It’s been a few months since we started talking about our new Rockhaq website for schools and colleges and we’re all really pleased to finally be unveiling it today! A lot of hard work has been put in by our developers Tammie Lister and Paul Gibbs to make it look and work brilliantly. You can find out more and say hi to our team here if you like!

As you look around you will no doubt notice many changes and new features. Why is this? Well the first reason is that Rockhaq has effectively become a social networking site where schools, colleges, teachers, pupils and students can now post blogs on almost anything music-related. Reviews, interviews, opinions and comments are all welcomed and the very best ones will be featured in our homepage slider.

We also have a leaderboard on our homepage that will show you our best young music reviewers by their gaming points. You can hit the top of the leaderboard by making sure your work is well-written, fast, and regular enough to be awarded points and, if you’re lucky enough, special Rockhaq plectrum badges that sit on your profile for everyone else to see how great you are.

A word about our gaming badges – we’ve taken our cue from famous bands, artists, album sleeves and personalities to make these more relevant to what we’re doing. Every badge has a story and some of them will be very difficult to win, but the best student journalists will get there, we’re sure of it.

We’ll be adding more information about our exclusive missions – which we will be awarding to our best reviewers – and how to win them, over the next few weeks, so look out for that. In fact, join our newsletter, Twitter feed and Facebook page to keep up to date with our news. We’re still running a competition on our Facebook page for fans to win £10 HMV vouchers, so check that out too.

This is only the start – over the next few months and as reviewers post more blogs, we will make more changes so that regular visitors can view more student content on our homepage. Phew, wish us luck with it! And if you have any questions or comments just get in touch with us as usual. We’d love to hear from you!