Anderson County renovates two Web sites

ANDERSON COUNTY — Anderson County has recently made major renovations to two of its Web sites.

The county’s new economic development site will be active soon and the new emergency services site was launched several weeks ago.

Around mid-September, officials including interim county administrator Rusty Burns and interim economic development director Burriss Nelson began planning to improve the current site, www.advance2anderson.com.

The Advance2Anderson site will continue to stay up until the new site can become well recognized.

The new economic development site is designed to help industries get all the information — demographics, zoning, distance from transportation, available locations — quickly to help land more business in Anderson County.

“These days much of the work is done on the Internet before you ever hear from anybody, whether it’s a consultant or someone else,” Nelson said.

The new site will become active sometime Wednesday, Nelson said.

It will use the same address as the existing economic development site, www.advance2anderson.com, he said.

Nelson expects the changes will cost around $9,000.

Carolina Media made the winning bid to be hired by the economic development department for the new site. County public information officer Angie Stringer and the economic development department helped guide the process.

Some of the work will take longer to be online, such as a plan to offer foreign language translations of the county information, Nelson said.

The county’s other major change to one of its Web sites happened in October.

The Emergency Services Web site is the best of its kind in the state, said Emergency Services director Taylor Jones and Burns.

“We went from being years behind to probably having one of the best (emergency services) Web sites in the state,” Jones said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

The emergency services site, in contrast to the rapid economic development changes, was the result of months of planning and development, including the hiring of a dedicated employee for the new site.

One of the biggest proposed changes has not happened yet. The county wants to develop the capacity to send text message alerts during emergencies and possibly coordinate with local school districts during school closings or other problems.

Jones said that is probably a few months away from happening, but several other significant changes have drastically improved the site.

The new emergency site adds YouTube videos, breaking news-style alerts and more links to ideas to help prevent emergencies or create plans in advance.

Jones said the site is being improved to add access for the blind and for special populations.

“One of the advantages of having capabilities in-house is with emergent issues that affect the community we can immediately design a Web page,” Jones said. “We can put out things that are timely. Some of this stuff we can get online within the first hour (during an emergency).”

He talked about one of the current issues facing emergency management officials across the country, H1N1 flu. Jones said videos about the importance of washing hands, featuring Elmo from Sesame Street, is an example of how the site can a destination for more residents with or without emergencies.

The emergency services site was built by Bob Biermann, who was hired in June as a part-time employee who would work on it. Biermann designed a campaign site for council member Cindy Wilson in 2008.