Overview & History of San Carlos' Website.

In May 1994, the City of San Carlos became one of the first cities in the world to launch a City Web Site. Since that time, we have added new information to the web site on a weekly basis. The result was that our web site grew from 1 page to over 500 pages in 1999!

With that growth, the site had become harder and harder to manage. Before adding more features to the web site, we decided to completely upgrade the site using content management technology. We became one of the first cities to have a content management system (CMS) in 1999.

Using Content Management (2001)

The City web site was truly a "next generation web site". It used a content management software named Story Server from Vignette Corporation. This is the same technology that is used to run many highly complex and high volume web sites.

Using content management technology allows us to separate the look of the City web site from the information in it. This gives us several other features as well including:

• Global Changes - Allows changes to the web site with one edit (contact names, phone numbers, copyright information, etc.)
• No HTML Required - The City staff can enter information easily without having to learn and use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
• Run Dates - Most of the web pages now had "run dates" that control when the pages will appear on the web site and when they will expire. (This gave us a more timely and up to date web site.)
• Reusing Information - Expired stories will stay in the web site database - ready for reuse the next time a specific event, job announcement, etc. needs to be displayed again - without reentry or retyping.

With this state of the art technology, we were able to post a lot more information faster and in more timely fashion. The city's website further ballooned from mere 500+ pages to over 8000 pages.

Generation III (July 2005)

With the down turn of the economy and budgetary constraints, we had to look for another solution to fit our current needs. The City moved to another CMS software called Civica. Civica provides City-specific Content Management System. The new web site continues to host the 10000+ pages of information from the original web site. 

Gen IV - (2012) - Coming Soon!
We have more features and system enhancements planned for the new City web site in the months ahead. But rather than talk about those now, we'd encourage you to look around and check out the website - we think you'll like what you see!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Webmaster.