versions on Brian McCrory

Changelog

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This briefly shows the major technical changes for how I write and publish Jazz of Japan. For a timeline of Jazz of Japan articles, see Publish History Timeline.

February 2026

Moved from Substack to Buttondown as “Jazz of Japan” (v5.0)

May 2023

Moved to Substack + Markdown as “Jazz of Japan” (v4.0)
Moved all content (writing, images, audio files) to Markdown files (GitHub + Jekyll) for version control and writing outside of a browser window
Data files and Java programs used for templating, consistency, validation, utilities

January 2022

Moved to GitHub/Jekyll/Markdown as “Jazz of Japan” (v3.0)
Moved to jazzofjapan.com
Details

May 2021

Moved to Substack as “J Jazz Substack” (v2.0)
Ran newsletter and website at jjazz.substack.com
Details

January 2018

Released “J Jazz: Modern Jazz From Japan” on January 26, 2018 (v1.0)
Ran on WordPress/AWS/Google App Engine at jjazzist.com
Install WordPress locally for writing/testing, push to cloud to publish
Details

v1 v2 v3 v4 v5
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2018 '19 '20 '21 '22 '23 '24 '25 '26 '27

Jazz of Japan v3.0 (GitHub)

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

January 2022: Moving from Substack to GitHub

Using Substack was great for writing and sending out free-form writing, but there was some extra functionality that I was looking for. Now that I had about 150 articles with many drafts in progress, I wanted to better organize things and have a standard structure that was easier to work with.

Since most of my posts were about albums, I was using a regular layout for each article, like a template with a specific format and well-defined sections.

J Jazz v2.0 (Substack)

Sun, 30 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

WordPress was becoming an unnecessary hassle, and I found an easier alternative by moving to Substack.

May 2021: Moving from WordPress to Substack

Substack offered an attractive solution: a simple design that featured newsletter functionality with a nice-looking web archive. The writing interface and dashboard was also refreshingly simple and clean. It was comparatively simple, a great interface to focus on writing and organizing posts.

In 2021, Substack was rapidly changing, enlisting high profile writers and sponsoring growth programs, yet the Substack team still seemed to have an independent startup freshness. Their support and outreach team was involved in weekly community discussions and enthusiastic to hear ideas from, and grow with, their writers. The platform was growing, but it was still all about writing newsletters.

J Jazz: Modern Jazz From Japan v1.0 (WordPress)

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This online project was first published online in January 2018, but I began to take notes on this topic when visiting Japanese jazz clubs and buying Japanese jazz albums in 2005. Those dozen or so physical notebooks became essential documentation for me as an early version of this project. I continue to take handwritten notes today.

January 2018: Starting with WordPress

It was easy to set up WordPress on a laptop and start writing posts. I published the site online using the custom domain jjazzist.com (no longer in use) with AWS and Google App Engine at various times.