Well, the blog is ten years old todayish. At least, the oldest post that’s still up is dated June 21, 2004, so that’s going to have to be good enough.
It’s not a good post, but hey. Not much that’s in June 2004 is all that great, because I’ve learned a thing or two over those ten years. Like how to write proper headlines! And posts with more than two sentences in them! (I took to Twitter so well because ‘quip’ is my most natural length, I think.)
I should note that Club Jade itself, which formed off RASS in 1995, will be celebrating our 20th anniversary next year. And we’ve had a website almost that long – I know I remember discovering it before I was a part of the group, in 1996. (Back when our fanfic was the hot thing.)
One of our founders, JeffP, handed the regular duties of running the site off to me about 1998, not long after I shut down my first site. Sometime around 2002 or 2003 I started thinking about adding a blog to it.
It was basically meant to be a quick way to keep other Jaders up to date. It ended up… This. I never thought it would get much traction beyond a handful of people, any more than I thought we’d be seeing more movies after 2005. We may not be the biggest fan site, we will almost certainly never have a podcast, we might not even survive the sequel trilogy, as so many ’90s fansites broke against the bows of the prequels. But for now, it’s still fun for me. I love doing the breaking news, as relentless as the rumor mill may be at times. I love the chaos and uncertainty of this era so far.
So, I want to say thanks to Club Jade, for letting me run this thing under our name, and all our readers for being generally awesome, and the other sites that link us and basically blah blah sincerity cakes.
And to wrap things up, here’s a look at a few older versions of the site, courtesy the Wayback Machine.
Pre-blog. Orange. So orange. Not the first version of the site, or even the longest, just the oldest Wayback has it. I believe I designed this over a weekend in college. The little Ewok drawings by Heather Lynn were originally done for the Ewok Cookbook, which is actually something we did. Not something I made up for an April Fools joke.
First blog design, 04-06. Very purple. Raver Chewbacca. I have no shame. (Wayback.)
Blue. 06-08. We had this until we moved to WordPress, when I finally gave in and just started using templates. (Wayback.)
Congratulations! Thanks for all the snark, info, and laughs.
Thanks!
Happy kinda-sorta-birthday! And I hope you’ll make it through the sequels (and the sequels’ sequels). We’re going to need level-headed people who don’t buy into every rumor or call things official that really aren’t. ;-)
Man, I hope so, too. But you never know. I kinda peaced-out for the worst of the PT fansite stuff, so I didn’t really have a front row seat for anything but the very earliest days… Most of it I heard after the fact.
But I will say this hasn’t been nearly as nasty so far, with only one or two really notable exceptions. I’m not sure whether it was burnout or disappointment, or a combo of the two, that took out most of the PT-era sites, but things are pretty different so far – and I’m not really running on ‘scoops’ in any case!
My favorite source for Star Wars info. Congrats!!!!!!
Thanks!
Happy Birthday! I really enjoy this site and your very grounded, “let’s not all jump up and down just yet” approach to SW fandom.
Thanks! I promise we will continue to be cynics. Well, I will.
Cheers to you and the site!
Thanks, Stooge. And for all the
fishcontributions. ;)Congratulations! And don’t worry about hitting that ten-year mile marker — I’ve done it six
times myself, and it gets easier with practice.
Thanks, Tim!
Congrats on the 10 years! I’ve been an on/off again lurker-reader over the years, and one of the things I’ve most appreciated about CJ is it’s blunt honesty in most matters. That sort of integrity is something I value, so thank you for all that you’ve done and continue to do!
Thank you! I try. :)
Congrats! And here’s to another 10 at least. Club Jade is easily my favorite Star Wars blog. I really appreciate the effort put into it. Thanks!
The best thing we ever did was let Dunc take over the website. And every now and then she lets me post some of my interests over here; even if I can never, EVER figure out how to insert pictures into the blasted posts!
During this year’s JadeCon, we figured out just how old we’re all getting, but Dunc keeps us fresh. So thanks, Dunc! (And James and Eliz and everyone else in Club Jade who posts here every now and then.)
I don’t think anyone else wanted it. ;)