating a useful website has to be included.

Files that the residents may want, such as applications for permits, meeting minutes, agendas, ordinances, and others all have to be copied and converted into PDF type files and then uploaded to the server, with proper links on the website to access each uploaded PDF individually, if the intent is to provide them to residents for printing out.

Even if the ability for residents to print out the items was not made available, somebody would have to spend the time typing the information onto the website so that it could be displayed for viewing.

This is only one aspect of the work that would be required. By my estimate, it would take at least 6 months to convert everything now on paper in the borough to digital information on the website and to update or include new information as it became available, while designing the appearance and functionality of it all. That’s assuming there was actually a person available to put in 8 hours a day dedicated solely to the website.

While Kelly Gross gave a monetary figure of $4500, I believe it would likely be closer to $10,000 if residents were provided with all available information that could be provided to them digitally. Even more if the work were hired out to real IT professionals, though delivery time of a finished site would be cut significantly.

It’s an expense that West Easton can’t afford these days, unless a few people with website and Internet skills come forward to volunteer their time in developing an “official” website under the guidance and approval of the Borough. That means also providing time in teaching somebody who works for the Borough how to perform tasks on the site, which would take them away from their regular work duties.

Considering the small pool of 1250 people to draw from in West Easton I don’t see that happening. I don’t know of any people in this town with the skills needed. While there may be a few bloggers who know how to use a free blogging service and click a button to include a link, I’m not aware of any that are familiar with host servers, Apache, FTP programs, PDF files, php coding, html, and a number of other skills.

In the meantime, this website will try to fill the online gap. I created it to help fill the need and to counter a blog that made West Easton appear as a community nobody would want to live in. I might want to sell my home one day, as I have dreams of spending my octogenarian years on my yacht, surrounded by Playboy bunnies. Hopefully, I won’t think they are real rabbits during those years.

However, I’m done with submitting an RTKL request to get public documents for uploading. Once was enough.

Should the Borough request documents be made available on this website and provide them to me I will upload them at no charge.

If the Borough or residents wish to promote an event on this site I will also be happy to do that, as well.

If any business wants to advertise on this site, that option is currently available.

Hopefully, this website serves the community, while allowing me to cover the cost of it – thanks to those of you who have been clicking those advertising links found on this site.