After being forced to return to Canada from Mexico in November, 2019 after losing my GIS pension, and having built various city portal sites in other countries like Panama, Ecuador and Mexico, I searched for a website that would promote Belleville, provide information for both residents and tourists, and keep up on the news. Although I already created a Belleville Today Facebook page, there was a BellevilleToday website for Belleville, New Jersey, so I registered BellevilleNow.ca and started building.

Having built other city portal sites in other countries, all of which got very good reviews and tons of visitors, I feel that I met all my goals on this city portal for Belleville. Not only do I have all the normal features, I also created an Entertainment Guide called Encore where I have a calendar of upcoming events and reviews with photos and video of the events that I manage to attend. I have encouraged venues to let me know what’s coming up, but only Sal at the Smokin 116 Bistro does this. Everything in the guide is free.

I am constantly updating the site with local news and I would like to add other features like a Real Estate Guide. I have also encouraged local businesses to let me know about promotions, staff changes, new openings and so on, but so far the business community has been lacking on this. Recently over a very short period the site got eighteen thousand views, some from BOTS, I know, but there’s still a lot of folks visiting the site.