A screen shot of Hamilton County's new website.Court dockets, county job listings, building permits and an aerial tour of Hamilton County are now in one easy-to-find spot on the county website's main page.
Webmaster Lark Walters studied the statistics of how people used the old site and placed the most commonly used links on the site's home page.
"The focus is making sure it's user-friendly," said County Mayor Jim Coppinger, who wanted to make sure the new site wouldn't be too cluttered and hard to use.
A new version of www.hamiltontn.gov went live last night, ushering in the era of YouTube tours of the county's nine districts and various municipalities. One of the new features of the site is its rolling video of Hamilton County's districts and landmarks.
County IT Director Brian Turner said he accompanied a county employee on an aerial tour of the area to capture much of the footage.
Turner and Walters worked to make sure the video doesn't slow the speed with which the page will load.
"It's fast, it's efficient," Turner said.
Between other projects, county employees have dedicated at least 800 hours to the new site since November 2010.
"These were people who were already on staff who did this," Coppinger said, estimating that the total cost to the county was about $24,000.