Cityofib.com Now Imperialbeachca.gov

Cityofib.com is now imperialbeachca.gov, city staff said.

The change was made in March, said Administrative Secretary Ed Vea who manages the site, because the city wanted to get a .gov address and reduce the number of total urls associated with the City of Imperial Beach.

The City of Imperial Beach has been found online at cityofib.com for more than a decade. Cityofib.org was used for city email addresses.

All city employee emails will switch to an imperialbeachca.gov address in the coming years, Vea said. Until then @cityofib.org emails will be forwarded to @imperialbeachca.gov addresses.

Web users who go to cityofib.com will be forwarded to imperialbeachca.gov.

No changes were made to the site's design or offerings as a result in the permalink change. The city has made changes to increase its online presence in recent years.

Starting in 2011, instead of monthly newsletters, weekly city news updates have been sent directly to resident's email inboxes.

In social media, to pass on useful information and keep the public informed during emergencies, an @cityofib Twitter account was created in December 2011.

Tweets are now sent on the city's behalf by Vea though City Manager Gary Brown officially manages the account.

At the start the account was managed by a public relations firm on the city's behalf until that contract ended in July 2012.

Less than 100 tweets have been published since the city established its account.

The city does not have a Facebook page though members of City Council expressed an interest in doing so more than two years ago.

To date, the only known Facebook page made by city employees was a Sports Park and Recreation page in 2011. The page had more than 1,000 likes after about a month online but Sports Park employees were ordered to delete the page since IB did not have a social media policy at the time.