New Water Valley Website Creator Aims to Keep Residents Informed

By Carson McKinney
Hottytoddy.com intern
cqmckinn@go.olemiss.edu

Need to know what’s going on tonight in Water Valley? A new flyer is heading not to your mailbox, but to your browser.

Preston Boutot is the owner of Oxford-based RockIT Computer Solutions and lives in Water Valley. Since moving to the Valley in 2016, he noticed a lack of awareness about local government and public events as Water Valley does not have its own city website.

“In Water Valley, because it’s a small town, it’s hard to find out what’s going on sometimes,” Boutot said. “Civic meetings, volunteer events, music in town, a lot of that comes through print, through the newspaper. Because that’s a once a week type thing, it’s hard to keep up with what all is going on.”

On March 15, Boutot plans to launch WVflyer.com, a Water Valley-dedicated, user-submitted and moderator-approved website which will allow residents to easily share upcoming community events and filter out unnecessary information.

“If it’s an event you would put on a calendar, we would consider that the type of event that we want on the website, not like 50-percent-off tire sale or things like that,” Boutot said. “If you think about Facebook groups, you’ll get inundated with just about everybody trying to get any way they can to post something about their business in their group, so we’re trying to administer that.”

Boutot’s wife, Aimee, has experience moderating Facebook groups like Oxford MS Resale and Homes for Sale/Rent – Oxford, MS and will assist Boutot with moderating WVflyer.com at launch.

Though he says Facebook groups run by Water Valley Main Street Association and North Mississippi Herald provide useful and excellent information for residents, he wants to further simplify event sharing.

“I just want to have a site that’s just simple, basic, and has the information right there,” Boutot said. “Two minutes, you say ‘What’s going on in a week?’ you go there, look there and you’re done all in one place.”

Boutot plans to offer his website free of charge to users even as it grows through feedback and suggestions but is interested in sponsorships with local businesses in the future instead of typical online advertisements.

“You can do things like Google ads, but that’s not something I’m interested in,” Boutot said. “I don’t want somebody on that site seeing an advertisement for an auto part on Amazon.com. I would much rather see one of the two auto part stores in town and see their company name on our website and have somebody go down the street and buy locally.”

Beta testing for WVflyer.com will begin on Friday. Anyone interested in helping Boutot test his website may reach him at webmaster@wvflyer.com.