Dartmouth Public Schools has unveiled its new website, dartmouth.school, and a new smartphone app, which will soon replace the district’s old website.

Although Dartmouth Public Schools’ new website has technically been live since September, officials are ready to introduce it as the school’s primary web presence, and will shut down the old SchoolFusion sites on December 31, according to district Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Gallishaw.

“We decided to keep the new website off to the side as we worked on it,” Gallishaw said.

It comes after a year and a half of work to revamp the district’s web presence, which was last tackled in 2010. But many shortcomings in the current system have since emerged.

“The old website, as great as it was, became a collection of information and just stayed that way,” Gallishaw said, explaining that much of the content is out of date, haphazardly organized, and provides no way to integrate outside services like social media accounts.

When it became apparent a new website was needed, district officials met with principals and teachers to see what they wanted to see added. Using their input, the new website will feature integration with each school's’ social media accounts, the ability to view multiple school calendars at once for parents with students in multiple schools,

To prevent issues with out-of-date information appearing, the new system allows staff to schedule content to no longer display when information is no longer relevant. The old three-letter domain names for each school has also been eliminated, replaced by easier ways to jump from school to school.

Gallishaw said information is still being ported over, but starting today the public should begin to use dartmouth.school instead.

A new smartphone app was also officially launched over the weekend, after the district received approval from app stores to publish it. Called “Dartmouth Public Schools,” the app is available for Android and Apple devices.

The new app is integrated into the website, and includes features such as easy access to school news, lunch menus, and push notifications, which will allow the district to notify parents and students of important news like school closings

“The app is like taking the entire website with you,” Gallishaw said.

The app can be downloaded from the Android Play Store or the Apple App Store.