Public notices are a critical function of state and local governments as well as a vital service of and revenue source for local newspapers across the US. Traditionally a highly manual print-based process, in recent years the publishing and distribution of public notices has been pressured to digitize and move almost fully online. Since 2007, the Florida Press Association has provided members with an online public notices service, thus supporting the publishing of legal notices by constituents, state, and local governments. They remain committed to this essential role for local newspapers based not only in Florida, but in multiple states nationwide.

In 2020, Florida Press enlisted Quoin to help them reengineer and redesign their legacy platform. The Quoin team worked closely with the client to implement a fully-responsive web/mobile application that supports the legal and functional requirements for a public notices website, thus enabling the distribution of important public information. Our team accomplished these features by enabling ingestion of XML-based notices, indexing of text and PDF content, generating user notifications via email and text message, and other features to support both newspapers and press association administrators. 

• The Public Notices application is single-code and multi-site by configuration, using AWS cloud-hosting with Docker and Ansible to deploy. 
• The new website required a comprehensive refactoring of the legacy code from Python to full-stack JavaScript. 
• The project also leveraged technologies such as Sequelize, MySQL, and ElasticSearch.

The redesign of the site provided an opportunity to add new user-centric features to improve usability and popularity for this critical function of member newspapers. This includes the following new and updated features.

• New and mobile-friendly design
• Responsive interface with dark and light modes
• Improved search features and results
• Text and email notifications
• English and Spanish language user experience
• Maps to display location for certain ad types
• User settings dashboard

The images below show the new home page design for both desktop and mobile users. Quoin's revamped design provided users with an intuitive visual design that is ‘responsive’ to changing browser sizes for a seamless experience.

Quoin focuses on building systems that provide user-centered features and a robust infrastructure. As a result, our approach delivered an outstanding system, establishing the site as an indispensable resource for Florida Press Association member newspapers.