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 …