Welcome to the new American City & County.com

A few weeks ago, I took stock of my desk at American City & County’s Atlanta office. It had become the typical journalist’s desk you see in movies like “Spotlight” or “The Post” — clutter atop clutter. It was tough to navigate, inefficiently organized and a general eyesore.

So, I took some multi-surface cleaner, a trash can, paper towels and elbow grease to my desk. An hour later, it looked brand new.

Over the past few months, our team has gone through a similar process with our website. After seven years with one design, it was long overdue for an upgrade — digitally speaking, it had come to resemble my cluttered desk.

Unlike my desk however, our site’s condition was beyond just needing cleaning — designing an entirely new site was in order. With the help of our international management, we’ve built a new online home that offers multiple advantages over the old one. Launched on Thursday, Sept. 27, the new site offers:

Modernized aesthetics
When you visit our new home page, you’ll notice that we’ve revamped our site’s visual aesthetics into a more modern blue and gray scale color scheme. Our pages have more space and less clutter to them now, too. However, we still give you convenient access to our library of white papers and webinars, as well as consistently updated groups of news stories.

A refined user experience
When you click a link to one of our news stories, you’ll see that the page loads much faster than before. As you read an article, you’ll note that the two-row menu bar follows as you scroll. That way, you’ll always have easy navigation at your fingertips on our website.

Streamlined organization
On the new menu bar, you’ll find that we’ve consolidated the 65+ subject categories of our former site into six subject categories. Now, you’ll be able to find all of your public safety news or administration news in one convenient location instead of navigating numerous subcategories. Additionally, you can find all of our news coverage, our in-depth magazine features and our multimedia content grouped in their own respective sections.

Looking for ideas on how to improve your government’s operations? Our new Expert Insights section includes weekly commentaries and regular content from groups like U.S. Communities and the Smart Cities Council that you’ll commonly find in our newsletters.

Updated newsletters
Soon, we will be debuting fresh newsletters that carry the updated look of the new site with them. With a straightforward, one-column format, our newsletters will help you navigate the day’s local government news and insights better than ever.

Improved digital magazine access 

It will soon be easier to sign up for a complimentary print subscription to American City & County or Government Procurement. But if you’d rather read the magazine online, we’ll now offer online access to PDFs of each of our print editions from January 2016 to the present. You can also read each new issue online through a new digital viewer that’s accessible on our site.

We’re very excited about our new site, and we hope that you’ll find it as enjoyable to use as we do. As always, we would love to hear from you about your thoughts on our new site and about the most pressing issues in your communities. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

Sincerely,

Jason Axelrod
Associate Editor