I know it won’t be easy, but it might be fun, inspiring, awesome and wonderful. Therefore I’m promising to make use of The DailyPost, and the community of other bloggers with similar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

If you already read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes, and good will along the way.

Eric C. Cohen

Readers will notice that a few things have changed, but the overall Sag Hampton experience should not be much different than what you are used to. The one obvious change is that the photo album, which used to appear on the upper left side of the screen is gone. This may return at some point, if I find a way to implement it in WordPress. For now, a sort of replacement is the revolving pictures in the page header. In theory, every time you move to a new page in Sag Hampton, a different picture will be shown at the top of the page. This worked pretty well in testing, although occasionally, the replacement picture was the same as the one being replaced. It is a random selection after all, so this is likely to happen every once in a while. Another change is that I am no longer using excerpts on the blog’s main page. Where you used to see a little snippet of the post, and then have to click on the “more” link in order to read the rest of the article you now will see the entire article, on the main page.

Also, for now, most of the other content in the sidebars is missing, including ads and links to other blogs and websites. As I get around to it, at least some of this content will return.

Finally, if you previously commented on this blog and used your real name, or an alias, you will find that your name has now been removed from the comment. This was an unavoidable side-effect of moving the blog content from one platform to the other. I have also taken this opportunity to turn off commenting on all the older posts, as most of the comments a blog receives on older posts are “comment spam” anyway. Comments will be allowed (and are encouraged) on all new posts, including the most recent, “The Five Top Problems Facing Sag Hampton.”

Oh, one more thing…if you’ve previously subscribed to Sag Hampton through RSS or e-mail, you may want to redo your subscription. In theory, all subscriptions should still work, but in reality, they may not. And, by the way, thanks for sticking with Sag Hampton, through its long hiatus.

Sometimes, they publish a version of what I’ve written shortened to fit in the space they have available. Sometimes they capture the essence of what I’ve written in the shorter version, but sometimes it ends up too short to really make the point I’m trying to get across. When that happens, though, you — the reader of the newspaper version — can go to the web and read the full version. You’ll always find a link to my blog at The Express’ web site: http://www.sagharboronline.com.

Now here’s the cool part. Both the editor of the newspaper and I think that it would be great to know what people in the community are thinking about the issues we write about. Sure, you can write a letter to the paper, but that may not be your style. Maybe you’re a bit more spontaneous, or would prefer a less formal way to express your thoughts. Perhaps everything you have to say about an issue can be summed up in one sentence and you think it’s just too short to make a good letter to the editor. If any of that applies to you, or you just like being a part of the online community, then the blog is made to order for you, because blogs, by design, are meant to encourage two-way communications. At the end of each article in Sag Hampton there is a place for you to leave a “comment.” In other words, a spot for you to have your say about the issue, or about what I’ve written. Others can comment too, and one person can comment on another person’s comment, giving us all a chance to have a real dialog online. Everyone can read it, everyone can participate in it. Comments can be signed, or anonymous. You must enter your e-mail address, but it is not published. Again this is different than writing a letter to the editor. When you do that, you have to sign it (even if your name isn’t published). On the blog, you can be completely anonymous if you chose. Even I won’t know who you are.

I blog (yes, it’s a verb too) because I want to start a discussion with other members of my community; so I invite you to visit Sag Hampton online where you can not only read the full text of every article (called blog posts), but also find other posts that were never published in the newspaper. And best of all, you can add your two cents (or more) to the discussion.

By the way, for those of you who do read Sag Hampton online, I would love it if instead of stopping me on the street to discuss what I’ve written (or in addition to that), you would add a comment to the blog. Even if it’s only to say that you agree (or disagree). It’s great  for me to know what you think, but not so great that you’re depriving the rest of the community of the benefit of you opinion. Please share your thoughts with the rest of the community on Sag Hampton.