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First website

Your town's first website, this week.

For a town, village or township that has no website, or only a page on the county's site, a parked domain or a Facebook page.

Make one for your town, village or township See example town and county sites

What a town is expected to post.

New York spells it out, so its laws are the examples here. Every state asks for some version of the same list. Check yours with your attorney or your state association.

What you get in minutes.

Four screens at /make/, no call and no form to wait on. Your town's site is built from our example made for towns.

  1. Step 1 of the LFW site builder: Town is selected among example sites for a city, a county and a town, each shown as a homepage screenshot. 1. Pick Town Town is already chosen when you start from this page. Village and township clerks pick it too.
  2. Step 2 of the LFW site builder: the name field says Town of Brissel Hollow and the place field says Dannock Valley, both fictional. 2. Name it Your town's name and where it is. Both appear only on your own sandbox site.
  3. Step 4 of the LFW site builder: eight color palettes, each with its contrast ratio for white text, and a custom color option. 3. Choose colors Eight palettes, or your own color. Each shows its contrast with white text, and a custom color under 4.5:1 is refused.
  4. The review step of the LFW site builder: the kind, name, place, content and main color, a preview of the header, and the line From $250 a month. No setup fee. Cancel any time. 4. Check and build A preview of your header and the price, then Build my site.

One more screen is optional: the address of a WordPress site you already have, to bring its pages in.

The homepage of the Town of Brissel Hollow example site: a search box asking How can we help you today, and links to pay a bill, permits and town meetings.
Town of Brissel Hollow, the fictional example every town site starts from.

Then your site, open in your browser.

Build my site opens a working WordPress site in your browser, signed in as its editor, with the pages of our town example under your town's name: news, meetings, the alert bar and the pages residents look for.

It is a free sandbox for 14 days. Keep it with a free LFW account, and Care starts the month you keep it.

Make one for your town, village or township

What it costs.

  • Care

    $250 a month

    $3,000 a year, billed monthly or yearly.

    • No setup fee for a site made at /make/
    • Cancel any time
    • Hosting on LFW's servers, included
    • LFW Academy courses for your clerk
    • Uptime checked every minute
    • A person who answers in business hours
    Read how towns pay for Care

  • Founding towns

    Fewer than 15 institutions

    A first cohort of small public institutions working through Title II with LFW over four months, with a monthly group session. Terms are proposed.

    • Care at the same price
    • Hands-on help moving pages and documents
    • Every Academy course for your staff
    Read about Founding towns

Keep it yours.

  • The domain Registered in your town's name, never ours.
  • The code Your site's code is yours to keep. Our plugins are open source under the GPL, so any WordPress developer can work on the site, with or without LFW. See the open-source plugins
  • Exports Your pages, documents, forms and records, exported whenever you ask, at no charge.
  • The free LFW account Courses, uptime checks every minute and a weekly page check for your domains, free for public staff. Sign up free

Questions.

We have eight residents and no budget.

Care is $250 a month, which is $3,000 a year. The sandbox is free for 14 days, so the board can see the site before anyone votes on it. If the price is the problem, write to us about Founding towns.

Read about Founding towns
Who updates it?

Your clerk, in the same editor the sandbox opens in. Running a Public Website Day to Day, a free LFW Academy course of about two hours, covers notices, agendas, minutes and documents.

See the course
We have a Facebook page.

Keep it. A post scrolls out of sight in a week, and the notices, minutes and records above belong where residents can find them a year later, on a website the town controls. Link to the site from the Facebook page.

Our county hosts a page for us.

Keep that too, and point it at your own site. The county decides what its page shows and when it changes. Your own site is yours to update the day a meeting moves.

Get your site started.

Leave your email and we send a link that opens a free LFW account. A person at LFW checks that you work for a public institution, in business hours. Or make the site now.

Already have a free LFW account? Write to hello@lfw.com.

Make one for your town, village or township

Get your site started: your email

Just your email. We send a link to confirm it, and confirming opens a free LFW account.

We store your email and the dates you asked and confirmed, and use them only for your account. How LFW handles data