I began blogging at Blogspot a bit more than six years ago. And five years ago to the day, Aard went live here on Sb! Blogging and the interaction with you, Dear Reader, are a continuing source of daily enjoyment to me.

But looking at the surroundings, things sure have changed at Sb in five years, though you can’t tell from the site design. Aard is one of the longest-running blogs still active here. These days I feel more like I’m at Blogspot again: works well, no frills, no fraternisation with the neighbours.

Sb is no longer a hip well-funded site that attracts big bloggers. We haven’t had a community manager in a long time. And indeed, the sense of Sb community is gone. The back-stage forum is deserted. I don’t know what half of the current blogs are like. Our new Overlords pay us about as little attention as the old ones did after they had to fire our last community manager Arikia. But the new guys have one huge advantage: financial solvency. Bloggers are getting paid on time (at 2006 rates). As the new Overlords can’t be seen to support aggressive atheism, we’ve lost almost all of PZ Myers’ spillover traffic. But my $50 a month were never a main motivation for my blogging. Anyway, I hear we’re set for a back-end and design upgrade sometime soonish.

Aard is currently ranked #19 in terms of traffic here, though the 18 blogs above it on the list include a number of defunct ones whose archives are still attracting major traffic despite their lack of new material. After Pharyngula, whose main existence continues elsewhere, our big cheeses right now are Starts With A Bang (est. January 2008) and Respectful Insolence (est. February 2006).