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

Okay, so now some of you have had a chance to look at the Read Only Beta of the redesigned H2G2 site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/beta/) we thought we'd take the opportunity to talk a little more about some of the changes you might have spotted.

First of all, we just wanted to say we sincerely hope you like what you see! There's lots of stuff that we're still working on, and that you've already pointed out to us (for instance, getting smileys to work on conversation posts, links in conversation posts, footnotes and special characters in Entries, etc) and there are pages and buttons currently 'greyed out'. But we just wanted to give you a snapshot of the site and the work that we've done so far, as well as a chance to take in some of the changes that have been made around the site.

So what's actually changed?

Well, the main changes are in how the site looks. Essentially, we wanted the site to look better. It's been a major criticism of H2G2 for years and this redesign has finally given us an opportunity to bring the look and feel of the site up to date. This has been done using the BBC's latest Global Visual Language design standards, which focus on the consistency, accessibility and readability of sites across bbc.co.uk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/gel/. Sadly, this means the other skins (Brunel, Goo, Alabaster, Plain) will no longer be supported as they no longer meet the required standards visually or technically on the new platform we're now built on. We know that this will difficult for many of you, but we ask you to give the new design a chance, get used to it for a bit, and then let us know what you think.

Beneath the surface it is still the same website that you know and love, and the ethos and spirit behind it remains the same. If you look at the new front page you will see how we've given a greater prominence to our late founder, Douglas Adams, who now has a permanent link in the top nav bar (and a destination page dedicated to him that will be live when the full version of the site is launched). And then there are the dolphins in our site-wide background images - our nod to 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish'. We've also put you the community at the heart of the front page too. 'Ask H2G2 - What the community is talking about right now' has been elevated to take centre stage. It shows to the outside world that H2G2 is a community, and that real people are continually talking about a huge range of subjects in a way that you don't find on many other messageboards. We want to show that you get a much better quality of debate on H2G2! Peer Review too, the engine behind all the great writing on H2G2, has been give a greater prominence.

We've also managed to add a few new functions. Each Researcher now has an Avatar, a profile picture they can upload via their BBC iD account. (If you've not done this before, go to your 'Settings' in the iD bar on the current h2g2 site, click on the 'Your Public Profile' tab, then hit 'Edit' and follow the instructions on the next page. For more details see: http://id.bbc.co.uk/users/help/profile/#profile.addprofilepic - please note, there may be a short wait while your picture is approved by the moderators. There is a shortcut link to this http://id.bbc.co.uk/settings/picture - discovered courtesy of swl! - BUT this won't work if you haven't previously signed in to BBC iPlayer, set up a profile page and enabled the Recommends function. You can do that here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbiplayer/ Please also note you don't have to sync your profile to Facebook or Twitter, but if you do you will have the option of drawing in your avatar from those sites.)

Entries will also carry BBC Online's social bookmarking tools, which will allow you - once you're able to sign in to the new version of the site - to bookmark and share Approved Entries (our new name for Edited Entries - we'll come on to that in a second) with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. And we've also redesigned the badges! But the way the site essentially operates has and will not change, as you'll see when the fully functioning and dynamic version of the site is launched later this year.

Now, in terms of navigation and terminology used, we've made a few slight changes that will hopefully make the site easier for newcomers to grasp and find their way around. If the site is to prosper we need to attract new contributors and help them to get to grips with the way it functions. Some of you have already noticed the change from lower case h2g2 to the upper case H2G2. We feel that the upper case letters look better, look a bit bigger and bolder and signify the site is developing and evolving. The 'Ask the h2g2 community' forum title was changed to 'Ask H2G2' to reflect this last week. The 'community' was dropped, not for any sinister political or ideological reasons (the word 'community' is now bold as brass on the front page), but simply for practical spacing issues! The old title wouldn't fit on the page with the new design. No other reason. With the current site running in parallel with the Beta, there will be some inconsistency between h2g2 and H2G2 across the site for a while, but we'll be slowly ironing this out in the coming weeks.

Another change is that Edited Guide Entries have now been renamed Approved Entries. This isn't a qualitative judgement on the Entries that are not 'Approved', it is just that we wanted to make the distinction easier for new and casual users of the site to understand - and it is one of the things that came out in our user testing.

Finally, we've also removed Life, The Universe and Everything as the top levels of our Categories. Again we've done this to make the site easier and more logical to navigate, so please don't see this as us wanting to distance ourselves from DNA's works, that couldn't be further from the truth.

We're very excited about the way the new site looks but please do let us know what you think. The point of the Read Only Beta is to give you a snapshot of the new design and let you explore and feed back and what you do and don't like about the site. We will continue to be on hand to respond to any comments you may have.

The site is in a process of evolution and that is the spirit in which we undertook this redesign project. Please explore and enjoy!

Sam and Chris
The H2G2 Editors

PS We're not opening a new thread for this announcement, that's because if you have any general comments about the redesign we'd like you to continue to add them to the conversation thread we opened earlier today when we announced the Beta live link: F77636?thread=7874056 Specific editorial or technical feedback should be directed to the Read Only Beta Feedback page: A76459170.