The City of Warrior is in the process of building a Web site with a $5,000 budget.

The Web site is being designed and built by Amy Johnson, a web designer native to Warrior and owner of Amy Johnson Web Design.

“It’s going to look super cool,” said Johnson. “It’s going to be an upbeat, non-government boring Web site.”

Johnson said the $5,000 budget pays for several different things, including paying for her services as a web designer, two domain names and server space for two years (which costs around $300 or more). The city said Johnson has not issued an official invoice yet.

“Five thousand dollars is a lot of money in Warrior. People hear that and they say, ‘Wow, you must be rich!’ But, the money actually pays for hosting, bandwidth… it doesn’t all go to me,” said Johnson.

The money also goes to paying a photographer, Becky Johnson (no relation to Amy). She is currently trying to take photos of all the businesses and business owners in Warrior, and is also going to take pictures of parks, historic buildings, and other points of interest.

I met her in church,” said Becky. “She knew I took pictures as a hobby, but when she started working on the Web site she was like, ‘Wait a minute, you take pictures for real!’” Amy then contracted her to take pictures for the Web site.

The purchased domain names are www.cityofwarrior.com and cityofwarrior.mobi, which will be accessible through mobile devices like cell phones. The mobile Web site is like a simplified, basic version of the normal site.

“The price is comparable to other sites we’ve seen,” said Warrior Mayor Rena Hudson.

Johnson said the Web site was for all of Warrior, but that the goal was to make the city more well-known, and to attract businesses and jobs. Warrior does not have a chamber of commerce, and Johnson said the Web site could fill that role in some ways.

“We need a chamber of commerce,” said Hudson. “The Web site would also be a partner to the chamber.”

Johnson is planning several features for the Web site, including an interactive map of the city with Warrior businesses on it. The map would show the names and locations of the businesses, and possibly link to the businesses’ Web sites.

“It’s important to keep up with technology,” said Hudson.

The site will possibly have an area for contacting city employees, an account of Warrior’s history with photographs of historic buildings, a city calendar, polls about city issues that visitors to the site can vote on, and video. Johnson is also setting up a Content Management System, which will let city employees without any programming or coding knowledge to update the Web site.

“We want Warrior’s image to be moving forward. There are a lot of young professionals here,” said Johnson. “Some people look down their nose at Warrior, and we hope the Web site can change that… I love Warrior. I like it’s the kind of place you can borrow a tool from your neighbor.”

Johnson also created www.extremelibrarymakeover.com for free, a Web site for the Regional Library at Warrior. She has been designing Web sites for about 10 years. More of her work can be found at www.amyjohnsonwebdesign.com.