The City of Vicksburg will soon be getting “a totally new website” that will allow meetings of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to be streamed live and archived for later viewing.

The board Monday approved spending $5,000 on upstart equipment and training for the upgrades and will continue to pay $450 a month for services provided by Granicus Inc. The San Francisco-based company specializes in municipal websites, and city IT Specialist and Interim TV23 Director Willis Thompson said Vicksburg will be his company’s first client in Mississippi.

“Initially, it was going to be $10,000 in startup costs and $750 a month for service… but they cut it about 50 percent” to get into the Mississippi market, Thompson told the board.

Mayor Paul Winfield said the city has been planning website upgrades for three months and added it’s important that some changes are made to make the site more attractive and user-friendly.

“We recognize that the website needs to be improved,” said the mayor, adding the current website and associated technology is about nine years old. “They’ve been working very diligently in the IT department to streamline our website and make it more attractive, because a lot of people who look at Vicksburg — especially if they’re thinking about moving here — the first thing they’re going to look at is our website.”

Thompson said work to overhaul the site at www.vicksburg.org will begin immediately, and the upgrades should begin appearing within two months.

“We’re basically going to do a totally new website,” he said after the meeting. “There will be better overall navigation and more content, and it will allow us to show the meetings online and archive up to 200 hours of video.”

The city currently features its most recent board meetings and other videos online, but users must have a media player installed on their computer to watch them. The new website will not require additional software for users to view videos, and videos will also be higher quality, said Thompson.