We sadly said goodbye to our former managing editor Jeff Brody, who wrote the Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap. In his farewell post, he said he’s going to focus on his work with the Kitsap Regional Libraries.

But that doesn’t leave Silverdale un-blogged-about. Rich Jacobson, who moved to Silverdale with his family eight years ago, will guide conversations and share news about the Central Kitsap area in his new blog Everyday CK.

Covering all of the county, Sally Santana is writing Side Street News with tips and resources for the financially challenged.

As you may have seen in last weekend’s Life section, Peg Tillery with the WSU Kitsap Extension will offer ramblings and tips about plants and all things green in Plant Life.

Related to that is the new Sea Life blog, written by local aquatic expert Jeff Adams who works with the University of Washington Sea Grant, and can be found in the same office as Peg Tillery in the Norm Dicks Government Center.

We also welcome news about the local beer community, what’s new on tap in the area and local deals on Beer Spotting by Michael Wilcox.

Though most of our new blogs are written by community members, one comes from our own Kitsap Sun staff, The Artful Blogger. J.D. Williams is an illustrator and page and graphics designer here, and he’s started writing about local art and artists.

Please help use welcome them all by checking out their blogs.

If you’re interested in writing about your passion, be it hiking, biking, eating, scrapbooking, whatever, please let us know! Having a reader blog with the Kitsap Sun gives it the potential to be seen by our thousands of daily readers. If you’re interested, e-mail your blog idea to Web Editor Angela Dice at adice@kitsapsun.com.

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The numbers are an add-on from the system to hide your e-mail address, for readers who used their e-mail as their user names.

To change it, click on your name in the upper lefthand corner of the screen (in black, above Kitsap Sun). Click “Edit your profile. Erase the part of your username with the e-mail address (or change it altogether if you’d like), click “Next” then make sure to click “Save”.

Got any other questions about the site? Ask away!

– Angela Dice

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We’ve done a couple of things to address that:

We added a “Today” link under our News heading in the navigation. It works similarly to our previous archives (which were admittedly hard to find). When you click “Today”, you’ll see a list of all the news that happened that day on kitsapsun.com, which is almost always a day ahead of what we publish in print. From there, you can see previous days by clicking “Previous” or scroll down to search earlier years and dates. We’ll implement a similar feature for our blogs in the next few weeks.

We also realize that scrolling through everything that happened in a day isn’t always what you want. Sometimes, it may just be easier to see the top stories, the big news that happened. So we’ve created a news page for top stories. Roll your cursor over News in the main navigation, then Local News, then click on “Top Stories.”

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• Hide or show the comments that appear after each story
• Reply directly to someone’s comment
• Identify comments made by Kitsap Sun staff members
• Use — or turn off — a feature that allows readers to write messages to each other directly

How to Hide or Show Comments After Stories

We know some of you like story comments more than others. Now you’ll have a choice to see them below the stories, or not.

When you reach the end of a story, you’ll see a box listed “Comments”.

On the right side of the Comments box, click “Show” or “Hide”, depending on your preference.

If you choose to hide comments, you will see the Comments box, the number of comments, and the option to click “Show” to see them again.

When you’re logged in to your Kitsap Sun profile, comments will be visible or hidden on every story, based on your selection of “Show” or “Hide”. You can change back at any time.

Replying To A Comment

Our new site will allow you to reply directly to any comment in a story. Your response will include a quotation of the comment you reply to, and a link to the user who made the comment. Your reply will appear below the quoted text.

To reply to a comment, click the “Reply to this post” link, which is next to the comment you’re replying to.

Here’s how it will look:

Identifying Comments From Kitsap Sun Staff Members

Reporters and editors are trying to be more proactive in engaging in the discussions that follow our stories. With our new site, it will be easier to identify comments made by Kitsap Sun staff members.

When one of us makes a comment, you will see the word STAFF in red letters after the staff member’s name.

Here’s an example from Web Editor Angela Dice:

How to Send a Private Message, or Turn the Feature Off

A lot of our readers clearly love debating one another in our comments. But sometimes you might want to respond privately to a comment, without everyone else seeing it. Now, we’ve brought back and modified an old feature that gives you the opportunity to send a direct message to another Kitsap Sun user. Your profile may have this function turned ON.

If you don’t want to receive messages from Kitsapsun.com readers, here’s how to turn it off (or on).

First, log in with your Kitsapsun.com information. When you’re logged in, near the upper left corner, click “Manage Account.”

Near the bottom of the page deselect the box  “Allow direct messages to me from other users.” Click “Next”, then click “Save”

If you choose to keep the function, here’s how to send a message.

To send a message to someone, you would click on their screen name, and select “Contact (screen name)”

You’ll be taken to a message dialog box, where you can write your message.

After you click “Send message”, the recipient will get an e-mail from the Kitsap Sun with the message. Neither party will see the others’ e-mail address, but you will see each others’ screen names. Your total number of messages is indicated by this icon, in the upper left of the Web site.

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Photographers are some of the most-seen members of a news organization as they freeze time and capture the best (and sometimes not the best) moments in the life of our community. Those, like our other photographer Larry Steagall, have crossed paths with hundreds of people from policy makers to pie bakers.

So it’s with great joy that we welcome a new face to the fold.

Meegan Reid (pronounced mee-gan, not maygan) started this week, replacing Carolyn Yaschur, who left in August to start a new path in life. Meegan comes to us from The Herald Journal in Utah. Check out her web site, particularly her portfolio, and you’ll see why we thought she would be a good addition to the Kitsap Sun and the Kitsap community.

Don’t be shy when you see her around town and give her a hearty Kitsap welcome. And look for tomorrow’s paper, where we plan to publish her first Kitsap Sun photo on the front page.

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In the past month, we’ve been able to send live broadcasts from our editorial board interviews with candidates, the town hall meetings with Jay Inslee in Poulsbo and Norm Dicks in Bremerton.

On Saturday, we kicked off our “Game of the Week” series with coverage of the South Kitsap vs. Kennewick game at Qwest Field. We broadcast video of the game, live blogged and sports editor Chuck Stark made his game-broadcasting debut. We’ll continue to broadcast a game of the week through the regular football season, and hopefully (should a local team make it) into the playoffs.

It’s part of our many attempts to go beyond being just a local paper and more of a news organization that brings you dynamic online multimedia content. We hope you’ve enjoyed the broadcasts, and we expect to bring you even more. We’d love to hear your suggestions for more events you’d like us to broadcast online. And thank you to those of you who’ve been tuning in.

– Angela Dice, Kitsap Sun Web editor

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But we know we’re not perfect. Maybe really, really close …

Which comes to the point of this blog and this post.

Who better than you, our readers, to tell us what you want?

We created this blog as a place where you can find out what’s new with our site, talk with us about it and listen to your suggestions about how we can make our sites more useful to you.

Is there public information that we can get and post on the site that you’d like to see (see some examples in our Information Center)?

Memorial videos to place with obituaries? New features on our obituaries such as guest books?

Would you like us to create a searchable map with information about sex offenders in your neighborhood?

Would you like us to do more videos?

Information about things to do and places to see within driving distance of our area?

E-mail and text alerts for breaking news or weather? A daily or weekly round up of headlines sent to you?

We’re open to discussing any ideas you have.

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