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.

The polls on the homepage, Varsity Extra page and Boise State football page are finally working again.

While it isn't a scientific poll, I know lots of readers enjoy sharing their opinion. I heard from a lot of readers who missed the poll - and I hear from people when we have a typo in the question or when we don't provide enough voting options. We appreciate your feedback.

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Update: It looks like the issue with the polls is complicated and it may not be fixed today. Our support team continues to work on the problem.

In addition, the most popular stories list is not updating. That problem should be resolved today.

Thank you for your patience with these issues.

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Looking for a way to save money on dining out? Today, you can save 30 percent off gift certificates to local restaurants. (Follow this link.)

Many of them are already sold out so you'll want to check soon. I know the two I had my eye on are already gone. That'll teach me to wait too long!

Darlene Carnopis
Online Initiatives Editor