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Governing.com, Version 5.0

Welcome to the new Governing.com. Long live the old Governing.com.

You are visiting the fifth major rendition of Governing’s Web site since it went online nearly 10 years ago, in 1996. (Scroll down for a look at version 1.0.) There have been many incremental changes along the way between major relaunches, and there will be many more to come before the next redesign. Each time, we’ve endeavored to provide a fresh, updated look without doing violence to the site design being replaced — that’s why longtime site visitors will find their favorite features pretty much where they were before, though they may look a bit different (better, we think, but that’s your call).

In the decade since the debut of Governing's online presence, many a Web site has been launched and attracted a huge following, then burned out like a meteorite and disappeared. The history of Governing.com, however, has been one of steady growth and expansion, adding one feature after another, always with the needs of Governing’s audience of people in and around state and local government in mind.

Traffic to the site has reflected that, increasing steadily. In a typical month, some 60,000 people now visit Governing.com, some of them in search of articles from the print magazine but most of them making use of Web-specific features: catching up on the day’s news, enjoying Otis White’s unique perspective on urban and suburban affairs, chuckling over a choice Who Said That? quote, learning about a useful, replicable program from the Idea Center.

The design goals this time, beyond the basic quest for a fresh look, were to provide a home page and high-traffic pages that made it easier to move around on the site. When Governing.com 4.0 was launched three years ago, we added a sophisticated set of pop-out, cascading menus — the hot Web technology of the time — in an effort to provide access to anything on the site in a couple of clicks. The technology worked well, but it didn’t fulfill its promise — many people just found it too hard to use. So for version 5.0, the mantra has been “simplify, simplify, simplify.” The new menus are a step back to a simpler era, and a step forward to user-friendliness. We hope you agree.

Governing.com, Version 1.0

No Web site relaunch would be complete without the addition of a new feature. Ours is 13th Floor, a new daily blog from which Governing’s writers and editors will be observing the world of state and local government. Why “13th Floor”? Our offices are on the 13th floor of a building in downtown Washington, D.C. Besides adding a note of the supernatural (some visitors to our building are stunned that it even has a 13th floor), it suggests something about our unique perspective on state and local government, though we don’t claim any supernatural observational powers.

By far the most popular feature of Governing.com is the daily news, summaries of and links to articles from newspapers and other publications from around the country as well as articles written exclusively for Governing.com, all selected for special relevance to state and local government. With this relaunch, the site now has six pages of news, updated early every weekday morning (and often throughout the day as well). The major change is the splitting of the general news page into two pages, one focusing on local government and the other on the states. Here's the new lineup.

More new features — short-term and long-term — are in the works, and the technology that underlies the site is being upgraded to provide more flexibility and the power to better organize the thousands of pages that comprise Governing.com. As the Web continues to grow in importance, both to us and to our readers and site visitors, we’ll be looking for other ways to make the site more useful and valuable. And in a couple of years, we’ll probably start working on version 6.0.

Meanwhile, tell us what you like — and don’t like — about 5.0. We really mean it: Many changes were made to previous versions in response to site visitors’ feedback. We count on it as we continue to evolve toward a decade online.

Publisher's Desk

C’mon Up to the 13th Floor

If things keep going the way they have the past two years, it won’t be too long before the number of people using our Web site surpasses the number of subscribers to our magazine. That’s a fact of life that it’s hard for us to ignore.

To be sure, Governing — the magazine — has more readers than subscribers, because so many copies are passed along. But the swift increase in traffic on Governing.com tells us that the information needs of people working in or observing state or local government stretch well beyond what we can provide in a monthly magazine.

So, on September 6, for what probably is the fifth time since we launched our Web site nearly a decade ago, we will be rolling out a redesign. The new look is cleaner, simpler and easier to navigate. It does a better job of highlighting those features we update daily. But what may be most important has nothing to do with the site’s prettier face — it’s how we are melding together our print staff with our Web staff.

Please pay particular attention to two of those daily features, one which has been around awhile, but I think is growing in value, and another that we are starting up with this relaunch. The first is called “Idea Center” and contains regular updates about new resources and innovations. It is evolving into an increasingly robust successful-practices service, covering a wide range of government activity at the state and local level. Keep watching that space, because more is coming.

The new feature is what dot-comers call a blog, but we would prefer to call a conversation, one that we invite you to join. It’s dubbed “13th Floor,” which happens to be where we reside, overlooking one of Washington’s key intersections in an area irreverently known as “Gucci Gulch” because of all the overpaid lobbyists and lawyers who daily flash their tassels on its streets.

The idea behind 13th Floor is pretty simple: First, we learn an awful lot more than we get into print, some of it factual, some of it impressionistic, some of it fairly significant, the rest poignant or odd or even downright funny. Second, many of our readers can relate to these stories, add to them, give them a new twist, or put them into more of a national context. We always have people telling us that their program or policy is the first in the country to do this or that. The 13th Floor roundtable over time should be a pretty good arbiter of whether that’s true.

If you get the idea that we’re making this up as we go along, you’re right. And it seems to be working.