CENTRE — Over the past few years, The Post has led local, and even regional, media outlets onto the World Wide Web in a variety of ways. We're proud of the social network we have in 2012, and we are constantly working to find new and innovative ways to reach out to readers in northeast Alabama and northwest Georgia—and across the world—with news from here in Cherokee County.

Let us tell you about what we're doing to keep our readers abreast of what's going on around us.

Our original website, The Post Online (www.postpaper.com) has been around for over a decade. From primitive early versions of our homepage to today's slick, professional design, we've been able to bring our online readers local and state news, Tim Sanders' Road Apples column, an extensive Weiss Lake archive and much more through the years. Today, The Post Online features a link to Cherokee County's only live webcam along with links to national and international news and sports stories, our Post Photo Patrol slide show, our exclusive lineup of regular contributors and a Family Features recipe video that updates itself weekly. Our archives at The Post Online go back to, in some cases, to 1999.

Last fall, we introduced the e-Post. We have been thrilled with the feedback our readers have given us about this innovative new supplement to our traditional website. The e-Post allows Internet users—either from their home or work computer, laptop, or handheld device such as an iPad—to view all 36 pages of the current edition of The Post. There's also a searchable archive section, in case you missed one of our reports from last week, last month, or as far back as 2009. If you want to be reminded of the weekly update, which typically takes place around 11 a.m. every Monday, you can sign up for an e-mail alert right on the homepage.

More and more, our readers are also Facebook users. We've been on Facebook for a few years now, and over that time we've made (as of Friday at 3 p.m.) 4,953 friends, 844 subscribers, and another 861 followers at our new “The Post” fan page. All the updates we post on our original Facebook page get posted to the fan page, as well.

In addition to posting links to our own original news stories (primarily on Mondays and Tuesdays) we are constantly posting columns from news organizations around the world—Yahoo, the Huffington Post, CNN, NASCAR, the Tuscaloosa News, Fox News, NBC Nightly News, etc. Some of the news is relevant to our part of the world and some we simply find interesting. Occasionally, we toss in a link we figure it sure to rile up one end of the political spectrum or the other, and we're never disappointed with the comments our posts generate among our more avid friends and followers. That's kind of the idea, after all.

One of our favorite features on Facebook was actually suggested by a friend. Every week, we post an old news or entertainment clip under the headline “Flashback Friday.” Earlier this month, for example, we posted a clip of some of the weirder answers “Family Feud” host Richard Dawson ever heard from families participating in his TV game show. We've also featured movie clips, TV show theme songs, and news items from years gone by.

As of last week, we were up to nearly 500 Twitter followers (we're @postpaper). We love sharing information and tidbits from people in the news, sports and entertainment industries, and we've started to notice an uptick in the number of folks who have signed on to follow our “tweets” over the past several months. Twitter takes a little time to master, but if you enjoy finding out about what's going on in Cherokee County and around the Weiss Lake area 140 characters at a time, we suggest you check out Twitter. It's also a great place to actually interact with celebrities and sports stars. NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon (@JeffGordonWeb) and Michael Waltrip (@mw55) are just a few examples of Twitter users who regularly interact, person-to-person, with their followers.

All that said, the traditional version of The Post—that brightly colored stack of paper you can actually hold in your hand—isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Some national newspapers are struggling through the Internet era, searching for a way to stay relevant and useful to readers, but we're confident we have found a combination of outlets that will satisfy folks looking for information about our area for many years to come.

Whether you're a longtime reader or someone who has just stopped by one of our 135 blue boxes (our found one of our Internet outlets) for the very first time, we thank you for reading, following, friending or sharing Cherokee County's No. 1 weekly.