In case you didn't notice, last week we finally got our community tool up and running. J Puddy and I have been working on this for several months now, but it's finally done and ready for your enjoyment. Of course like all things on the web,  we will be adding new features and tweaking the implementation of it for some time to come. Regardless all of the basic features you would expect are up and running, but let's talk about a few of them real quick.

Friends, Groups and Searches

The most basic and in many ways important thing you can do in our community is to make connections with others. On the most basic level, you can friend people. This won't in itself help connect you to new people, but it will help you to keep connected to them.

The next set of tools are groups. Groups work like any other group on Facebook. You can join, leave, or create groups. Ideally each group should have a unique subject matter like DJs in the Southeast. We have a few in place now. They range in subject matter from geographical location to your role in the industry.  These groups will be a great way for people to discover others with their interests, so long as we don't create ones that already exist under a different name. Right now,  anyone can create a group, so please check for a pre-existing group before creating one yourself.

Searching is the next tool for forming these connections. The best way to use this feature is to go ahead and use the advance search tool. Once here, you can search on individual profile fields like "hometown" or "I am a...". You also can click directly on some of these fields on a profile page and conduct the same type of search.  Granted, the search feature needs improvement and that will come as the Jomsocial people continue to develop the tool.

But Wait... There's More

Events really bind us together as a community. They allow us to leave the comfort of our homes so that we might directly connect with one another on a deeper level. Toward this goal, we've added a third party tool called "Eventlist". This tool will allow you to enter all of your events so that everyone can see what you are involved in. There are categories for podcasts, club events, music festivals, music releases and more. If you need another category, just let me know. You can also enter in the venue information for the event. Once entered, you won't have to add that venue again and others can use it as well.  There is also an application for the community that you can add to your profile page that will display your events.

And... If That Wasn't Enough

As part of your community involvement, we want you to take a more direct role in the content of the site. This isn't mandatory. It's just an open invitation. If you think you have something to contribute in the way of an article, we'd love to have you submit it. We'll have some article guidelines posted in the future, but for now send us what you have and we'll go through a few edits and get it on up. If you want to know what type of articles we're looking for, check out what we've published in the past. We would also like to keep moving forward, so even if we haven't touched a subject in the past we may want to now. If you have any questions about this, let me know. As an added bonus, links to all of the articles you've written can be displayed on your profile page by adding the "My Articles" application. 

Well, those are some of the top features we've just added. If you have an account on the forums, you now have a profile account. The community is located under the "Community" link and tools for submitting articles, events and venues are under the "Get Involved" link that appears after you log into Tastyfresh.com.

Thanks so much for your support over the years. I hope that with the launch of the community we will be well on our way to building a stronger community among Christians who love club music.

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