Too much success

has temporarily scuttled Fayette County's efforts to make property tax

information available online.

"The server

just was not designed to handle that much traffic," said Marc Rogers,

the county's webmaster.

Rogers has

been working for several months now to upgrade the site, make it more

interactive and user-friendly and provide more information. As part of

that effort, tax records were made available, but the demand for the information

and the amount of data involved were so great that the system was overwhelmed,

he said.

"It's

like 40,000 records," said Rogers. "And it ended up being more

popular than we had expected."

A "more

robust" server and new, improved software will solve the problem

and make the records available again, he said, and even increase the amount

of information available. "We'd like to include more information

about the dwellings themselves," he said.

But in the

meantime visitors who look for tax records on the Web are being directed

to visit the county offices to get the information, or send an e-mail

request.

The need for

visits to the office, phone calls and e-mails requiring staff time are

precisely what the Web site upgrades are intended to reduce.

"We want

to get to where the folks use the Web site as an alternative to picking

up the phone," said Rogers.

But as county

workers prepare the coming year's budget, a mammoth undertaking, the upgrade

will take a back seat for awhile, he added.

Some improvements

to watch for in the future:

A page for

newcomers. Rogers said the page will have information on cable providers,

gas and electric service, local government, etc. "It'll be a one-stop

page for new residents with links to drivers' license information and

that sort of thing," he said. "That way they can get the information

even before they move in."

A redesigned

site map, with more information on various pages within the site.

As an ongoing

process, Rogers said he also is updating the code so that the site's organizational

structure is easier to deal with.

The site is

at www.admin.co.fayette.ga.us .

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