A hearty thank you to all the early adapters who have signed up to InJersey and begun posting. We sort of figured that it would take several weeks for people to catch on to the sites, and until then it would mostly be us newspaper reporters doing the lion's share of the posting. Of course, as with just about everything on the Internet these days, the site has taken on a life of its own -- in very exciting and welcome ways.

As you've probably noticed, we made it easy for anyone to register and post to InJersey and its town sites. Unlike many other hyperlocal news sites that have sprung up in recent years, we don't exercise any kind of filter between you and the "publish" button.

That said, we want our sites to be the best user experience possible, and thus it's important for you to be conscientious about how your posts look before you send them straight to our homepages. A few simple ground rules we'd like you to follow:

• If your post is more than 200 words, break it. You can see the word count on what you're writing at the bottom of the editing window. Use this little icon to insert a "Read More" button in your post. That way, a lengthy post won't end up completely taking over the front page of the site you're posting to.
• Add "tags" to all your posts. The more tags you include, the more it helps goose your post's visibility to Google and other search engines. Which in turn translates into more people reading your content.
• If you're pasting from Microsoft Word, please be sure to use the "Paste from Word" button. This is important because Word often applies HTML formatting to text written in the application, which then gets carried over to the blog -- often making your text look yucky. You'll need to click on the rightmost "Kitchen Sink" button to see this option.

  

  To read more on how to use the "Past from Word" button, read this tutorial

• Include a Google map if your post refers to a specific location in town. All you need is the same amount of info you might use to look up the address on Google Maps, like this:
  

  Simply plug in a street address, town, and state, and you should be good. By default, the blog will you your post's title for the map info; if you want a custom map maker, you can use an alternate title and description. Note: You must save your post once before adding a map location. Make sure to click "Save Draft" before putting in your map info.
  

• Use your real name. Any posts published under suspicious or clearly anonymous user names will be unpublished until you attach a real name to them.

Those are just some basics. If you happen to create an extra-long post missing a break, or accidentally embed a video that's bleeding over into the site's sidebar, we may go ahead and help you fix it. And we'll continue to give advice and feedback about how to make your posts look as good as possible.

Thanks again for joining our site. And please, don't be a stranger. Email me if you have any specific questions, suggestions or feedback about the site at all.

—Ted Mann