Idea for Community Websites

Krysti Mikkonen from Frederick shared this information for communities that may be interested in establishing a website:

I know that many of these small communities either don't have a newspaper, don't have a website or both. Frederick's website serves as both. Many of the communities I would suspect would like a website. I know this is a discussion with many communities in SD, I assume in ND too and probably many of the other communities in the participating eight states.

Frederick does not have a local paper and this project began three years ago with only an e-news which was emailed weekly to all subscribers. The site was built at cost and paid for in part by community donations about 1.5 years ago and is currently updated and maintained free of charge. We have A LOT of people that visit our site and from out of town too. Since Sat. of last week 479 visitors have been to the Frederick website.

I don't know if your communities are interested, but I am working to develop a complete web solution packaged especially for communities that will be similar in function and design to www.fredericksd.com, but with added features and benefits. This site would have a scrolling news feature similar the one on www.MikkonenOrganic.com. It will also have the following:

• each site will have an original look with colors and design of the communities choice
  a news page that can be archived and searched www.fredericksd.com (Frederick's can't be searched or archived yet)
• classified section for people to sell cars, furniture, promote their skills, hire people, etc... (Frederick just added this page)
• document manager to upload important documents
• calendar feature that be viewed by list or by a full month calendar
• polling wizard to find out what the residents of a community think
• dynamic image rotation - like on www.Fredericksd.com
• a very nice content editor so that communities can hire or get a volunteer to keep the site updated. Worker will only need knowledge of using a program like Word
  ability to add unlimited main pages and subpages
• e-mail marketing program that will allow residents to sign up to for notifications and announcements and communications, news updates can be sent with the push of a button. (Frederick news has this feature)

In the school year the news for the www.Fredericksd.com website is written largely by students from the journalism class at FHS.


CONTACT:
Krysti Mikkonen

Internet Consultant Frederick, South Dakota
Tel: 605-329-2027 fax: 605-329-2027
kmikkonen@activewsiwebdesign.com
Visit us online at http://www.activewsiwebdesign.com