Author: Andrew Adams

Kearney Township’s New Website

When we met Kearney Township at the Michigan Townships Association Expo in 2019, they were just starting to look into updating their website. The previous Kearney Township website hadn’t been updated in many years. It wasn’t mobile-friendly, it lacked modern security features, and it simply looked old, providing a less-than-flattering online persona for the township.

Kearney website homepage Kearney wasn’t able to immediately focus on the website project, but we made sure to stay in contact. Once they were ready, the Shumaker Group submitted a proposal right away. The Kearney Board discussed their options, and they accepted our proposal. Then, we hit the ground running working together on the new website!

Kearney had wanted to include zoning maps on their website for a … Read More

Bringing Comstock Township’s Uniqueness to the Web

Home to Michigan’s largest greenhouse growers, Michigan’s largest brewery, and several well-known, beautiful parks, suffice it to say that the Charter Township of Comstock in Kalamazoo County is a unique township. Since a website serves as the face of a township, the Comstock Board knew that they needed a website that captured what makes Comstock special. Unfortunately, their website at the time made heavy use of stock photos that didn’t show off the actual township. Their previous website provider didn’t give them much input on the design, and it showed in the lack of representation of the township’s unique character.

comstock website
Comstock Charter Township’s new website, developed by STG

In addition to the lack of personality on the site, the Comstock … Read More

STG at CES 2017

IMG_0682For the fifth consecutive year, a group of us from STG escaped the Michigan winter and headed to Las Vegas for CES, the Consumer Electronics Show. This year’s show was impressive as usual, and it was particularly interesting to explore with previous years in mind and watch how old trends have faded and new exciting ones have emerged.

In 2014, for example, virtual reality and other “immersive” innovations were some of the most exciting but least developed technologies around the floor at CES. Getting into one of the few actual demonstrations came with hours of waiting in line. This year, it seemed like every other booth was running a virtual reality demo just to show off their product that may … Read More

MTA On the Road 2016

img_8461For the past several years, we have been regulars at the yearly MTA On the Road events. MTA On the Road is a series of events presented by the Michigan Townships Association and hosted in various communities across Michigan. At these events, representatives from townships come to learn about the latest happenings in township legislation, see what new resources are available to townships, and enjoy the company of other township officials and vendors.

Our role at these events is to inform townships of our website development, document management, mobile app development, and graphic design services that could be useful to them, and connect with townships who are looking for these services. It’s a great feeling to meet a township official … Read More

Web Basics: HTML vs. CSS

While HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are separate coding languages, they’re not so much distinct choices as they are two connected and essential pieces for building a web page. HTML and CSS are best used together to create a functional and appealing page.

The majority of a page’s content is defined in the HTML. Images, links, text formatting, and all of the text content are found here. Inside the HTML code is also where the information gets organized: headers, paragraphs, numbered lists, and bulleted lists are just a few of simple functions for organizing information.

CSS describes the presentation of all of this information that’s been defined in the HTML. For example, what the headers say … Read More