The city of Helena has some new digital duds.

Officials launched a revamped version of the city’s Web site earlier this month, completely reconfiguring the site to include more information for and about the community. The old site, redesigned two years ago, was more focused on city government.

“The old Web site was basically department-based. It was more for the city employees, not for the city of Helena,” said Claudia Bagley, a city court employee who chaired the committee charged with rethinking the city’s Web presence.

“We wanted to make it more for the community, visitors, residents — anybody who wanted to know about Helena,” she said.

A few pages are still under construction, but most of the site is up and running. Lewis and Clark County employees are undertaking a similar project, which should be complete in a few months.

The new site includes information about city departments, codes, permits and the like, but it also provides links and information about community events, recreation, transportation, education, child care, recycling and more. It also includes links to other organizations and agencies.

“There’s a whole lot of information that will interest people,” Bagley said.

She and four other employees started working on the project in January, visiting other sites to get ideas on layouts, color schemes and functionality.

“We sat down with paint chips, believe it or not, to come up with the color scheme,” Bagley said with a laugh. “We spent a lot of time on it, a lot more than any of us had anticipated.”

Art Pembroke, director of the city-county Information Technology and Services Department, said he’s pleased with the city’s results and looking forward to the new county site.

“We’re trying to focus on making these a little more citizen-friendly, a little more intuitive,” he said. “It seems to be going really well. The city committee and the county committee, they’ve really been doing a bang-up job, working hard.

“Anybody who’s looked at the stuff is real pleased. It’s truly an effort of the employees — they’re doing this,” Pembroke said.

The new site has the same address as the old city site: www.ci.helena.mt.us.

Reporter Larry Kline: 447-4075 or larry.kline@helenair.com