Every municipal website vendor publishes a grid of features. Sixteen tiles, sixteen short descriptions, a “Learn more” under each one. It is a useful thing to read and a bad thing to buy from, because the grid flattens two very different kinds of item into the same square: things that are simply part of having a website, and things that are real projects with real work behind them.
Here is how we would sort the list a town is usually shown, and what we would ask before building any of it.
First: we do not sell modules
It matters to say this before the list, because it changes how the list reads. TownFront does not price a website and then price the pieces of it separately. The things below are either already part of the site we build for you, or they are custom work we scope into the project with you. There is no menu where the calendar costs extra and the forms cost extra again, and no renewal where a feature you already use moves into a higher tier.
So the question is never “can we afford this module”. It is “does your town actually need this, and is it worth the time to build and the time to keep running”.
Half the grid is not an add-on. It is a website.
Content management, user accounts and permissions, an events calendar, online forms, a news feed, a directory of departments and services: on most vendor grids each of these is its own tile, and it is fair to wonder what is left if you do not buy them.
These are included in every TownFront site, and they have their own pages here rather than a tile:
- Editing your own site. Screens named after municipal work rather than after content types, so posting an agenda looks like posting an agenda. See Agendas & Minutes.
- Accounts, roles and permissions. The recreation secretary can post recreation minutes and nothing else. Permissions follow how the work is actually divided between boards and offices.
- An events calendar. Statutory meetings and community events in one place, filtered rather than split across four department calendars. See Events & Meeting Calendar.
- Forms residents can finish. On a phone, with a reference number at the end, arriving as records you can search rather than as attachments in one person’s inbox. See Forms & Permits.
- News and public notices. Including the emergency banner, and including the dated, permanent record a legal notice needs. See News & Public Notices.
- Departments, staff and services. Hours, a direct number and a person who can answer, maintained as one record that updates everywhere it appears. See Departments & Contacts.
If a proposal you are reading prices any of these as an option, that is worth a question during evaluation. Not because it is dishonest, but because it makes two quotes impossible to compare.
Custom work that usually earns its keep
These are genuine additions. Each one is built for the way your town already does the job, which is why they are custom rather than switched on.
Business licensing and permits
The strongest candidate on most lists, because the work is repetitive, the applicant is motivated, and the current process usually involves a counter visit and a filing cabinet. An online application that routes to the right office, issues a reference number and lets an applicant check status removes a large share of the calls a clerk takes in a week. Worth building where the volume justifies it; a town issuing a dozen permits a year is better served by a good downloadable form.
A local business and services directory
Useful, and the one on this list most likely to go stale. A directory is only as good as the last time somebody checked it, so the question to settle before building it is who owns that check and how often. Where a chamber of commerce or a business association will maintain the listings, it works well. Where nobody owns it, a directory becomes a page of disconnected phone numbers that reflects badly on the town rather than on the businesses.
Employment listings
Municipal openings are already public and already posted somewhere. Putting them on the website with a proper application form, rather than as a PDF and an email address, widens the pool and gives HR a record instead of a mailbox. Small to build, and it makes the site useful to a group of residents who otherwise never visit it.
Payments and donations
Taxes, utility bills, permit fees, park programs, and where a town runs them, memorial funds and community appeals. The website’s job here is mostly to hand off cleanly and honestly: to the payment processor you already use, with the fees stated plainly before anyone commits. What residents notice is not the payment screen, it is whether the receipt arrives and whether the balance updates. Both of those depend on the system behind it, which is a conversation to have early rather than a feature to tick.
A visitor guide
Worth it for towns with a season, a lake, a historic district or a festival, and not worth much for towns without one. When it is right, it is genuinely the second audience for the site, and it deserves its own way in rather than a page buried under Community. When it is wrong, it is a section nobody updates after the first summer.
History and archives
Many towns hold photographs, oral histories and records that exist in one binder in one office. Publishing them is a real service and a real preservation exercise, and it is also the kind of project that stalls without a volunteer or a historical society behind it. Where that group exists, this is one of the most rewarding things a municipal website can carry. Where it does not, start with ten photographs rather than a plan for four hundred.
Library catalog
Almost always an integration rather than a build. Libraries run their own catalog systems, and the right outcome is that a resident searching the town site is handed to the catalog cleanly, with hours and card information alongside, rather than that the town rebuilds a catalog it cannot maintain.
Three worth thinking twice about
Community discussion and social features
The tile usually promises engagement. What it actually creates is a moderation duty, and moderation on a government platform is not a spare-time job: it involves public records, First Amendment considerations around viewpoint discrimination, and somebody reading the site on a Sunday. Some towns are ready for that and get real value from it. Many are better served by the things that answer people without a conversation: good notices, a working calendar, and a form that reaches the right desk. We will build it if you want it, and we will ask who is moderating before we do.
Weather
A live temperature is a pleasant detail and residents already have it on their phones. The municipal version of weather is different and more useful: what is closed, which routes are being plowed, when collection is delayed, where the warming center is. That is the emergency banner and a notice, not a forecast widget. We are happy to show conditions on the homepage; we would not count it as a feature that changes anything.
Analytics
Every site can report visits. Almost no municipal site acts on them, because visit counts do not tell you what to change. The report that does is much smaller: what residents typed into your search box, and which of those searches returned nothing. That list is the clearest statement you will ever get of what your website is missing, in residents’ own words. See Search That Works. Analytics is also a privacy decision for a government site, so it is worth deciding deliberately what you collect rather than accepting whatever a script gathers by default.
How to decide, in four questions
- What does this replace? If a feature does not remove a phone call, a counter visit, a spreadsheet or a piece of paper, it is decoration.
- Who keeps it current? Name the person, not the department. Every feature on this page has a maintenance cost and most of them cost more in attention than in money.
- What happens when it is out of date? A stale directory or an abandoned discussion board damages trust more than the absence of either.
- Can it start small? Most of these are better launched narrow and grown than launched complete and left. Ten photographs, one permit type, one department’s listings.
What custom means here
Custom does not mean we start from nothing every time, and it does not mean you are paying to invent things other towns already have. It means the site is built around how your town works rather than around a template, and that when you need something that is not on any grid, it can be built. Municipalities are not identical, and the interesting requests are usually the ones no vendor has a tile for.
Have something in mind? Request a conversation and tell us the job you are trying to remove. We will tell you honestly whether a website is the right place to do it.