ARLINGTON — On Feb. 10, the city of Arlington’s redesigned website was launched at www.arlingtonwa.gov.

Arlington Assistant City Administrator Kristin Banfield explained that the website has been redesigned to give its visitors an easier time locating key information about the city, from contacting city officials and conducting business with the city, including online bill payments, to searching the city’s completely updated municipal code.

“The city’s primary goals in developing the new website included making it easier to navigate, easier for city staff to update, adding social media components, improving the overall content available for review and downloading, and improving the overall appearance of the site,” Banfield said.

The new website provides direct feeds to Twitter and Facebook, where residents and businesses can follow the city at www.twitter.com/arlingtonwa and “like” it at www.facebook.com/arlingtonwa.

“Social media components are another way of reaching out to our many residents, businesses and visitors,” Banfield said.

One of the website’s new features is its calendar of events, displaying not only all of the city’s events in a single schedule, but also the agendas of all those events, so that users don’t have to search any further.

“The new site also makes it easier for staff to upload information, increasing the city’s efficiency,” Banfield said. “Some of the most popular features of the city’s previous site will be available on the new site as well.”

Site visitors will still be able to sign up for e-mail updates of employment opportunities, road closures and agendas for the Arlington City Council, as well as for the city’s boards and commissions. Residents and business owners will likewise be able to continue to contact the city about particular problems or concerns through the site’s “Request Tracker” system.

The redevelopment of the city’s website is a project that was almost a year in the making.

“The city initially started looking at the websites of other local jurisdictions to determine what we were missing,” said Bryan Terry, information services manager for the city of Arlington. “The websites we continued to revisit all had the same company at their core — Vision Internet.”

Based in Santa Monica, Calif., Vision Internet has experience with municipal websites with advanced features and applications. Banfield also cited the company’s “thorough understanding of Arlington’s unique needs.” Some of the municipal sites designed by Vision Internet include those for Lancaster, Calif., Chapel Hill, N.C. and Park City, Utah. Within Washington, Vision Internet has designed sites for the cities of Longview, Maple Valley, Shoreline and Wenatchee.