By Tim Engstrom, managing editor

There has been a change. If you logged in to the Albert Lea Tribune&8217;s Web site on late Saturday night or early this morning, you would have noticed a new look. In fact, it&8217;s a new everything. And you might have gone so far as to log in and register yourself as a user.

If you really explored the bells and whistles of AlbertLeaTribune.com, you might have found the site called Spotted and logged in to that. There you can peruse various Trib photographs or you can upload yours.

And you might have found a few things that don&8217;t quite work yet. Please be patient with the Tribune staff. This is entirely different than any previous project online or in print. The plus side is it allows the Tribune staff greater control over AlbertLeaTribune.com than the old site, but that control comes with a learning curve.

As part of the site&8217;s debut, the Tribune is giving away $1,000 in gas cards. The Tribune will draw 40 names to win $25 gas cards. Just log into the site and click on the big blinking advertisement that says &8220;Free Gas.&8221;

AlbertLeaTribune.com remains the Albert Lea area&8217;s Web site with the greatest number of viewers. However, the old site was mostly one-way communication. The new site will allow more two-way communication. There will be news, commentary and nearly everything that is in the printed paper, but there are places for your comments, your posts and your photos, too. And there are places for submitting items for the print paper, such as letters to the editor or classified ads. This will be Albert Lea&8217;s online community.

&8220;The new Albert Lea Tribune Web site will make it easier for members of the community to be more involved with mass communication and personal communication,&8221; said Albert Lea resident Jeshua Erickson, who is one of the new bloggers on the site. &8220;It&8217;s even more of a community resource, because more people in the community will be able to use the Web site.&8221;

Let&8217;s go through some of the features:

At the end of stories, briefs, columns and editorials, readers will be able to post comments.

Some of the items in the printed paper that weren&8217;t online before now are, such as submitted photos, political cartoons and convictions. OK, they might not be there today, but they will be soon as we cross some t&8217;s and dot some i&8217;s.

Two blogs start off our entrance into the blogosphere. One is by Erickson, and one is by reporter Sarah Stultz. Look for more blogs by members of the community and staff as time goes by. Erickson&8217;s blog is called Welcome to St. Thomas Ave. Stultz calls her blog Life Lessons. When you click on &8220;News&8221; in the blue bar, you&8217;ll see blogs on the next page, too.

On the sports page, readers can click on their school&8217;s logo to read stories about their school sports teams.

On the local news page, if they can&8217;t already, readers from surrounding communities will be able to click on their town and go to stories about their town.

Getting to Spotted &8212; where you can upload photos and message other users &8212; is easy. On the home page, you&8217;ll be able to click on &8220;For Photos and More, Click Here.&8221; Or eventually on the word Spotted under Multimedia.

Another way is to go to &8220;News&8221; in the blue bar at the top of the page and click on it, then look for &8220;Check Out Spotted for Photos and More.&8221;

The weather icon and temperature in the upper right corner is real-time weather. You can be inside without windows and know what it is like outside in Albert Lea. If you click on the weather, it should lead to KIMT weather.

Meteorologist Adam Frederick set up that portion of the site. He will continue to add features to it as weeks pass.

If you find a link that says &8220;Photos,&8221; you will find all the photos that Tribune staffers post to the site &8212; from mug shots to your wedding photos to the feature photos.

&8220;We are pleased to be able to bring Freeborn County a place to share everything,&8221; said Tribune Publisher Scott Schmeltzer. &8220;The people of Freeborn County and southern Minnesota deserve a spot like this and we will continue to work at upgrading and finding new ways to bring you video, news, photos and more.&8221;

Schmeltzer designated a few readers to be testers. Some offered feedback and praise. One, Freeborn County Engineer Sue Miller, said she reviewed the site at work, at home (where she has dial-up service) and by smartphone. She said she is &8220;very impressed with the load speeds.&8221;

Schmeltzer said readers will find a few things under construction such as Classifieds and Records &8220;but that will all be perfected within a few weeks.&8221;