The Montgomery County Police Department’s news release website didn’t work Sunday afternoon and most of Monday because of problems with the hosting website, an official said. By 4:15 p.m. Monday, the site was working again.
Clicking on the website, mymcpnews.com, during the day Sunday and most of Monday brought users to a bare page with a note at the top that stated that “This domain name expired on 2020-03-01 20:30:12.”
Sgt. Rebecca Innocenti, a department spokeswoman, said police officials discovered the problem Monday morning and contacted the hosting service, PressHarbor, to determine the problem.
PressHarbor could not be reached for comment.
The police department uses mymcpnews.com to post news releases, advisories about missing persons and other public information. The department uses PressHarbor to post its news content, Innocenti said.
“They host the website, and then we work through WordPress to [post] the content,” she said.
Innocenti said the police department pays a fee to host the news content. She did not know how much police paid to PressHarbor.
While the domain problem kept the news page offline, the department shared information through social media, as it regularly does.
The police department’s news information website is separate from the rest of the department’s website, montgomerycountymd.gov/pol/ That website is hosted by the county’s main server, which hosts other aspects of county government.
“We’re in the process of redesigning the county website and combining the county press release information on that website,” Innocenti said.
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@moco360.media
