Now, here are some tips to finding your way around our new digs.
First, all of you who signed up and became registered users on our previous site and have logged on during the past two years are automatically pre-registered on this new site. So your same user name and password will work on the new site, just like on the old site
One apology: We had to leave your avatars behind (it’s a database complication thing). But you can sign on and easily upload your favorite avatar again.
You’ll notice that where the old site was more vertically arranged, the new site is — deliberately — more horizontal in its layout. Our goal was to present you with a rich and varied list of choices of entry points into our information-loaded site.
Also, we have many more photos — many contributed daily by our readers — than was possible on our previous site. We will continue to make it easier for you to submit photos and information for posting on this site. Stay tuned.
Just below the main photo and top stories is an important component of our local community news site — your comments, your forum posts, your familiar community neighbors. You’ll see the latest comments on our stories in this prominent spot.
Veteran posters on our previous site will immediately notice a difference when they log in to post comments on stories, forums and blogs. Some of the formatting is modifiable, and some isn’t. Let us know what you think.
One difference in the new site is the absence of blogging capability for all registered users. Instead, we encourage you to make use of our improved forums. Forums lend themselves to categories and increased visibility and searchability.
In other words, on the previous site, blogs were little more than differently named comments and were quickly lost to most users after a day or two.
Forums, with their “threading” characteristics, remain viable for as long as interest in their categories and subjects remains. Forum postings will stick around a lot longer and be easier to find and contribute to.
A note to our faithful regular bloggers and commenters: We invite you to become leaders in our enhanced blogging capabilities.
Many of you — known mainly by your user names and avatars — have consistently engaged in high quality debates among yourselves on many different issues. I want to invite a select group of you regular commenters and bloggers to become our core group of featured bloggers on this new site.
Our core bloggers will have enhanced posting powers, such that their new blogs will be displayed prominently on our front page, just like The Citizen staff writers and our other columnists. Bloggers’ latest postings will show up under “Opinion” and “Your Say.”
You can retain your anonymity, or you can choose to identify yourselves, as you choose. But the basic qualification is that you have commented regularly on the previous site and at a high level of interest and engagement.
I can think of upwards of at least two dozen of you — anonymous and named, left, right, center, libertarian, independent, progressive, Tea Partier and unknown — who add significant intellectual value to our site on a regular, ongoing basis.
Of course, even after becoming one of our core bloggers, you can still play in the whole sandbox like always — commenting at will on other bloggers and commenters and forum posters. You gain some power, you lose no privileges.
I will be extending personal invitations over the next couple of weeks to several of you to become a regular blogger via the email addresses associated with your user name.
If you no longer have the same email address you used to register with, you’ll need to initiate an email to me — editor@TheCitizen.com — and let me know of your interest. Don’t be bashful, and don’t wait to hear from me — Apply now.
