Greenport launches new village website
The Village of Greenport unveiled a new website on Friday, updating how community members see meeting agendas and local happenings and pay bills.
Clerk Candace Hall and Trustee Lily Dougherty-Johnson have been leading the year-long charge on the revamped site, working with the village’s web development team — The Public Relations and Marketing Group.
“The timing is really just making sure that we balance the needs of the community and then also the needs of the staff and our volunteers for the village,” said Ms. Hall. “Our website is not only a resource for our community, but it is something that I use every day in my work, along with many people who work for the village.”
The site’s top-level domain is going from villageofgreenport.org to villageofgreenport.gov. New York State signed into law in early 2025 that all municipalities must have their official website end in “.gov.” Village workers’ emails are also changing to end in the new URL.
The law also states that the site must include basic municipal information, including current elected officials, services provided, hours of operation, financial documents, public notices, meeting agendas and the village code. Greenport’s website already included it all, but it is a lot of transfer from an old site.
“Our website is the original website that the village got, I believe, back in 2013, if I’m not mistaken,” said Ms. Hall. “It was compounded information on there, and never any real structural changes happened with the website.”
The website has always had rails on either side of the homepage, with links to agendas and meetings on the left, and business hours, elected officials and contact info on the right. A lot of scrolling is required to find everything, and the new site will be more modern, Ms. Hall said.
Ms. Dougherty-Johnson said the new site will also now have the members of each village committee listed, with more accessible contact information, and forms for those interested in joining them.
“We basically tried to reorganize and update,” said Ms. Dougherty-Johnson. “I think, ultimately, it will be much easier for people to navigate and find what they need.”
Around the same time as the information on changing the website came along last year, the village was also informed that the software it uses for posting agendas and video streaming was entering an “end of life phase.” There are two years between “end of service” and “end of life.” The village is between the two.
Greenport has been recording meetings for four boards since 2016, so the decade-long archive needed to be kept. The village works with Granicus, a Colorado-based software company, for its agenda and meeting needs.
“There’s a tremendous amount of video, which takes up a lot of space,” said Ms. Hall. “There’s been a ton of work that has gone into this, and it did take us a long time, but I’m really happy with what we put together. I think it’s going to be easier for people to navigate.”
