Bhangra Teams’ Forum has a YouTube channel that includes short (2-4 minutes) videos reviewing specific moves and how to do them.  Many newcomers to the bhangra scene have commented to me how helpful the videos have been in educating their teams on traditional bhangra and proper form.  With no advertising or promotion of the existing videos, they have gotten about 55,000 views on YouTube. As more and more teams present traditional elements in their dances, it is increasingly important to properly execute moves to their completion (not running to the …

Some great features have arrived on the Bhangra Teams’ Forum Media Center: You can now search and sort through all the media (music, pictures, etc) uploaded to BTF.  This makes existing media on BTF much easier to access. Get all the available remixes by a certain DJ, or a remix of a certain song, or even all of your favorite team’s mixes.  A big thanks goes out to Swi for designing and coding this.

As BTF continues to grow, we are always looking for responsible community members who can step up to help manage the site.  Each of the moderators has a life outside of BTF (believe it or not), and we have been looking for a good addition to the team.
It makes me happy to announce (and it made her really happy to hear) that Dheerja is joining us on the Mod Team.  Dheerja, one of the first people to join BTF, has consistently made insightful and constructive contributions to the site.  I …

Early this morning, I upgraded BhangraTeamsForum.com to the latest backbone software, and introduced users to BTF 2.0.  Although ready to go for some time, the 2.0 project had been postponed due to conditions outside of our control, so I am very happy to finally get it live and to our users.
The past few days (after Elite 8 Bhangra Invitational) have been our busiest on record, with 60,000 to 70,000 hits per day on the site.  Despite this, I did not want to postpone the benefits of BTF 2.0 any longer. …

As many of you already know, I’ve been planning 02.10.10 as a go-live date for BTF 2.0 and all the improvements it brings to the forum and site as a whole.  However, the US East Coast was hit hard by a snowstorm over the past few days, leaving hundreds of our members stuck at home and relying on BTF to keep their sanity (I kid you not).
Throughout this morning and afternoon, I saw higher-than-usual activity and felt it would be an unnecessary inconvienience to bring down BhangraTeamsForum.com at the same time.  [ …

Bhangra Teams’ Forum is looking to add a select number of motivated individuals to our team.  The existing team is comprised of volunteers who love bhangra and want to help the community and site grow.  In 2010, we are planning to bring some new, exciting features to BTF and would love your input and help.  If this resonates with you, please contact us!  These positions are, just like our existing team, on a volunteer basis and should only take a few hours of your time.
The following positions are open:
- Writers …

Bhangra Teams’ Forum is proud to announce its first sponsor, Bhangra Avenue.  Bhangra Avenue is a one-stop solution for all your bhangra-related needs: vardiyan, instruments, and more.  Run by Lali Sehmi, an experienced member of the bhangra community, Bhangra Avenue is in touch with teams’ unique requirements and situations.
We are looking for organizations that care about the bhangra community to help sponsor BTF. Please contact saleem@bhangrateamsforum.com for details and a sponsorship package.
http://bhangrateamsforum.com/discuss/index.php/topic,6601.0

Today I’m pleased to announce two new additions to our BTF Staff!
Jeeti Mangat – BTF Moderator
Jeeti has a long history with BTF, where he’s shown level-headedness and has brought calm to some out-of-control debates.  His years of experience in the community have shown him the worst of times pre-BTF and hopefully this will help him foster on point, respectful dialogue on BTF.
Ram Mahalingam – BTF Bhangra Wiki Manager/Moderator
Ram has given well-thought out contributions and input on BTF and is becoming active in the bhangra community.  He’s shown initiative on BTF …

You may notice that BTF is faster than ever, as I’ve made a few key enhancements in the past day.
Two changes have helped bring page load times down to between 0.05 seconds to 0.30 seconds for various pages! These changes have made BTF at least twice as fast.
You can see it for yourself– at the bottom of each page, BTF tells you how long it took the page to be created and how many queries were involved, example for me:
Page created in 0.047 seconds with 8 queries.
I made a changes …

Recently, some users were having an issue with large attachments (over 8 MB).
New PHP settings have been put in place which returns us to the 20 MB limit per file, 30 MB per post (up to 3 attachments).  I’ve tested it and confirmed this; please let me know if you have any timeout issues with large mixes you’re uploading.