13 July means one thing for this site - it's birthday - and this year is extra special, as Jamiroquai - The Funkin Site is ten years old!!!

Starting as a small number of pages about my favourite band (anyone remember the www.netlink.co.uk/users/funkin/jamiroquai/ URL?) the site went from strength to strength and rapidly expanded.  Since the early days the aim of the site has not changed...

"This site has one aim - that is to provide Jamiroquai fans with information. I chose not to fill the site with huge images on every page and have kept the layout very simple." [July 1997]

After the site launched it took over almost all of my free time and I have learnt a lot about developing websites.  Behind the scenes the site improved with added functionality such as the Avantgo and WAP versions.  More recently I have added the RSS/XML newsfeed, news comment system and news headline displays from Jamiroquai.com and the band member MySpace pages.  I have some more features planned so watch this space.

People often ask me how I became involved in the official site.  This happened back in 1998 when I was asked to help Sony out but after a few years the band took control of the Jamiroquai.com domain and my involvement with the site ended.  I was then invited to contribute to the official site about 18 months ago in the run-up to the release of Dynamite, and I'm still involved with news items, photography and mailing list messages.  I do this entirely for pleasure and don't get paid and my involvement with Jamiroquai.com has the same aim as this site - "to provide Jamiroquai fans with information."  I hope people agree that the official site is now getting better at communicating information to the fans.

Outside of maintaining this site I am extremely busy with my full time job, and when I'm not a work or maintaining this site, then I am normally windsurfing, sailing or running (I'm a bit of a "fitness freak" as my wife Sharon would say!) - leaving not much time to just relax.

I know I say this again and again but the site wouldn't be anywhere near as successful as it is today if it wasn't for the contributions of news stories and information from the visitors to the site - for which I am eternally grateful. 

I hope that you've enjoyed the first ten years of funkin - and who knows what the future has in store for the band over the coming years.  All I do know is that I hope to continue to be here helping spread the news far and wide...