Village of Yellow Springs launches redesigned website
- Published: July 28, 2026
Residents looking to pay their utility bills, find the minutes from a Public Arts and Culture Commission meeting or peruse a local events calendar at yellowsprings.gov this week will find a new look for the Village of Yellow Springs website.
In speaking with the News, Assistant Village Manager Elyse Giardullo and Media Manager Ben Guenther said the redesigned site — which launched Monday, July 27 — was built to meet federal accessibility requirements and reorganize how users navigate Village information, with the aim of making the site more user-friendly. They also described the redesign as a large undertaking, with the last major updates to the website happening about 10 years ago.
“When I went full time, this was one of the big three pillar projects that I was given,” Guenther said. “For me, it’s been like a two-and-a-half-year or so process.”
While the idea of rebuilding the website was a goal for former Village Manager Josué Salmerón, it became more feasible for staff to begin reworking the website in-house after Guenther built an information website for the Village celebration of the 2024 solar eclipse.
“It was like taking what we learned from that and then trying to apply it to a site for the Village,” Guenther said.
During the initial process, new Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, requirements were updated; in turn, the scope of the website project changed, so Giardullo and Guenther said they started looking for third parties to help build the website, ultimately settling on Revize.
“We were so lucky to find Revize,” Giardullo said. “They’re nearby, in Michigan, and they solely focus on government and municipality websites.”
Part of their research process, Giardullo said, included looking at other municipalities’ websites and deciding what features were both useful and user-friendly. They also connected with other municipalities, both within Ohio and nationally, that use Revize to host their websites. After deciding which host would best fit the Village’s needs, Giardullo and Guenther began working on the design elements of the website.
“We liked functionality elements of one municipality and design elements of another, so it was like this kind of long process of cobbling all that together into what we wanted,” Guenther said.
One of the major design elements, Guenther said, was reimagining the front page of the Village website. The inspiration for the video landing page for the new website was Golden, Colorado.
“Golden just had a beautiful landing page — this really scenic image,” Giardullo said. Having worked with Ben the last two years, I thought, ‘Ben has such an eye for photography and videography, how do we then take his skill set and amplify it on the website?’”
The redesigned homepage features several navigation categories across its header, including “Government,” “Departments,” “Services,” “Community” and “Experience YS.” Guenther said input was taken from both villagers and Village staff to determine what should be at the top of the page.
Another change users will notice is that individual emails for Village Council members are no longer listed on the website, and have been replaced by email forms — a change Giardullo said is intended to enhance cybersecurity, reduce spam and curtail people impersonating Village staff.
“It’s happened a few times within the Planning and Zoning department,” she said. “People were able to piece together requests from the Board of Zoning Appeals or Planning Commission and try to fraudulently ask villagers to send money for payment. Using forms for email reduces the chances of that happening.”
Some changes were made in hopes of allowing villagers greater access to records and documents. For example, agendas and minutes from public meetings and forms for residents and vendors are available on the website’s front page, just under a centrally located search bar.
Those looking for a deeper dive into Village policy will notice that the new website has shifted away from ClerkBase to ClearDocs, which allows village documents to be updated and made available without going to a third party.
“Revize created this tool that takes all PDFs, makes an HTML version, which in turn makes them all searchable,” Giardullo said.
“So now we will have all of these documents sort of living on the website that will now be searchable, which will be very helpful internally and externally,” Guenther added.
Shifting away from ClerkBase and using ClearDocs in-house will also lower the cost of the website from $9,475 to $8,650 annually.
The site also includes an ADA-compliant accessibility menu, represented by a human-figure icon at the bottom of each page. The menu allows users to adjust contrast and text size and choose a font described on the site as “dyslexia friendly.” The website also includes automated translation options.
“I’m excited to hear what people’s thoughts are with the accessibility widgets that we’ve added,” Guenther said. “I think [the accessibility options] and being able to translate the website into a language of your choosing is amazing.”
One thing you won’t find on the website is an AI helper or tool.
“It came up when we were talking to different vendors,” Guenther said. “Most municipalities use AI to make an outdated website or difficult information easier to navigate. We just updated all of our content so there is no need for the AI.”
While the look and feel of the website is new, the URL has not changed: go to yellowsprings.gov. Villagers are encouraged to give feedback through the website so the Village can continue making improvements.
“We’re really excited for everyone to have it and to welcome this new digital era for Yellow Springs,” Guenther said. “I think it’s gonna be good.”
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