Boulder County

Moving public information into a new home

A county website serves people with very different reasons for visiting. One person is looking for an open-space destination. Another needs motor-vehicle information. Someone else is searching for election details, a license, or a permit. The information has to remain understandable as it moves between platforms.

I was hired as a contractor to help migrate Boulder County’s website from SharePoint to WordPress. My responsibility covered Parks and Open Space, DMV-related content, Elections, and Licenses and Permits, including the pages, content, formatting, and layout within those areas.

A migration is also a communication task

Moving content is only part of the work. A page’s headings, spacing, document links, and organization influence how quickly a reader can understand what it contains. During a platform migration, those details have to be considered alongside the transfer of the material itself.

This assignment brought together content migration, page building, document conversion, and continuity across the presentation. The documented work also included consolidation, documentation control, identification standards, and calendar updates. Those supporting tasks help the pages and their related materials function as an organized collection.

For a public-service site, the reader arrives with a practical purpose. Clear organization gives that reader a better starting point: a recognizable subject, a readable page, and a way to reach the next piece of information.

Different departments. Different information needs.

Parks and Open Space content has a different character from elections or motor-vehicle information. Outdoor destinations and recreation material benefit from imagery and a sense of place. Administrative subjects need clear routes to the relevant details, documents, and contacts. A common website has to accommodate both.

My role was within the migration effort, working on the assigned pages and content. The project was a collaboration within the county’s broader website transition, with WordPress providing the destination content-management system.

The website presentation images below show the public-facing setting for this work: the county identity, landscape imagery, navigation, featured information, and supporting content within the same site.

Documents belong to the experience too

Government information often extends beyond an individual webpage. PDFs, Word documents, forms, and linked materials can carry the details a visitor needs. Document conversion and organization therefore belong to the same communication problem as the page layout.

The original project record identifies paper-to-digital forms and document handling among the deliverables. Together with the migration and formatting work, these show the practical scope of the assignment: moving information into a new platform while maintaining an understandable presentation around it.

The work behind a useful public page

This project represents an important part of my web work: helping an established organization move its existing content into a new system. The creative contribution includes the visible page presentation and the attention to the details that make a large body of information manageable.

The screenshots document the website presentation associated with the project. The county’s current website provides additional context for the public services it supports.

Visit Boulder County’s current website