The Sanatoga Post

SANATOGA PA – What’s your group, school, organization or company got going on in coming weeks? If it’s a local activity open to the public, The Post Publications – The Sanatoga Post, The Limerick Post, The Pottstown Post, and The Main Street Post – want to help promote it … for free.

One of The Post’s most visited pages weekly is its community calendar. Post readers have come to rely on it to plan fun for their weekends and keep up with can’t-miss-stuff during the week, in part because we also link directly to 18 other community events calendars in Limerick, Pottstown, Boyertown and Douglassville PA. Feel free to send your notices of community events to us by e-mail to sanatoga@yahoo.com. We’ll make sure they get posted to the calendar.

Here’s what we added Thursday (Oct. 20, 2011):

• Halloween Haunted House (Sanatoga PA), 10/21-22/2011
• Run For Courage Fund-Raiser (Royersford PA), 10/22/2011
• Pumpkin Run Car Cruise (Boyertown PA), 10/22/2011
• Community Movie (Royersford PA), 10/22/2011
• Ham And Oyster Supper (Collegeville PA), 10/22/2011
• Pippin [The Musical] (Pottstown PA), 10/22-23-27-28-29-30/2011
• Tournament Of Bands SE PA Championship (Royersford PA), 10/23/2011
• Sacred And Secular Jazz Celebration (Pottstown PA), 10/23/2011
• Business Card Exchange (Limerick PA), 10/25/2011
• Leadership And Management Seminar (Pottstown PA), 10/27/2011
• Halloween Safe House (Sanatoga PA), 10/27/2011
• Drug Take-Back Day (Various Locations), 10/29/2011
• Power Networking Luncheon (Limerick PA), 11/2/2011
• Earned Income Tax Law Basics (Pottstown PA), 11/3/2011
• Chamber Membership Breakfast (Pottstown PA), 11/10/2011

See the entire calendar and Upcoming Events page, here.

SANATOGA PA – Constant Contact Inc., a Waltham MA-based provider of e-mail distribution services to more than 400,000 businesses, on Wednesday (March 16, 2011) named The Sanatoga Post and The Post Publications network as one of its 2010 All Stars. The honor is bestowed upon companies that consistently follow ethical e-mailing practices while enjoying high rates of recipient participation.

The Post has relied on Constant Contact since 2008 to deliver its daily headlines newsletter by e-mail, while giving readers the opportunity to take (“opt-in for”) or drop (“opt-out from”) the newsletter at any time, no questions asked. Constant Contact also employs strict delivery and anti-spamming rules to ensure readers’ e-mail addresses remain private.

As of Wednesday, the service had delivered more than 87,000 e-mails on The Post’s behalf.

• Not yet a Post subscriber? Don’t hesitate; the headline newsletter is free, and it takes only seconds to sign up! It’s so private, we don’t even ask for your name. Click here to get started.

Constant Contact also reported The Post’s rates for e-mail “opens” (representing messages actually read by recipients) and “click-throughs” (the number of embedded links readers clicked on to see content) were three to four times higher than publishing industry averages.

“Obviously, we’re honored by Constant Contact’s attention,” Post Managing Editor Joe Zlomek said. “It’s been clear from the launch of The Post that readers wanted the news we offered. And when we began the e-mail headline newsletter, readers also made clear it would be refused if it couldn’t be trusted, or if their privacy was violated. We’re happy to fulfill our promises on all counts.”

Fortunately, Zlomek noted, advertiser interest has followed reader interest. Since The Sanatoga Post began accepting advertising in November 2010, its number of advertising clients, the number of ads served, and the click-through rate for advertising response all have climbed monthly. “We’re pleased to be able to satisfy our sponsors too,” he said.

SANATOGA PA – Changes and tweaks made to the re-design of The Sanatoga Post, which made their debut during November 2010, won praise Monday (Jan. 17, 2011) from the company that originally designed the daily online news service’s new look and feel.

An international team of software developers that operates WooThemes, a South African-based company, this week added a link to The Post from its web-based clients’ showcase gallery. The gallery is intended to display how WooThemes’ customers adapt its products to novel uses.

The WooThemes Showcase now includes The Sanatoga Post.

What has become known as “The Post 2.0″ started as the purchase last year of a WooThemes template called “Gazette” by The Post Publications of Sanatoga PA. The template was then customized during a three-month period by other programmers in Pottstown PA to meet The Post‘s needs. WooThemes’ coders noted Monday that their design had been given “a different lick of paint and some TLC (tender loving care)” in making it work for The Post’s several thousand readers.

“We’re really proud of, and we thank, the group of local software and website pros with whom The Post worked to help make the Gazette template our own, as well as something special,” Managing Editor Joe Zlomek said. “Having WooThemes showcase their efforts is an honor.”

The Post was established online in August 2008, and re-launched last Nov. 15 with its new theme and a new web address. It has won acclaim from several online news publishing experts. Last year The Post Publications were chosen by a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow as among the 14 best mini-sites in the U.S. for community news. The Post Publications is a member of the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce and the Tri-County Community Network.

The Post adds new story, photo, and video content daily, and continually updates its features. Within the past month alone it added new links to food blogs and local restaurants’ websites to its Food archive page; and installed user-friendly local gas price comparison and public transit planning applications to its Transportation archive page.

The Post Publications is again at work with Pottstown programmers to update the look and feel of its other websites – The Limerick (PA) Post, The Pottstown Post, and The Main Street Post – to mirror the Sanatoga edition. The first of those is expected to re-launch in 60 days.

To keep up with what The Post is doing in western Montgomery County PA, and to have its news articles delivered every morning in a single, easily read e-mail, click here.

It's the place we're pleased to call "home."

SANATOGA PA – If you’re new here, welcome. If you’re returning here, welcome back. And if you’re not yet sure where or what “here” is, allow us to introduce “The Sanatoga Post.”

The Post is a daily online news service that, since Aug. 25, 2008, has covered Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township; the village of Sanatoga PA; the Pottsgrove PA School District, of which the township is a part; and when it’s appropriate and possible, the neighboring Borough of Pottstown PA to the west and adjoining Limerick (PA) Township to the east.

• Learn more about The Post here.

Today is Day 811 of The Post‘s existence, and with it two things are new … sort of.

First, we welcome a new audience of readers arriving here from The (Pottstown PA) Mercury newspaper‘s “Town Square.” It’s a launching point for blogs and websites that are members of The Mercury Community Media Lab. Although The Post started more than a year before the lab did, the newspaper for several months has listed us as a “community partner.” We appreciate that recognition, and simply formalized the arrangement.

Second, The Post has a new design and a new domain name. The design was produced by an international team of software developers in a company called WooThemes, and then was customized during the past three months by other programmers in Pottstown to meet The Post‘s needs. It offers several new features that our regular subscribers have enjoyed for the past two weeks. The new domain name, the place where you’ll find us on the Internet, is http://www.sanatogapost.com .

• Later this week, The Post will publish stories that describe its enhanced features in detail. There’s a lot that’s new, and there’s more to come.
• The Post offers a User’s Guide, here, to help you wade through its content.

Our former address is now the Post archive.

Our former Web location, http://sanatoga.wordpress.com, remains online too. It has been renamed as “The Post Publications Archive,” and contains almost 3,000 local news articles that were published before today. Many stories presented here in the future are likely to be linked back to the archive, enabling readers to see single articles in context with others written earlier.

Post subscribers knew all this beforehand. They get each day’s news earlier than non-subscribers, and are told in advance of coming features and changes. They’re an active part of our news network, as well; many of our stories originate from subscriber tips. Want to subscribe? We hoped you would. It’s free! Subscribe here, and cancel anytime without hassle or questions.

• Did we mention the word “free?“

The Sanatoga Post has siblings. Separate editions also are published for Limerick (The Limerick Post), and for Pottstown (The Pottstown Post). Their formats will be upgraded to the new look in coming months. They and other products and content are part of The Post Publications, a division of Career Education Media Ventures based in Sanatoga. Its managing editor is Joe Zlomek, a former newspaper publisher, editor, and reporter.

• The Post Publications proudly is a member of the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce, and the TriCounty Community Network.

The Post Publications combined are seen monthly by thousands of unique individuals (that means they’re counted only once, no matter how frequently they visit), who on average read, hear or view about three stories, videos or other content each day.

We hope you’ll be a regular. We thank you for reading, or at least checking out, The Post.

It's taken two years, but The Post's Facebook page has launched.

SANATOGA PA – In the world of so-called news-making proclamations, the arrival of yet another business-related Facebook page is no earth-shaker. So there’s little expectation of public “hallelujah” as The Post announces that its long-overdue contribution to the hot social media platform officially opened Thursday afternoon (May 28, 2010).

• Visit “The Post Publications” Facebook page here.

Readers may be surprised, however, at how we plan to use Facebook. We’re going to deposit fresh Easter eggs there on weekdays.

Easter eggs are a computer programmer’s term for virtual surprises – we intend them to be only good ones – that reward or give something extra to users. In a video game, for example, an Easter egg might be a hint to help players jump to another level.

Our fresh eggs on Facebook often will be exclusive or additional content related to stories carried in The Post itself. Maybe it’s an extra video from a school concert, or a larger gallery of photos from an event, or just observations of life in Lower Pottsgrove, Limerick, Pottstown, and from along the U.S. Route 422 corridor that are fun and interesting but don’t rise to the level of “news items.”

• Today’s Fresh Eggs on Facebook include a discovery at Turkey Hill, and a legion’s tribute.

After all, we figure, why bother to make an effort to visit Facebook if you can’t get something new from the experience?

We’ll also link to local photos, stories, videos or features published elsewhere we think our readers will find enjoyable and informative.

As elsewhere, The Post’s Facebook page is open to visitor comments, discussion, “likes,” and everything else that makes Facebook an interesting place to be. We welcome you to join us there.

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