I usually leave all the thank yous and emotional stuff to Mr C because he's good at hugging people and he likes that kind of thing. However, I have been completely blown away by the support we've had over the past couple of months, so I elbowed him out the way to write this post. Plus, I wanted to make a graph.

After we decided to scale back on our Sidepodcast duties, we hoped we could get the odd extra post from some of our regular commenters, but we could not have anticipated how each and every one of you has stepped up to make the site even greater.

172 guest posts have been published so far in 2010

The graph above shows the number of guest posts published on the site since the beginning of the year. February saw a bit of a boost, thanks to the culmination of the off-season Thursday Thoughts and Friday Fun series, but that was a bit of an anomaly. In total 172 guest posts have been published so far in 2010, with 54 of those coming in the past four weeks. A staggering and much appreciated effort from all concerned.

Firstly, to our regular daily post writers - RG, Marilene, Gavin, James, Lukeh and Lou. Big thanks go out for your weekly efforts. Writing the daily post each and every day for about a year was beginning to take its toll, and I think the quality and variety has increased so much now that we all share the task. There are links and items that you would never get from me (eh-hem, golf) and that can only be a good thing.

Over the past month or so, we've branched out from our normal programming of F1 goodness (F1 with a bit of Eurovision and Le Mans), as two rather big sporting events took place. The World Cup only occurs every four years, so we hadn't encountered it since starting Sidepodcast. Initially, we wanted some posts to keep the football talk in one place, away from those of us who like more wheel-dominated sports. However, it turns out that the World Cup was quite a lot of fun, so signing up guest writers from the super-football fan to the less-initiated was excellent. We covered each and every day of the tournament and followed every single high and low.

Along with football, we also featured a post for each day of the Wimbledon fortnight. There were perhaps less of us interested in the tennis, but we still had a great time watching the topsy-turvey tournament play out under our eyes and in the comments.

Things are gradually going back to normal now, but we're still loving the guest posts we get through. If you're inspired to write a guest post yourself, have a look at this page. There's plenty of space for one and all.