NEWS INFORMATION FROM

THE OFFICE OF MAYOR STEPHEN R. REED
City of Harrisburg
King City Government Center
Harrisburg, PA 17101-1678
Telephone: 717.255.3040

FOR IMMEDIATE USE
September 2003

CITY WEBSITE ADDRESS CHANGES TO WWW.HARRISBURGPA.GOV

Harrisburg, PA—Mayor Stephen R. Reed today announced that Harrisburg’s popular Internet Website has a new domain name, www.harrisburgpa.gov, which in the coming months will replace the city’s current domain, www.harrisburgcity.com. Both domain addresses will remain in use and as an added convenience to users old bookmarks, favorites or other shortcuts will continue to work. An automatic feature will shortly begin replacing the old domain with the new domain.

The Mayor said the domain name change is intended to better help direct visitors to the city’s official website, and was made possible by the federal government’s relaxation of the rules regulating usage of the dot-GOV domain name. Prior to 2003 only federal government agencies were permitted to use the .gov designation, but earlier this year the U.S. Government began permitting all levels of government to use the popular dot-GOV identifier.

Reed said Harrisburg’s website has been very popular, drawing more than 780,000 visitors since it went online in early 2002, and is averaging nearly 3,000 visits a day. The site was designated as one of Pennsylvania’s top websites recently by an independent Internet monitoring company.

The Mayor noted that Harrisburg’s website is also considered one of the most accessible sites in the state for those with visual or physical impairments. Visitors with the proper accessibility applications can easily navigate the site thanks to the accommodations that have been built into website.

Reed said Harrisburg’s website is one of the most comprehensive municipal websites in the nation, and allows visitors to search for and download permits, search for jobs and download employment applications, read news releases, special events schedules, pending legislation, departmental annual reports and much more.

“Our website has quickly become one of the city’s best marketing tools, and our appreciation is appropriately extended to the city’s fulltime webmaster and data processing staff for their excellent work on the site,” said Mayor Reed.

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