H2g2 - DNA

DNA

The software for h2g2—and of its related 'sister' communities in the BBC (now all closed), such as "606", "Film Network", "Action Network", "Comedy Soup", "Memoryshare" and "Collective"—is affectionately known as DNA, after the initials of author and site founder Douglas Noel Adams. The DNA technology was introduced a few months after the BBC takeover and is still used for BBC blogs, messageboards and commenting systems. Before this technology, there was "Ripley", which was named after the character from the film Aliens, in homage to the quote "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Before that there was a technology with no particular name, which subsequently gained the retronym Llama, due to the code holding the site together being written mostly in Perl, the standard introductory textbook for which, Learning Perl, has a picture of a llama on the front cover.

Adams himself was rather involved in the website in its early days. His account name was DNA, and his user number was 42, a reference to the famous joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. When Adams died in May 2001, his personal space was the focus for a huge reaction from the community. Adams' legacy is still felt on h2g2, and naturally the site is peppered with references to the Hitchhiker books; it is, however, not a fan site, and was never intended as such.