As new years go, this one's been pretty big for us. After slaving away for weeks on end getting the site working, it's been nothing short of uplifting (especially for me) to see it all getting put to good use.

We kicked things off at the start of the month with a glance over our shoulder at the best posts 2009 had to offer, including such gems as February's Az + Bo Soap Runout, March's Angriest Raver Ever and September's live coverage of Blind Aura's trip to London for the Virgin Media Shorts awards. James also gave you his top three mixes of 2009 and the crème de la crème of 2009's photos.

January's also seen the start of a new weekly feature we like to call "Cyberwaste" (at least until someone can think of a better name). Hold tight for the third edition tomorrow, until then you can read #1 and #2.

Our newest contributor Dan provided us with numerous quality articles, including our exclusive interview with Synkro and a review of Joy Orbison's EP, the former being easily the most viewed post this month.

The very same Synkro set out on a US tour later on in the month, which you can read about here and here. Expect a full update upon his return...

For many people the start of the month was nothing but chaotic as the cold weather made getting anywhere outside your front door virtually impossible. With phrases such as "coldest winter for 20 years" being banded about, we thought it would be a good idea to give you a little survival guide. While I'm not sure how many people followed our frankly invaluable handbook, I'm sure those that did were glad of it...

January was also a month of controversy, with Facebook threatening to file lawsuits against the so-called "Suicide Machine", for apparently breaching their terms of service by actually - shock horror - letting people delete their accounts. Subsequently, you weren't able to commit Facebook-icide for a week or so but it's now back online and probably still under threat from some bigwigs on bigger salaries sat in the Facebook offices.

Not a bad launch month then, as launch months go. The website has proved fairly sturdy so far, with only a couple of major updates that resulted in some messed up posts while I went back through everything and removed a load of bbcode. Those should all be sorted now, but if you spot any unruly [b] or [img] tags then don't hesitate to let us know.

After asking about for a few weeks, James decided about half way through the month that letting people comment on posts was infact a good idea after all, and I set about making it so. If you've got an account with us you can now discuss/debate/argue/flame to your hearts content, and you even get some nice text formatting buttons to do it with.

February looks to be a good month, at least from where we're stood. As promised, there'll be loads of updates to your account, meaning you'll be able to write a bit about yourself, upload an avatar, etc. Then of course there's our first birthday bashment which unless you've been living under a rock I'm sure you're already aware of. A quid to get in, can you really say fairer than that? There's more exclusive content to come as well, including interviews with some big names that you won't want to miss out on...

In all then, happy days! We hope you've had a good start to your 2010 and if you haven't, come down on the 4th February and we promise it'll get better :)

Peace, respect and all that,
The Example Family