We’ve made some important changes to our site’s policies. Please read the summaries below to see how they affect you.

1. We updated our Acceptable Use Policy to be more in line with our current commenting system. You DO NOT need to be registered to comment, but you still need to provide a name and a valid e-mail. This information is stored to recognize you next time. You need at least one comment approved by an administrator before you can comment without moderation. This is a layer to prevent spam. Your name and e-mail gets stored in our database to recognize each time you comment. We DO NOT sell, trade, lease, or lend this information. (In fact, we never look at it!)

2. We updated our Privacy Policy to align with how we use your information, especially when it comes to logging in or registering with a third-party service like Facebook or Twitter. We don’t store your e-mail or passwords when that happens. Our database retains a special key that recognizes you from those services. The only other data we pull in is your user avatar (picture) that gets used on our site. We CANNOT sell, trade, lease, or lend this information. We DO store your username and e-mail address when you register using the traditional method of providing a username and e-mail address.

3. We converted our free classifieds to require registration. We regret this step, but we’ve been getting a lot of spam ads. We have better spam protection in place through our registration process. We want to keep this great service going, and this was the best way to keep its value for our users.

As always, we encourage your feedback – especially criticism and feature requests. We want to design a site that suits the interests of the community, and your input is extremely valuable. Please feel free to use our Contact form to reach the site owners at any time.

Welcome to the Destination Wake Forest Blog!

Stay tuned to this space. This will be the official channel to keep readers and sponsors informed on what is going on in and around our virtual newsroom.

Regular readers should have noticed that 2011 was a big year for us. We switched from Drupal to WordPress as the main engine of our publishing platform. We also have recently upgraded our theme to surface more of our news content. Of course, the task now (like when I bought my then-fiancee a jewelry box) is to fill the site with content.

That’s where YOU come in.

When we started Destination Wake Forest in 2009, we developed the site with the intent of putting publishing power in the hands of the community at-large. We wanted to break down the old model of gatekeepers delivering news content based on physical space and advertising sales. The Web is a medium that allows for content creation by all users, but most people don’t know where to begin. We want to give the people in greater Wake Forest that power, and the place to begin is our Contact page. When you click Submit, it doesn’t get dropped into a heaping queue of unanswered e-mails. It goes directly to both owners, and we act on it as swiftly as possible.

But, we’re not looking for your content, right? That certainly can’t be any interest. WRONG! We want it all. Have club news? Kids sports? Academic achievements? Do you have expertise in a particular area and you’d like to pitch us some articles? SEND IT NOW!

In the coming weeks and months you will see some new voices on our site. We are adding writers who will bring their own perspectives to life in this corner of Wake County. We hope you will read, comment on, and share (even pin!) their stories.

Thank you for reading. We have enjoyed your support over the past three (gasp!) years. We look forward to your continued support as we build Wake Forest’s best news site!