City Websites Experience Technical Difficulties

For the past 24 hours two of the City of Southlake websites (www.CityOfSouthlake.com, www.VisitSouthlakeTexas.com) have been experiencing some technical difficulties.  Instead of showing the City’s front page, an error page from a popular social media site appeared.

“The problems were a result of technical changes made to the city’s website address by the City’s web vendor Aria,” said Pilar Schank the City’s Community Relations Officer.

According to Grant Pankonien Account Director at Aria, ““the cause of the problem was a configuration error that was quickly identified; this was not a case of phishing or hacking on the Southlake sites. The error page from the popular social media site was a legitimate page on a legitimate site.  It was a problem that occurred on other clients websites as well. All clients have confirmed that their sites are operating as expected.”

Although both sites are up and running again users could still experience difficulty in accessing the site.  The City’s IT department recommends “control F5 refresh” to rid computers of old versions of the page.

“The changes need time to work their way through the internet.  In the next 24 hours users need to reach out to the internet for a fresh view of the page,” said IT Director Dale Dean.  “Although it may not come up the first time it should come up within a 24 hour period.”

“We are encouraging people to call the City if they can’t access our website and are in need of information,” said Schank.  “We apologize for any inconvenience this caused and are working with Aria to ensure better service to our customers.”