Remember that music section that has not been updated in ages? Remember how there used to be some decent charts there? Then there is the label page. Let’s not even forget the old CD and vinyl databases that existed back when the site first got started some 10 years ago. Well, we’re fleshing that section out and we are going to do our best to provide you with useful information. In fact, not too far down the road, I hope to get some “major players” to submit charts to the site on a regular basis. We’ll have to see how that goes though.

The biggest thing you will notice immediately in the music section though is the start of an artist listing. Granted, right now we have less than 20 artists listed. We have a team of writers working on that right now and if you meet the criteria, you can simply email us your information. Basically, any artist who is a Christian and has at least one COMMERCIALLY released track will be listed here eventually. Once this is done, we’ll focus on doing the same for any DJ with some sort of residency (club or radio). After that… who knows.

The other huge improvement is in the way you view articles and reviews. The obvious comment is that they are sorted by theme. No longer will you simply look at a listing of articles within the current zine issue and move on because nothing seemed apply to you. Now you can pick a topic and quickly see everything that has been written on it in the past. The reviews are done the same way, however, unlike the articles, which get published every other month, we are going to start publishing them more frequently. The idea is that as soon as one of our reviewers gets a new release, they can review it and put it on the site. We’re still finalizing the details, but within the next month or two we should be starting down this path.

Unlike some of the other times I’ve reworked Tastyfresh.com, I had a ton of help in the background on this. Buddy Smith (aka Nullset) turned me on to Joomla! which is the content management system this site is now running on. This will allow me over time to off-load maintenance and content updates onto other people on the site. This will free me up to work on other major updates to the site, new music and well… time with the fam. Brian Babinec, Jamey Wright, Justin Moreh and a host of others have had to put up with my complaining about this process for the entire time. John Baker (godlovesmaggots) has taken the lead on writing and gathering artist profiles. Brandon Sweet, DJ Dunamis, and Robert Brooks (Ikronix) have also been helping with the artist profiles.

Now, no amount of testing will give you a 100% perfect site. I’ve tested this site out for weeks. I’m still finding some bugs. All I can say is that I’m working on them. Most of them unfortunately seem to be related to the forums. The BIGGEST issue is that sometimes the site won’t let you post. When this happens, it also will not let you log out. To fix the problem, you have to delete the forum cookie from your browser’s cookie folder. I’m working on fixing this and as soon as I have a solution, I’ll implement it. Until then, please be patient. If you find any other bug, please email me. I’m expecting a fair amount of broken links too.

All right, I’ve said a lot so far. It’s also 1:10 am here. I need to get some sleep, but before I do, let me also tell you that we have new zine issue. Some of the highlights include the third part in Oneel’s series on how to Dj professionally, the second article in my unity series and probably the best article we have had to date with Shana’s feature on violence in the dance scene. I hope you enjoy the read.

Dave R