Recently we upgraded our commenting solution to the newest version offered by Disqus (our vendor). We were one of a handful of McClatchy markets who made the transition as a test.

What we discovered is that all of the issues had not yet been worked out, and it isn't ready for prime time. So we've rolled back to the previous version.

We know that some users have had trouble logging in to make a comment. We are not sure whether rolling back to the previous version will solve this issue, but the support team at McClatchy is aware of the issue and has been looking into it.

To our readers

You will notice that our commenting section looks a bit different. Disqus, our partner who provides our commenting solution, recently made changes to their product.

Some of the immediate things you'll notice:
* You can click the up arrow under a comment to let everyone know you liked the comment. Click the down arrow on comments you find less helpful to the conversation.
* You can follow particular users and view their other posts by clicking the Community tab above the comments section.

You will notice that the design of the story pages on IdahoStatesman.com is different today. (The changes actually took place on Sunday.)

The changes were made based on reader and advertiser input and are a part of an ongoing process to improve readers' experience on our site.

Some of the changes:

* The right column was moved up next to the headline in order to get related story content higher on the page.

* When available, the primary photo is larger on the page than it was before.

* There is an ad in the body of the story.

Readers,

When we launched our redesigned website in April, we said that we would go back and tweak the design as needed. I want to let you know about a minor change on our homepage.

We have moved the "Recent Galleries" to the top right of the homepage, where "Most Popular Pages" was. We did this for a couple of reasons.

1) We know that our photo galleries are extremely popular with readers and we want to put them at the top of the page to make them even easier to find.

There is someone on our site who is impersonating me and putting comments in stories on IdahoStatesman.com. It is our policy for staff to not comment on stories on our site other to answer reader questions about the site. I would not comment on the subject of the story.

If you do not like our comment guidelines, please feel free to post your comments on another site. Here is our policy:

What You Should Know About Comments on IdahoStatesman.com

Our editorial board is meeting with primary election candidates from the Treasure Valley. All of the interviews are recorded and you can listen to hear the candidates' point of view in their own words. The Statesman will publish endorsements from April 27 to May 10 but we are putting up links to the audio as soon as all candidates in that race have been interviewed.

You'll find the audio here.

We've created two new blogs recently.

* Election Central and

* Retail Rodeo

Whether you are a college basketball fanatic or just care about basketball during tourney time, you could be $500 richer. The local person who gets the most games correct will win the $500. And if you are really good at this, you might be eligible for the national prize of a cool million! (see the contest rules page for details)

I always fill out a bracket for fun and compete with my kids. And yep, the 12 year old does better than me. Anyone have any suggestions for me?

You'll find the contest

When we decided to redesign our IdahoStatesman.com website, we figured that we’d get as many complaints as compliments. After all, change is hard for everyone.

But based on the feedback since we launched the new website Feb. 7, we were wrong. Really wrong. About 70 percent of the people who took the time to get in touch with us are happy with the redesign.

Most people told us they like how the site loads faster and is less cluttered. That’s particularly satisfying feedback, since those were two of our biggest goals with the redesign.

I've gotten a couple of calls today from readers concerned because older stories are listed in the Most Read section of IdahoStatesman.com. A couple of people have asked if we are putting out old news on the homepage - which they don't like.

Stories in the Most Read aren't selected by us. They get placed in that list by an automatic process based on the number of page views for the story. Because our locally written stories are archived on our site for a year (and sometimes longer), someone searching our site can find the stories and then link back to them.