About a year ago, Joplin, Missouri was tragically hit by the worst tornado in decades. Now, after its visit by President Obama for the Joplin High School commencement, it has launched a new website. The website is the result of a hackathon which was judged in part by GovLoop founder and CEO Steve Ressler.
Joplin, Missouri Gets New Digital Home
The company which that the website pro-bono, CivicPlus, co-hosted the hackathon with the city of Joplin three weeks ago. Their goal — which they were successful in achieving — was to have the website completed by Joplin’s May 22nd “Day of Unity” which marked a year since the deadly tornado.
The website features banner art which I think looks awesome, is very easy to navigate, and has a lot of features which encourage citizen participation. My favorite is the Joplin’s Voice forum, which allows citizens to air concerns and discuss ways to improve the city. The boards include one on economic development and another on quality of life improvements. To check out the site for yourself, visit http://joplinmo.org/.
You can see an image of the old website and check out Steve’s blog about the event by following this link. There’s an obviously huge improvement between the old and new websites, and I hope Joplin’s work on rebuilding its physical infrastructure is going just as well.
Awesome website.
I think it looks great–from balance of images, use of art in their banner, and six sections of features below the news.
If anyone wants a reference, here’s what their website looked about a year ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110515115458/http://www.joplinmo.org/
Hi, realized that the link may not work for some. If you want a reference to any website before their redesign, there’s a handy website called web.archive.org that allows you to see some pages from back in the day.