Managing Editor Joe Zlomek

SANATOGA PA – Items to keep readers up-to-date on what’s happening at The Sanatoga, Limerick, and Pottstown Posts:

Drag us into your Google+ (Plus) Circles

The tech-savviest of Post Publications‘ readers know that Google last month launched its competitive answer to Facebook, the Internet’s most popular social networking site. Google’s new weapon in the social media wars is called Google+ (Plus). It works much like Facebook, in some cases is a little easier to use, and in many cases provides a much cleaner and more graphically appealing interface, experts say.

• The Posts have Google+ pages; find them here.

• And The Posts have had a Facebook page for a couple of years now; find it here.

Because it’s a new kid on the block, so to speak, Google+ is building its user audience by issuing invitations to try the free service through those who already use it. Consequently, The Posts have available 150 invitations for its readers interested in starting their own Google+ pages. We’ll give ‘em away ’til they’re gone, but only one per e-mail address, please. If you want in, send your e-mail address to sanatoga@yahoo.com with the subject line “Google+.”

Once you’re up and running on Google+, we’d be delighted if you would add The Posts to one or more of your Plus Circles. They are groups of other users with whom you share friendship and information. That way we can keep each other better informed.

Take us with you when you go

When The Posts re-tooled their online appearance last November, thanks to some talented software programmers locally and beyond, we gained hundreds of new readers but lost the ability to present stories in a format easily seen on cell phones and other mobile devices. We are happy to report that – for the Sanatoga edition on iPhones, iPads, and Android- or HP WebOS-powered devices – our “gosh-that’s-fun” mobile interface returned in early July.

Simply open your phone’s web browser, type in “sanatogapost.com” as the desired address, and our software will automatically 1) take you to our website, 2) detect that you’re reading on a handheld device, and 3) serve up The Post’s phone-friendly look and feel.

For those of you with phones running other operating systems or reading the Limerick and Pottstown editions, well … we’re still working on them.

A Post milestone (or two) passed

The 4,000th news article produced for the Sanatoga edition was published last Friday (Aug. 5, 2011). The Sanatoga Post archives are so large that Google now serves up a category index for our stories in certain search results.

On the same day, The Limerick Post published article No. 1,153; and The Pottstown Post went live with article No. 1,116.

We thank our still-growing readership, contributors, media partners, advertisers, and community organizations with which we work for their trust in The Post Publications Network and their confidence in our products.

Another milestone just ahead

In two weeks (Aug. 25, 2011), the Sanatoga edition will observe its third anniversary and begin its fourth consecutive year of serving news and information to residents of Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township, the Pottsgrove School District, and their municipal neighbors.

On similar occasions in the past, we’ve announced either new features or anticipated big improvements in what we’re doing or how we do it. Our goal for the coming year is, instead, “refinement.”

Readers tell us, almost daily, what they like about The Posts and also what they think needs fixing. We’ve now got an arm’s-length list of items that must be tweaked to work better and meet new demands. The improvements we hope you’ll notice on our pages during the next 12 months may be smaller in scale, but will pay off in greater usability and reader convenience.

And we’re hitting the road

The Posts have been invited to participate in the national “Block By Block Community News Summit 2011,” being held Sept. 29-Oct. 1 (2011) at Loyola University in Chicago. Block By Block bills itself as a conference at which “online community news entrepreneurs” can pick each others’ brains, trade ideas and learn new skills.

The Posts will continue to publish daily during the three-day period. Managing Editor Joe Zlomek expects to be bursting with enthusiasm when he returns from the Windy City.