We wanted to point out our new Classifieds Section to those of you that haven’t checked it out in a while. You might also notice the new homepage look which will be rolled to the rest of the site over time.

Here are the benefits of the new Classifieds system:

• no registration required to post an ad
• can upload an image with your ad
• the most recent ads show up on the main homepage of jag-stang.com
• simplified - there are only 3 categories so browsing all the ads is much easier now.
• just click the ‘Post An Ad’ tab to post your ad

We would love to hear your feedback on the new system. Now go post your ads!

It was 10 years ago today, September 14 1997, that jag-stang.com was originally started. It’s hard to believe that many of the people that are visiting this site for the first time this year may not of even started pre-school yet in 1997!

Interestingly jag-stang.com didn’t start as jag-stang.com at all. Back in 1997 geocities web pages were all the rage, much like myspace today, and jag-stang.com was just another geocities webpage. From what I can find the url to that original page was something like ‘geocities.com/SunsetStrip/2925/’. The actual jag-stang.com domain name was secured and put in use about 6 weeks later, October 30 1997.

Jag-stang.com started off as “The Jag-Stang Owner’s Club” and was also known as the JSOC. It appears the original intent was to only cover jag-stangs and their owners. But as the jag-stang was discontinued and interest in the site continued to grow, the Fender Mustang and Fender Jaguar coverage was added, as they are the models the jag-stang is derived from. The original JSOC title logo is shown below:

The site has been through quite an evolution over the years. If you’re interested in seeing the summary of news updates over the years that track the site’s progress you can check out these 2 links:

• 1997-2000 Site Summary
• 2001-2006 Site Summary

You could also check the wayback machine at archive.org for some of the old archives of the site.

• jag-stang.com @ archive.org

So we crack open the champagne to celebrate and say a big thank you! to all of the folks that have supported jag-stang.com over the last 10 years! After reflecting on how far the site has evolved over that period of time we look forward for the years to come!

In anticipation of “10 years on the web” for jag-stang.com the site has been given a fresh new look. Please make sure you are using a recent browser and preferably a most recent version of firefox, safari or IE.

Along with the refresh a weblog has been added to more easily publish news updates to the site. The main jag-stang.com entry page will show the last 3-4 posts while you can go to the ‘News‘ section to see all the posts plus News, archives, and more. All the past jag-stang.com site news has been archived into the weblog so you can see all the updates over the years. Here are 2 pages to easily access all the past site news:

• 2001-2006 Site Summary
• 1997-2000 Site Summary

If you use a RSS news reader (ie bloglines.com or google reader) you can add the Jag-Stang.com News Feed to easily keep track of any updates to the site. We will also be posting many of the alternative guitar related press releases as well as other articles we would consider of interest to our audience.

• Subscribe to RSS Feed

To close out this update I thought I would post a couple of the old site header images I came across for old times sake.

We’re giving jag-stang.com a long overdue face lift. The new design you see here on the main page will be pushed down to the rest of the site as time permits. (Please be patient, it will take a few months to get all the pages updated.)

We’re doing most of the testing in the latest versions of Firefox and IE so you will have the best result using those browsers. If you do run into browser problems with the new pages please let us know. Thanks!

A new google powered search feature has been added to the site. Look for the new search box in the left hand column of the main page down a few modules.

Note that this search feature will not search discussion forum topics. Please use the search feature in the forums to search them.

All pages on jag-stang.com should now be updated to have the same look and feel. A lot of unused sections have been cleaned up as well. A new owner listing / registry is in the works to replace what was removed.

If you encounter any problems or page errors please let us know!

We’ve just opened up a brand new section for guitar reviews. It should be much more useful and easier to navigate than the old reviews sections were. We encourage everyone who has submitted reviews in the past to submit a new review into the new section. Thanks!!

The chat page has been updated to use AOL Instant Messenger instead of IRC. No one seemed to be using the old setup so we’ll try this for a while. Note that the room is public and unmoderated.