We characterize the continuous $q$-ultraspherical polynomials in terms of the special form of the coefficients in the expansion $\mathcal{D}_q P_n(x)$ in the basis $\{P_n(x)\}$, $\mathcal{D}_q$ being the Askey--Wilson divided difference operator. The polynomials are assumed to be symmetric, and the connection coefficients are multiples of the reciprocal of the square of the $L^2$ norm of the polynomials. A similar characterization is given for the discrete $q$-ultraspherical polynomials. A new proof of the evaluation of the connection coefficients for big $q$-Jacobi polynomials is given.

We develop a method for deriving integral representations of certain orthogonal polynomials as moments. These moment representations are applied to find linear and multilinear generating functions for $q$-orthogonal polynomials. As a byproduct we establish new transformation formulas for combinations of basic hypergeometric functions, including a new representation of the $q$-exponential function $\mathcal{E}_q$.