Hi friends. You will have noticed that in the past week Pundit has looked a little different — a little fresher, a little sleeker.

That’s because after 10 years, we felt it was time to modernise things. For readers this should mean very little will change… and yeah, it looks kinda similar. Hey, we like it. We still want you to read, make comments and submit stories. But Pundit will work better on mobile, our security is improved, our homepage is tidier and things should go a bit faster.

Best of all, we’ve got some new additions to the Pundit whanau, who continue our commitment to smart thinking and analysis from a range of viewpoints.

• Brigitte Morten is a senior consultant for Silvereye, who was an advisor to Hekia Parata and Nikki Kay and a campaign director for Australia's Liberal Party.

• Phil Vine has been a journalist on all the top TV shows (one of the country’s best visual story-tellers), is a fine writer and reviewer and is now making films for Greenpeace.

• Liam Hehir has been kind-of with us for a while, but is now official. He’s a Palmerston North lawyer and conservative commentator with great insight into New Zealand politics.

There is one change we have to flag with you though that’s not ideal.

We have moved all of the content over from our old host to a new one, Squarespace. Unlike the old Pundit, the new Pundit does not have a feature that allows readers to create member accounts on our site. Sigh.

So if you are a loyal reader and have one of those (that’s almost 10,000 of you), thank you for your years of support, but you will no longer need to use your membership to make comments.

You have two options for now. First, we’re going to try opening comments up a bit and you to simply comment as a ‘guest’. That will mean entering your name each time you comment (yes we still want you to use your real name and yes it would be good if you left an email address as well). It will look like this.

Option two is to join Squarespace. Sorry, but that’s the way they roll. It’s not uncommon with other sites and is quick and easy.

When you want to comment on a post, go to the comments section at the bottom of the story. Write your comment and click on ‘Post comment’. You will be asked to login with Facebook, Twitter, or Google. It will look like this.

We’d hate to miss out on your thoughts. And we’ve always loved how civil Pundit it; a rare oasis these days. So let’s give that a go for now and see how it shakes out.

The changes have taken a bit of work (hopefully I’ll be able to post a bit more now!). But let us know what you think in the comment section of this post. Plus, there’s one other thing you can do.

If you are feeling nostalgic (Wow, is it really 10 years? Yes it is!) and generous (Gosh, I would love to support Pundit to continue to provide great content!) please consider making a small donation. The changes have cost a bit more than expected, so we’d really appreciate any little contribution you can make to help keep Pundit ticking.

Click on the ‘Become a Supporter’ button on the home page. Your help would be much appreciated.

Finally, do share Pundit on social media. Tell your friends and family. And keep coming back. Whatever your opinions, we hope you value smart commentary and a commitment to playing the ball, not the person.

Thanks again for your support,

Tim and the Pundits.