Happy 2010, and welcome to the new SFBG.com -- the Web site for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

We've redesigned the site in order to have a more immediate interaction with you, our reader, and to launch the next phase in our 45-year history of serving the Bay Area community with the latest, local-oriented, proudly made-in-the-Bay news, reviews, commentary, and guides. It's a fiesta, so dig in!

In the near future, we'll be adding new features, making some wee adjustments, and ironing out any kinks. We always appreciate your feedback, and hope that you enjoy our changes.

Here are a few notes to help you get oriented.

*Our homepage now consists of a Top Story, links to listings, our daily Hot List, and recent posts from our blogs. The homepage is updated several times a day with fresh stories and features.

*You can access the content of our current weekly paper by clicking on the cover under "This Week's Paper" at the top of the site.

*You can access anything on the site through the top navigational bar, using the mouse-over menus -- or, you can use the search box located at the top of every page.

*You no longer have to register and remember that pesky username and password to comment on any articles or blog posts.

*Unfortunately, a few recent comments on articles and posts were deleted during the transition. We apologize. Please feel free to post your thoughts again if they were deleted.

*The weekly paper area will be updated every Tuesday night, as usual. But the blogs and homepage will be updated several times a day.

*We are still in the process of adding some back issues to the site. A few old article link URLs no longer work, but you can find almost any article from 2005 until now by using the search box.

*As always, comments are welcome -- we love to engage in constructive dialogue. We would never censor anyone expressing a different opinion about or offering supplemental information to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete any comments containing hate speech, libelous implications, or completely unrelated blather.

*Please explore!

Again, we always welcome feedback. You can email me directly, and we'll be publishing a Contact Us page very soon.

Thanks,

Marke B.

Senior Editor, Culture and Web

marke@sfbg.com

PS. Incredible thanks to our Web developer Harris Rashid and tech admin Adam Michon for all their help!