First off: if things look a bit askew, hit refresh on your browser! Yes, we've changed the design of BusyThumbs a little. Everything is still pretty much where it was, although it may look a little different. The new layout should make the site even easier and faster to use. Your feedback is welcome as usual - leave a a comment here or in the forum!

BusyThumbs is pleased to announce the immediate launch of our new forums. Visit the forums by clicking here or on the button in the site navigation menu. The forums use the same login as the rest of the site, so there's no need to re-register - simply login! The forums introduce a range of new features to the site itself, including avatars and private messaging. These can be seen straight away in your profile. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to post them here or in the forums themselves!

Starting right now all users have the option to be notified by email whenever someone posts a comment on one of their blogs. The email contains a summary of the user's post, plus the comment itself. This functionality is now on by default on all blogs, but should you wish to disable it, simply click on Edit Blog Info in the relevant blog in your control panel and set comment notification to none.

We are happy to announce that the winner of December's Refer-A-Friend league was Jenkz, with 11 referrals. Congratulations Jenkz - the MP3 player is on its way!

We have now finished our data salvage operation and restored as many pictures as we could. If you find any missing pictures in your blog, we would ask you to upload them again. Ironically, the incident happening shortly before we were due to complete our backup systems strengthening and upgrade. These steps are now complete, and much safer and more reliable backup systems are in place to prevent any data loss in the future. We realise that this has been a big setback to our otherwise rocketing startup, but we hope that a range of new features to be unveiled over the next weeks will make up for it.