h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We can't believe it...ten years! Ten years! How did it go so fast? Happy Birthday, h2g2!

First of all, we want to thank you all for making this the fantastic and special place it is. We really do appreciate everything you do for h2g2 - your Entries, your chatting, your subbing, your Scouting, all the people you welcome and help and the artwork you provide - but regrettably we can't always show it. We're especially indebted to our incredible volunteer groups who work so hard, purely for the love of h2g2. Thank you!

...which brings us onto our new smileys. Yes - the eagerly-awaited new smileys are here. You can see them at our smiley page. At this point, we'd like to thank our tremendous Community Artists, who made the smileys possible. Special mentions must go to Dr Anthea, King Bomba, Fluffy Lump, but most of all, to Malabarista, who really has pulled out all the stops in order to create the most incredible new smileys under great pressure. They're brilliant! So, if you get a minute today, please do say thanks to them!

(And expect a bit more news about smileys today, once we get our initial technical difficulties sorted out...)

Secondly: at one stage this year, as evidenced by the 1-2-1 with Antelia in the Post this year, things seemed to be looking up.

As ever, I'm not able to say anything definite but it genuinely does feel as if things are picking up a bit for h2g2 in terms of how we are perceived by those who make decisions regarding funding.

At that stage, we'd been promised resources for a redesign of h2g2. Great, we thought. Pirate games! Text speak!1 but we held back on making any sort of announcement. We ended up being quite glad that we did...

Sadly, shortly after that, the funding we had been allocated (that had encouraged the optimism of that statement) failed to materialise. It looked as if we were going to have to send you all a slightly risqué novelty card come April.

More happily, later some funding was confirmed. The brief is for a 'sympathetic refresh' of h2g2. This will bring h2g2 more in line with other BBC sites visually, while ensuring that h2g2 still has the widest functionality of all the DNA websites and that the character of the Community is respected - as well as enabling us to be at the forefront of any new technology developed by DNA. We don't have any more details than that, currently, but we hope you will share our optimism about the changes. We will be consulting you all as we get to know more.

We'd also like you to reminisce about the past ten years on h2g2 in an unashamedly nostalgic Talking Point.

Finally...did we say thank you? I'm not sure we did! Thank you, h2g2 Researchers, past and present. You really do mean the world to us. Here's to the next decade! Happy Birthday to all of us!