City website switch to menlopark.gov

Published on October 17, 2022

Visitors to the City of Menlo Park website will notice a new more secure web address after Oct. 31, 2022. The city website address has moved to menlopark.gov.

Switching to a .gov domain provides further assurance to the public that the information found on our website is official, trusted information.

Registering as a .gov domain requires a government entity to submit evidence to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), part of the Department of Homeland Security, proving that it is truly registering on behalf of legitimate local, county or state government. The new .gov domain also makes it more difficult for malicious actors and scammers to co-opt government websites. Using less secure domains such as .com or .org allows cybercriminals and malicious actors to more easily impersonate government officials in attempts to defraud the public.

The shift to the .gov top level domain is part of a long-range federal initiative to increase security and counter foreign disinformation that began about two years ago with the passage of the DotGov Act of 2020, which shifted responsibility for managing the .gov domain from the General Services Administration to CISA.

Along with this change will be impacts to all things that involve or touch the website. Printed materials will start to reference the new menlopark.gov web address after Oct. 31. This will include the website address you see in the footer of documents, agendas, minutes, envelopes, business cards, flyers, letterhead, fleet vehicle decals, etc. These items will transition to the new address with future new orders and upon regular life-cycle replacements. We will continue to control the menlopark.org address and will redirect it to the new menlopark.gov address as needed.

City staff and city councilmember email addresses will also eventually change to @menlopark.gov email addresses. For a time, we will operate both email addresses simultaneously so that emails sent to @menlopark.org email addresses forward to @menlopark.gov addresses. This will provide an overlap period and the opportunity for an orderly transition so that all contacts can be updated.