A lot of people have been commenting on the recent site changes. Some positive, some negative. We have been running this site since 1997, and this is the second most major change we have ever had (the most major was when it went from being "Jon's guitar lessons" to have multiple instructors around late 1998). We put a lot of thought into the changes we made, and I thought you might like to know what the issues were and how we addressed them.

ISSUES PRIOR TO THE CHANGE

Instructors wanted to be able to do more - video files, bigger files, more files per page, more jams, etc. We couldn't allow this on the banner ad budget.

The amount of popups we had to run was embarrassing - people complained about this to me all the time.

Users could only get 5 lessons per day - people complained about this to me all the time.

We needed the help of a professional designer.

Somebody needed to put some hard work into reprogramming the site, particularly the search features.

We had about 4000 low quality "lessons" in our database that needed to be removed.

The jam section was lame and outdated, and hard to update.


CURRENT SITUATION

Instructors can now upload 2 MB mp3s, 2 MB videos, and unlimited jams.

Fewer popups for everybody. High Bandwidth members see no banners and no popups, and free members see much fewer than they used to.

We removed the 5 lesson per day restriction from all users.

We have a professional design, not some thing I threw together.

We have what I hope is the easiest search drilldown tools on any guitar site.

We got rid of the majority of the weak database entries, and are working on getting rid of the rest, so it is easy to find the best lessons.

If you haven't checked out the new jam section, check it out. It is very expandable and very usable.



Today, when I look at my site, that i have worked on for 8 years, I am really proud of it. Which I haven't been able to say for several years.

So far the response to high bandwidth membership has been quite good. I think lots of people are sick of popups and expecting advertising to pay for things. Also, a lot of members are tired of the 5 files per day rule and are ready to get down to learning some guitar.

Even if you don't want to subscribe, there are still over 100 free lessons, two on each page (two for each style, two for each instructor, two for each inspiration page, etc). This more free lessons than most guitar sites have, and more lessons than several pay sites will sell you for $20. So please check it out before you decide it isn't enough.

Thanks for listening.

Jon

By the way, how is the flash tab working for you? Are you have tech difficulties with it? Do you like it? I would really like to know.