NEW WEB MASTER READY TO GIVE JACKSON PAGE A FACELIFT

JACKSON -- The view on the City of Jackson's web site, jacksonmo.com, is going to begin changing after the first of the year.

The site's new administrator, Lisa Smith, hopes to increase its usage by people who live in Jackson.

"It's a real nice site for the rest of the world to know what Jackson is about," Smith says. "In addition to that, we'd like to provide something for the citizens of Jackson to use."

Smith plans to encourage merchants to put coupons on the page and to provide a community bulletin board where organizations can advertise food drives and the like.

She also hopes to solicit contributing editors who will regularly update information on the site.

Nearly 8,000 hits have been logged since the City of Jackson went online in May 1997, though Smith says she doesn't trust the site's counter. She plans to install a new counter that will provide information about what country the inquiry is coming from, the browser used, the time of day and day of the week.

"We would be able to better monitor who's going there and address who's using it," she said.

Smith's company, FAQulty and Staff, took over administration of the site from University Computers. The latter firm, formed by Washington University students and former Jackson residents Mark Milde and Chris Dittmer, originated the site.

The site they built is an attractive one with about 100 different pages of information. But distance and the pressures of trying to graduate led Milde and Dittmer to arrange for Smith to take over.

Smith, who has 15 years experience providing technical support and working with computers, says they did a good job. The easy-to-use site offers information about single-family housing construction, the labor force, manufacturing wages, tax rates, city government, recreation, history and much more, including photos of the city's parks, business listings and a calendar of events.

The web site is sponsored by the city and the Jackson Chamber of Commerce, which split the $1,000 annual cost. At this point, the city's utilization primarily consists of a listing of the members of city boards. Last summer, the city put its schedule for swimming lessons on the site.

The Chamber of Commerce has a listing of businesses and businesses that have home pages. Chamber Executive Director Ken Parrett has said he intends to expand this to include economic development links.

A Jackson chat room has been temporarily closed. Smith said the site was abused by people leaving behind what amounted to sexual graffiti. "There were some teens putting things up the city was not pleased with," she said.

She thinks the chat room can be reopened. "We can identify certain words not to be posted and certain postings can be rejected," she said.

In addition, there's a Jackson High School alumni page listing the names of people in different classes dating back to the 1940s. The listing is not complete.

To reach Lisa Smith, phone 243-1229. She also has a link on the site's business page.