As you have probably noticed, things are changing a little at Yellowhammer.

The black and yellow design has been our trademark look for the past year or so, but I thought it was time to brighten things up a little.

You also may have noticed that the homepage no longer “snaps” to the top every time you visit. When you land on our homepage you are now immediately taken to the newest stories on the blog. I know this has been a point of annoyance for people who check Yellowhammer frequently so I was glad to have that tweaked.

An email list signup form may have popped up when you visited the site for the first time after the changes were put in place. This popup is programmed to only come up once a week and hopefully won’t be too invasive.

There will be a few other minor tweaks to the sidebar on the homepage in the next couple of days, but nothing much worth mentioning. We’ll just be placing a couple of more widgets to better connect the site to our social media pages.

Outside of the aesthetic changes, the most immediate difference you have likely noticed is in the comment section. Since Yellowhammer’s launch in late 2011, we have allowed commenting under pseudonyms. This has led to some interesting discussions, especially when the Montgomery insider crowd took to the comment section to call each other out. Commenters like “Dunce,” “Sy Sperling,” “Inside Goat,” “Kathy P,” “DJ Jazzy” and numerous others have been frequent topics of discussion among people in the State House who enjoyed speculating about their true identities.

But as of yesterday, the only way to comment on Yellowhammer is through Facebook Connect. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg describes it:

“Facebook Connect makes it easier for you to take your online identity with you all over the Web… You won’t have to create separate accounts for every website, just use your Facebook login wherever Connect is available.”

Connect is now available on Yellowhammer. So to comment on a post, you simply have to be signed in to your Facebook account.

I wrestled with this decision to transition the comment section. I realize the number of comments will go down for a period of time because people aren’t near as forthcoming when their actual name is tied to their comments — especially Montgomery insiders. However, as Yellowhammer’s reach has grown and our readership has changed, it’s become more and more important for us to adapt.

Yellowhammer initially started as a blog focused on insiders and people who live and breath politics 24/7. That won’t change. We’ll still have “Rumors & Rumblings” and we’ll still continue to provide behind-the-scenes analysis — especially as we move toward the 2014 election cycle. No other source will be able to bring you inside the action the way we will.

I’ve always said that Yellowhammer’s value has as much to do with who reads the site as it does with how many people read the site, so we will not be changing a thing with regard to our content.

But what I underestimated when I launched Yellowhammer was the appetite across our state for a conservative take on both state and national issues, from an Alabama perspective. What started as a place for insiders has turned into the go-to source for political news and opinion for tens of thousands of people across Alabama.

Over the next several months, we will continue to change and implement new ideas. Some of these ideas will work. Some of them won’t. But it’s not going to be boring.