JoBlo.com gets a facelift! Version 10.0, baby!

We
used to update our sites’ look a lot faster in the early days of JoBlo.com (7
changes in the first 4 years
), but we’d become somewhat complacent, and
satisfied with the look, since 2004. Well, as
you may have noticed, the news section of our site has a new look now (same goes for our horror
sister site ARROW IN THE HEAD)
and we believe it gives us a better forum from which to present you with all
the latest movie goodies. The rest of the sections/sites will slowly get
upgraded over the coming months…

Firstly, we now have longer headlines, so we don’t have to
keep thinking of new ways to squeeze the latest news items into headlines of 21
characters or less, and our articles are also wider (and whiter!),
which means bigger pictures and bigger videos. We’ve also updated our
navigation menu, to make it easier to find everything in one row, but the big
change is the addition of a 3rd column on the right which features all of the
latest trailers, videos, reviews, boobies (woo-hoo!), dvd reviews columns, podcasts that we have running on
the site, at all times. Not to mention the cool new MOST POPULAR news item
feature which keeps track of the hottest stories today, the past week and the
past month!

We hope you all dig this new look (and if not, give it a few
days…you’ll dig it, hehehe) and as per usual, we present you with all of the
different looks that JoBlo.com has had since its inception in 1998 below, as well as
the intro to my 2002
book
, which gives you a little background about how I
started the site. Thanks to everyone who contributes to JoBlo.com and we hope
you keep enjoying our site as it gets bigger, better and cooler for years to come!!


(click to enlarge)

June 1998 December
1998

 

 
February
2000
September
2000

 

 
November
2000
April 2001

 

 
April 2002 June 2003

 

 
October
2004

 

I wrote a book
back in 2002 called "JoBlo.com presents…the 50 Coolest Movies of
All-Time
" featuring a foreword by writer/director Kevin Smith, in which I
wrote my favorite 50 coolest movies at that time (you can read all those
reviews HERE), as well as some personal shit about myself and the site. Since
my publisher f*cked me on the book, I’m reprinting some of the stuff on
my site now (although if you want to buy a copy of the book, I may have a few
lying around), including my intro to the book, which provides for a little
background on me and the website. Needless to say, some stats and shit are
"off" since I wrote it about 8 years ago, but all in all, the
background stuff is valid (we now get 100,000 people on the site each
day and I no longer live with the parents).

I’m
basically just a dude who started a movie website called joblo.com back in
March of 1998, as a hobby, since I was in a bit of a writing funk myself (I
wrote about four screenplays in the two years prior) and wanted to keep my
writing skills sharp. Years passed, I barely matured, I smoked even more shit
and finally got laid (thank God the cousins came through town) and I somehow
started to develop a following on the Net: great folks to whom I refer to as
“the schmoes” on the site. People like you and me (but muuuuch better
looking!), movie-lovers, nacho eaters, all looking for a place to congregate
and discuss films (and boobies, of course—well, okay, maybe that last part
is just me). So I started to add some other sections to the site, put some
news items up every other day, added a bunch of movie trailers, screensavers,
some funny trivia quizzes, and the next thing you know, the 100 people that I
used to get every week during the first year…turned into 100 people every
minute a couple of years later! The site kept expanding after that, even as I
changed shitty computer jobs in “real life” (I have a M.B.A. in
marketing), and that’s when my good buddy Arrow came on board with his
horror sub-site called “Arrow in the Head”. We also added more goodies
like movie wallpapers, movie scripts, a movie discussion board so that
everyone could converse amongst one another and much, much more (Mike Sampson,
our beloved news editor also helped take the site to another level, among
various other volunteer workers, all working on the site for no pay but mucho
“love of the game”).

So
I finally quit my last crappy job in January 2001, just when the Internet
bubble was about to burst (great move, genius!), and have been working on the
site full-time ever since (and crying myself to sleep every other night, boys
and girls). And yes, I basically still live at home with my mom and dad, and
my room is literally in the garage (some people think that I made this part up
for effect…but come…visit me…I’m seriously in my parents garage, yo!!).
Anyway, it’s not all bad, I actually like living at home, especially since
the internet ad market is dogshit nowadays, and even though we get more than
30,000 people visiting our site every single day, the green that we bring in
is just enough to pay the bills and cover our obscene amount of coke and
hooker parties (a man’s gotta relax). Seriously though, I joke around a lot
because it’s the only way I can keep from putting a bullet in my left
temple. Seriously though…someone please take me away from all
this…harrumph, oops, sorry about that…forgot that I was still typing. So
yeah, nowadays, I basically dedicate 24/7/365 of my life to the site (get a
life, junior!), my girlfriend of three and a half years drop-kicked my big ass
about a year ago and life’s been serving me caca-balls every since…but
who’s complaining!!

Alright,
I’m gonna try and get serious here for a minute (I guess the girlfriend
breaking up with me is starting to make a lot more sense now that I read all
of this back to myself—sheesh, whatta headcase!). Anyway, as for who I am
exactly…well, the whole detailed history of the site and my dinky life will
likely have to wait for the next book (if there is one, of course—buy
several copies, dammit…I want outta this garage, man!), but for now, I will
leave you with the description of myself as a critic (aka JoBlo) that I’ve
left on the site since day one: “JoBlo is your typical everyday movie
fanatic who believes that most of the movie reviews that he sees on the Net,
newspapers and TV, are long-winded, "critical" reviews that never
really address what the real movie fan wants to read about. JoBlo has decided
to pen his own movie reviews in a quick, easy-to-read fashion, so that all
movie geeks could skip the pompous, overwrought professional critical reviews,
and visit the man whose notion of movies reflects their own. He’s a man
who loves great movies, nachos and a warm cozy blanket, under which to enjoy
the pair. If you are an individual with some of the same gripes as JoBlo, and
enjoy his quick and easy movie critiques, please continue to visit Mr. Blo’s
Web page as he takes on each and every movie that comes through the theaters
and video.”
 

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HERE TO BE-FRIEND ME ON
 
MOVIE FAN CENTRAL

There are two teams to thank for this
new look, which we’ve
been working on "behind the scenes" for some time now, and they are FACE3MEDIA
and NEXCESS.NET.
FACE3MEDIA are the ones who worked closely with me to create the actual
"front-end" of the site, while the kickass boys at NEXCESS
handled the complete "back-end" of the deal. Needless to say, I’m
very happy with all results and recommend either team to anyone looking for
help on their respective sites. Just tell ’em JoBlo sentcha!

Source: JoBlo.com