T’bonne Web Sites Get A New Look

Anyone clicking on the Web sites for Terrebonne Parish government and the Houma-Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce will see a new look.

Parish government and the Chamber have changed their Web pages since the New Year’s holiday.

Both were updated so that the sites can offer more information, quicker and easier access, and, generally, to make them more appealing, said Neal Prejean, manager of the Parish Finance Department’s Information Technology Division, and Drake Pothier, president of the Houma-Terrebonne Chamber.

Though most of the text from the former parish government Web page has carried over to the new site, the updated one is better organized, Prejean said, having a longer drop down menu.

The former parish government site had been around since 2002, and had deficiencies in users’ ability to navigate it.

“We were getting e-mails saying people couldn’t find certain items that were already there,” he said. “We had staff look at other Web sites so we could fulfill the requests of people.”

Prejean said some of the writing on the site has become more standardized, and the home page now has a link for visitors to click at the top.

The site, which debuted on Jan. 5, has several major new features, including an increased bandwidth that allows faster load times.

Streaming videos of Terrebonne Parish Council meetings will soon be offered on the site, but technical problems are delaying its implementation, Prejean said.

Parish government is now posting its own in-house news articles and photographs on the Web page.

The Web site update was done in-house, mostly by staff members in Information Technology’s Networking division.

The Houma-Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce Web site that debuted on New Year’s Eve is much more “robust” than the former one, Pothier said.

On the old site, “visitors couldn’t find as much information,” he said. “We needed to do a refresher. It needed a makeover.”

The Chamber hired the Houma advertising and public relations firm (and Chamber member) Armand Creative to enhance the graphics on the Web site.

The biggest change from the former site is the greater information available about chamber member businesses.

The new database offers members practically their own mini-Web sites, Pothier said. As an example, he said restaurants could post their weekday specials.

A “What’s Hot” section allows Chamber members to post press releases, and members can display streaming videos. Google maps are now integrated into the site as well.

The Chamber also has a new logo, which visitors can see on the Web site. It is a stylized letter “C” for chamber with arrows on top representing the flow of oil and gas, the parish’s key industries.

“The site is high tech,” Pothier said. “Not a whole lot of chambers offer such high technology.”