The new San Juan County website is now officially on line. The address of the new site is: http://www.sanjuanco.com, however visitors to the previous web site will be automatically re-directed to the new site.

The new site includes a number of features designed to make it easier for county departments to post information on the site, easier for the public to find information and it is set up to minimize clutter, by automatically cleaning up time-dependent postings such as past meeting notices and other expired material.

Communications Program Manager Stan Matthews notes that while the site should provide at least as much information as the old site at the outset, improvements and new features will be added almost daily for the next several weeks. The user interface will be modified in response to use patterns and user comments, and the appearance will continue to be refined. Users may find a few pages still under construction as work progresses.

One feature that will become considerably more useful over the first several days is the site search feature just above the menu on the left side of the page. The indexing for the search is done by Google.com and the process is on-going.

Matthews undertook the re-organization of the website in earnest this fall. “The existing site had become unmanageable,” he said, “In the years since it had been created, it had grown to include more than 22,000 files in 400 directories.”

“Beyond that”, he said, “its developers had, over the years, used different technologies and development tools, which made maintenance and updating difficult and time consuming. “

If you have comments or requests concerning the new website, or discover malfunctions, please email us at communications@co.san-juan.wa.us.

Users who have difficulty locating information previously available on the old web site should contact Stan Matthews at: stanm@co.san-juan.wa.us or phone: 360-378-7045.