Town of Annapolis Royal

The Town of Annapolis Royal needed a website that could serve residents, businesses and visitors while making a large amount of municipal information straightforward to find and maintain.

The site needed to accommodate everything from public notices and community information to council documents, events and historical records. Town staff also needed to be able to manage day-to-day content themselves without relying on a developer for routine updates.

For visitors, the challenge was equally practical: municipal information is often spread across pages, documents and years of archived material, and people do not always know where to look for it.

We designed and developed a WordPress-based municipal website with a clear structure, responsive layouts and straightforward content management for Town staff.

Rather than treating the website as a static project, it was built as a platform that could continue to evolve as the Town's requirements changed.

Custom content tools make frequently updated information easier to manage, while public notices, events, documents and other municipal resources are presented consistently across the site.

Staff training and ongoing support have been part of the project from the beginning, allowing the Town to manage its own content while having direct technical support available when needed.

As the amount of information available through the website increased, we developed a Smart Search system specifically around the way municipal information is published.

The search goes beyond standard WordPress page and post content and can index information contained within documents such as PDFs and Word files.

Searchable collections allow material such as Council Minutes, Newsletters and By-Laws to be organised separately, while autocomplete and suggested answers help visitors reach useful information without needing to know exactly where it is stored.

Administrative controls give Town staff control over the search system, while automated health monitoring and safeguards help keep it reliable.

Other custom functionality developed during our ongoing work with the Town includes tools for managing municipal content, public notices, events and online information resources.

Annapolis Royal has remained a Mumford Connect client since the original website launch in 2016.

Over that time, the website has continued to develop rather than requiring repeated replacement. New functionality has been added as requirements have changed, while the underlying WordPress platform remains familiar to Town staff.

The result is a practical municipal website that is easy to manage, works across devices and makes a substantial collection of current and historical information more accessible to the public.

The ongoing relationship also reflects the way we prefer to work: building websites that can be maintained and extended over the long term, with direct support from the same company that designed and developed them.