Welcome to PoliGazette! Celebrate our launch week with us!

Howdy everyone, welcome at this new and improved blog. After thinking and talking about it for a month or two - amongst ourselves - today is launch-day. Basically, we want to continue where we left off: we want this site to be a place where moderate liberals, centrists and conservatives feel at home. We want this site to be a place for civilized debate. We want, in short, to offer readers a wide range of opinions and perspectives so that they can make their minds up more easily - or at least more informed.

In the future we want to offer original reports as well as blog posts, links and videos. Furthermore, we plan to start a Blog Talk Radio show of our own, so that you all can read and listen to us. This will be set up in the coming months.

The first week will, hopefully, be a great - great - week. We’ve asked several bloggers to write a guest post for us. These bloggers, names all of you will know, are incredibly busy but took the time to write a post for us nonetheless. These posts will be published throughout the week. Some of you have asked what the line-up is. Let me first say that we’re still waiting to hear from two or three people. That being out of the way, here are the bloggers who have agreed:

• Jules Crittenden
• Justin Gardner
• Shadi Hamid
• Rick Moran
• Ed Morrissey
• Dave Schuler
• Jon Swift

I advise you take a look around as to acquaint yourself with the new site. It’s quite different from the old Gazette. Firstly, the page isn’t as long. We want to limit the length of it - it’s less of a ‘bloggy’ set-up and more of a magazine layout. That is, obviously, done on purpose.

Secondly, every day we will have several Lead Stories. The Lead Story - the story way on top - will be replaced two or three times a day. This Lead Story is mostly a longer post, read by many people. In other words, a longer, popular post. Once we will focus on original reporting, the Lead Story will, quite often, be such an original post. You can read the entire post by clicking on ‘read story.’

Thirdly, next to the Lead Story you see “features posts.” These are normally posts that have been pushed off the frontpage. In other cases, they’ll be older original reports, popular articles, etc.

Fourthly, the regular blogposts can be found on the left side of the screen. The intros are, reasonably, short. To read the entire post you’ll have to click on ‘read story.’ Obviously, you can leave a comment.

Something I like very much is the center bar: as you see the section is called “In the News.” It contains the titles of, intros to and links to articles at news sources like the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, ABC News, CNN, Pajamas Media, Huffington Post and so on. We’re using Delicious to add these links. They will be updated throughout the day. In other words, if you want to find the hottest and latest breaking news, go to the frontpage and select an article that sounds interesting.

Sixthly, and this is something I like very much, you will notice, when you scroll completely down, that a video player will be loaded. The videos are brought to you by The Voxant Newsroom. This player contains some 25 news videos: from now on you can come to the PoliGazette to read and watch the news (as said, listening comes at a later time). Not only will you be informed when you watch a video, however, we will earn some money at the same time. You click on play, we get pay (artistic freedom of the poet). A win-win situation, in other words.

In the right sidebar you will see the editorial staff listed, you’ll see the latest comments, advertisements and the three latest headlines of our partner, Stubborn Facts. Be sure to visit this great blog on a daily basis.

What more? We have different pages: home, archives, about, blogroll and partners. The archive page makes it easy for you to find old posts. The about page informs you about the PoliGazette team, the blogroll has links to the best blogs on the net (a fairly limited blogroll, we’re snobs) and, lastly, the partners page informs you about how are partners are, what their blog is all about, etc. At this moment we only have one partner, we hope to partner up with more blogs in the (near) future.

And now, having explained the technical aspects to all of you, I’d like to take the time to thank the people behind the move:

• First and foremost, of course, Justin Delabar. Justin is the Managing Director of Creatabyte and the one who designed this blog. I contacted him a while ago to ask him whether he would be interested in designing this place. He quickly agreed and also agreed to implement the design. Without Justin, we would have been nowhere. When he sent me the first rough draft of what he wanted to do, I was speechless: it was exactly what I had in mind. The result is what you see today: to say that I’m thrilled would be an understatement. It looks better than I hoped. Justin did an awesome job. If you need someone to design a site for you, I highly recommend him. Visit the Creatabyte site to look at his portfolio.

• Secondly, I’d like to thank Dustin. Dustin is a co-blogger at the PoliGazette, of course, but he didn’t have time to write much in the last couple of months. He has, however, more time now and told me that he will get back to blogging today. What’s more, not only will he get back to blogging, he’s also the Site Manager. He’s the one who will fix what’s broken. If you have a question about the blog - not about a post but about technical issues - contact him. He already proved that he’s far more handy than me by moving the posts from the old blog to this one. There were some difficulties with that, but, together with Justin, Dustin got the job done (and stayed up to 3AM to do it). Thank you Dustin.

• Thirdly, of course, I wanted to thank my partner in crime, Pieter Dorsman. Pieter is a co-blogger here, has a blog of his own and he is the owner of a consulting company. What’s more, together we form the executive board behind the PoliGazette. We will become professional in the coming months, registered etc. Without Pieter’s knowledge, passion and energy that - becoming more professional - would not have been possible. When we turn this blog into a business enterprise, Pieter will be the CFO. Pieter and I are the ones who planned the move. Without Pieter my plans would’ve remained plans. He’s not ‘just’ my co-blogger anymore, he’s also my business partner.

• Fourthly, I need to thank Jason. Jason is assistant editor and weighed in on the design and the usuability of PoliGazette. Without his advise and eye for detail we would’ve forgotten to include many things and the site would’ve been far more difficult in use; both for you the readers and for us the bloggers.

• I’d also like to thank the readers who donated money when I asked for it in order to start PoliGazette. Thank you very much for generosity and words of support and encouragement.

• An unprofessional thank you is required as well: thank you Esma for putting up with me during the move and the planning for it… and for me not being able to talk as much with you as you deserve due to my blogging habits. Without your support and patience I would have given up a long time ago.

• Lastly, but surely not least: a big thank you to all those read this blog on a daily / regular basis. Please stay with us and enjoy your stay at the new PoliGazette!