Local officials look to update county website
With the Putnam County website only weeks away from no longer being available online, the county commissioners needed to take action Monday morning.
That was when Ian Wallace of Power On Hosting informed the commissioners that he has control of the county website's domain name (http://co.pu-tnam.in.us/) but that the name would soon be sold, at which time the site would go down.
Action needed to be taken by the commissioners as to who would provide Domain Name System (DNS) service to avoid the interruption in service.
DNS service has nothing to do with the content of a website, but only its name and address. Essentially, the service is what allows computer users to access the Putnam County website when they type http://co.putnam.in.us/ into the address box in a Web browser.
The end of the existing DNS service would mean no county website.
The county will avoid this outcome, with the commissioners voting 3-0 to contract DNS service with Wallace for a small yearly fee. Wallace will have to submit an invoice for official approval, but his fee will be $300 for the first year, and $150 annually thereafter.
Beyond DNS hosting, however, the county website has bigger problems, mainly in the form of out-of-date information.
The county worked with John Tesmer on updating the website information in the spring of 2011, but no agreement was ever reached about keeping the site updated.
As such, much of the information on the site, including office holders, is out of date.
One exception is the clerk's office page. Clerk Marty Watts has worked with Tesmer on updates and said she would like to see something done to keep up the entire site.
She said her office often deals with residents and attorneys from outside the area, and any information they can provide remotely is helpful to the county and these interested parties.
"Anything you can do in terms of making it user friendly before you walk in here (the clerk's office), that is what you need," Watts told the Banner Graphic.
Additionally, Wallace suggested to the commissioners that something be done about keeping the site up to date to make it useful to citizens.
"It's your county site," Wallace said. "You need to have control over that."
The commissioners will continue to look into solutions, including talking to Tesmer at an upcoming meeting.
Any updates to the website will be a benefit as the county continues to move forward with its upgrade to geographic information system (GIS) mapping software for the county.
WTH Technology of Indianapolis has been working through the conversion to GIS mapping with the county, with representative Tony Shriner discussing a final cost to the project with the commissioners.
County officials learned at a previous meeting that the project was set to cost the county an additional $20,000 for software.
The software cost was not presented at the time a matching program with the state was approved earlier this year.
At that time, the project was presented as a $90,000 project, of which the state was willing to pay half, in terms of converting the county's mapping system to a digital system.
Shriner, who was did not represent WTH at the time, could not say why the other $20,000 was not presented at that time. Both he and county attorney Jim Ensley said the cost was presented by WTH when it originally made a proposal to the county, but was left out when the cost share with the state was proposed.
The commissioners approved the additional cost, but the expenditure must still go before the Putnam County Council.