[ FORUM POST ]

We made it, guys! Happy fifth birthday to us!

This is such an insane milestone post to be writing right now. I’ve been sitting here for about an hour now trying to figure out how to write this post; I can’t believe that Diadem has been up and running for five years already! It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s been that long!

I was just 15 years old when I started working on bringing Diadem to life. I had no expectations that Diadem would become the site and community that it is today. I just wanted to create a place that fans could go to to learn about T-ara and hang out. At five years, it feels crazy that we’re still going strong and we continue to improve and become a fansite that keeps working harder to support and love T-ara.

I was just talking to Meg (qridoesntcare) about having to write this post out and she said, “Wow, five years, Elly; that’s pretty impressive,” and thinking about it based on time, I can agree that it is pretty impressive. Bragging aside, not a lot of sites do well and get to the five year mark, but we did. I can’t say that running and keeping Diadem up for this long has been an easy feat. It wasn’t always smooth-sailing. There have been many times that I’ve thought about giving it all up because of all the challenges. I opened Diadem in 2009 while being so young with no skills in anything, no money, and with no one to help me with the tasks involved in running a site. And looking back, I can really say that Diadem’s changed so much and come so far.

Diadem’s first milestone: Boram’s thank you autograph from 2010 Birthday Project

Now, I look at all our accomplishments and I think to myself, “Wow.” Mainly because we have achieved so much and have celebrated so many milestones over the years — some of them, I didn’t even dream of attaining as the mere 15-year-old that created Diadem. At the same time, despite all of the shortcomings we’ve had as a community, despite the things that I’ve lacked as a leader, we, as Diadem and QUEEN’s, were able to stay strong until this day.

Five years is a really long time. I don’t believe that any amount of words can truly express how grateful I am to our hardworking staff members and members for all the love and support through the years. If it weren’t for your participation in Diadem and your encouraging attitude towards everything we do, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this post for our fifth year together. I’m naturally not great at expressing my thoughts and emotions in any form, but everyone here has been so great and I hope that we can continue this journey for longer. I know that I can look forward to bigger and greater achievements with Diadem and that we can continue to be a site that does everything for the love of T-ara.

On that note, I’d like to let the members of Diadem know that: as always, the staff members of Diadem will always work harder to meet your expectations and work with you hand-in-hand in reaching out to T-ara and their members.

– Elly
Founder
http://twitter.com/fabyeolus

P.S. Do you want one of T-ara’s new “Gossip Girls” albums? Stay tuned to Diadem to find out how you could win!