A Helping hand For New Researchers
Created | Updated Apr 8, 2002
Welcome to h2g2! This page is for you, a new researcher! Dive into the community and experience the best of The Guide!
A Brief Introduction
h2g2 is the Earth-edition of The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams started the ball rolling with his hilarious sci-fi comedy on Radio and TV. It was the story of Arthur Dent, his friend Ford Prefect and other bizzare characters such as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android. After the Earth was unexpectadly demolished, Arthur found himself roaming around the cosmos with an incredibly useful book - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford Prefect was a researcher, helping piece together the new edition. it was a guide to Life, The Universe and Everything.
h2g2 is the new edition, turning fiction into fact.
Smileys
You probably noticed these things within seconds of arriving. Small yellow smiley faces with a variety of expressions. They're specially designed for h2g2 so if you see them anywhere outside of the BBC then alert the italics! To use them in conversation forums, simply type [smiley] (replace the square brackets with the triangular ones1) or the name of any other smiley, e.g: [wow], [sad], [cool]. You can see the full list of smileys here.
When using Smileys in GuideML (I'll go over this later) you must use a slightly different method. You need to type [SMILEY TYPE="smiley"/] again replacing the brackets and switching the name of the smiley in the quotation marks.
GuideML
You know you're in a classy club when you have your own Mark-up Language. 
You already know a little GML if you've read the bit about the smileys.
GML is a simplified version of HTML. You can create an entry by typing this!
[GUIDE]
[BODY]
...contents...
[/BODY]
[/GUIDE]
This example gives you a pretty good idea how the whole idea works. You have to wrap things up in tags. To simplify this, lets take the paragraph tag, the most common. To start writing a paragraph, you use [P]. To close off a paragraph, you use [/P].2 Simple! Of-course, some elements don't need the second tag: horizontal rules and smileys for example. For a horizontal rule we use [HR/] The tag closes itself with the '/' at the end. For more information, see the GuideML Clinic where all the tags are explained.
A few links to help you liven up GML pages: Picture Library, Web Safe Colours.
(MaW has created a nice little program called GuidePost which can be very helpful in coding GuideML entries. Have a snoop around on his page for the link. Also, you can see the GuideML of any entry by going up to your address bar and replacing the A720055 with testA720055. ( Try it.) You can also do this with User Pages. Replace U189208 with testuserpage189208 ( Try it.)
Links
There are a few different ways of linking and they're all commonly used. First of all lets take the GuideML links:
[LINK H2G2="A187229"] ...text... [/LINK]
The tags above will give you a link to an A123456 entry. Just about every page has one of these code numbers. The one above is for the GuideML Clinic.
[LINK BIO="U189208"] ...text... [/LINK]
This link is to a user page. In particular, mine. 
[LINK HREF="http://www.bbc.co.uk"] ...text... [/LINK]
No prizes for guessing this one. This links to an external site. Remeber the 'http://' bit.
now in conversations or plain text entries. You can easily make a link by typing in
A187229 or U189208. However these aren't exactly memorable. You can use names instead of number in some cases. Lets say you wanted to link to The Post. all you have to do is type:
[./]ThePost[/.]
After replacing the square brackets with angled ones you'd get a nice link that looks like this: ThePost. You can only do this with specified names. You can read these by clicking here.
Talking on h2g2
h2g2 is not a chat room. it's hosted on the BBC and therefore the moderators can be strict. Use etiquette; don't swear, don't flame and be friendly! Use smileys to convey you're emotions and don't TALK IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Its the 'net equivalent of shouting and could be taken the wrong way. Spelling and grammar aren't important in forums but we like to see people who use proper language. And please remeber that this is not text messaging: you'll impress no-one using a few numbers in letters.
Getting into h2g2 conversations can be tough when baffling phrases like 'the Italics', 'RL', 'Flea market' and 'Zaphodistas' are flying around. You'll pick up more as you go around. The Italics are the inhouse staff members like Peta and Mark Moxon whose names are dispayed in - have you guessed it? -italics. RL means Real Life, whatever that is. 
The Flea market is where abandoned entries are picked up and continued and the Zaphodistas are those who protest against how the moderation works etc. there's a great page that deals with all this jargon. Click here to see it.
Skins
Skins change the way h2g2 is viewed. There are currently two skins. Alabaster is the white, green and organge one with black text which is the default skin. The other is Classic Goo3 which is dark blue with white text and has a gooey menu along the top and side of the page. I might as well mention the two clubs for each skin (
) : The Classic Goo Fan Club and The Alabaster Fan Club. You can change your default skin by selecting it on the Preferences page.
View this page in Goo / Alabaster.
Things to do
See Who's Online
Extras!
Mmm! Gadgets! Everyone loves gadgets! Want some gadgets for your page? How about these?
Favourite Entries Menu - Find a spot on your U-page and enter this in GuideML:
[ITEM-LIST NAME="dropdown"]
[FIRSTITEM]My Favourite Guide Entries:[/FIRSTITEM]
[ITEM H2G2="A672022"]The Life and Works of J.R.R. Tolkien[/ITEM]
[ITEM H2G2="A292790"]Terry Pratchett's Discworld[/ITEM]
[ITEM H2G2="A527799"]Antiquated Words and Phrases[/ITEM]
[/ITEM-LIST]
Replace the A123456 number with the entry code for the entry you want to include and obviously you'll have to replace the titles.
Other gadgets you can use are the 'Who's Online?' gadget: [WHO-IS-ONLINE]...text...[/WHO-IS-ONLINE] or the Popup Conversation list: [POPUPCONVERSATIONS]...text...[/POPUPCONVERSATIONS]. Check out the Guestbook gadget by clicking here.
Help!
Don't panic! Help is at hand! When you get baffled by techno troubles, get help from the Gurus. If you're problem is more of a community one or you need help with finding something or someone, the Aces are your best friend.
2One of the main problems that people have when GMLing is the brackets. (traingular ones remember!) make sure that all brackets are properly closed or you'll get an error message something lik 'Bad Closing Element - expecting [P}' 3The best one!