The city of Ceres will soon be launching a redesign of its website, IT Manager John Federick told the City Council last week.

He explained that the city’s contract with the webmaster allows a redesign every 36 months.

“Our goals on this update were to make it easier to navigate and simpler, to get rid of some of the busyness on the website to make it easier to use, especially on mobile devices,” said Federick.

The city’s social media links will be placed in a large button in the top left corner for easy of navigation.

“The big feature – we are changing the domain name for all of our online presence to comply with AB 1637 where all government communications must come from a domain name ending in dot gov,” said Federick.

He explained that the city of Ceres was approved by the federal government to use ceres.gov so the website will be moved to that “instead of the hard-to-remember and communicate ci.ceres.ca.us,” he said.

Another change is that the menu will remain at the top as one scrolls down.

Icons will be larger and clearer to see, especially for mobile devices like cell phones.

Any old bookmarks and links will still take users to the new website and any old email addresses will still get to the right person, said Federick.

The presentation prompted a question from Ceres resident Dave Pratt about whether the city will be changing its mobile app for reporting code enforcement concerns. He complained that the app freezes up and hard to use.

John Warren echoed that the Ceres app is “really not user friendly.”

“You cannot delete an entry once it’s completed,” complained Warren.