There comes a time in a blogger's life when you have to let go of the past and embrace the new. In our case, it's letting go of what we could politely call a "bespoke" version of Moveable type that has become increasing more Heath Robinson-esque and needed to be replaced.
It is a system that was never designed to carry the phenomenal volume of content and comments that we subject it to everyday, and needs to be put out to pasture along with Netscape, VCRs, pagers and all the other bits of technosoftery that we've left behind.
And so tonight, the last half of the theguardian.com blog network will be switched off, and reborn in the form of R2 - our new site design.
Our head of community, Meg Pickard, has lovingly detailed all the various benefits for you all over on the Inside Guardian blog - your own site-wide profile, for starters. And Amber McNett from our blogs team explains all of the technical and design-related improvements; consistent keywords, a more spacious design, better navigation and easier content sharing.
I'd ask that you be forgiving this evening as we switch systems. Comments will be switched off here from 4pm until 9pm - so if you have anything to get off your chest, do it now. There may also be the odd borkerised post, so if you spot anything weird in a dusty corner of PDA do let me know and I'll pass it on to the blogs team. It's jemima.kiss@ this domain.
After we've tried our best to break everything, normal service will be resumed on PDA: the bastard child of technology and media.
W Heath Robinson illustration of one of Professor Branestawm's inventions. From the book William Heath Robinson by James Hamilton.
