If you are reading this you know that the Drummer Cafe has gone through some major changes. Not only has the look changed, but many features have been added.

In this thread I plan to, over time, share and explain some of the new features that you'll find here in the forum ... and more importantly, how you can take advantage of them.

Shrink/Expand Sections
Anytime you see a or you can click on it to expand or collapse (respectively) the portions of the forum where these buttons appear. This is especially nice if you want to reduce clutter, not viewing areas that you don't necessarily need all the time. I use this feature a lot at the top section where my username appears; the button is next to the today's date. Collapsing this section pushes the forum up so I can see more of the threads.

Recent Posts
There are two hyper links, again in the section just below your name at the top, where you'll see the following:

• Show unread posts since last visit - displays all the posts made since the last time you logged in or visited the forum.
• Show new replies to your posts - displays not only the replies to threads you've started, but also any replies to posts you've made in other threads! Pretty cool huh?
• View the most recent posts on the forum - an old feature that many of you have enjoyed using in the past. This does exactly what it says, displays all the recent posts to the forum, beginning with the most recent post. You can page through all of the posts in reverse chronological order ... regardless if you've read them once before or not.

Enjoy!

Personal Messages
(Also known as Instant Messages) There are a number of features that you can set for your private messaging system.

Go to your Profile and look in the menu on the left under Modify Profile, then select Personal Message Options.

Here's what you can do:

• Add members to your Ignore List. Probably not a feature that you'll need to use on this forum.
• Checkbox to save a copy of your Personal Messages in your outbox.
• Checkbox to "Show a pop-up (alert) when you receive a new message". This is especially useful if you don't plan on receiving email notifications of your Personal Messages ... or if you don't make it a habit to look at the My Messages menu. I'm working on adding some sort of icon to alert you ... as another option.
• Notify by email. You can choose from the following: Never, Always, or From Buddies Only. This would be another reason to generate a Buddy List.

My Messages
This is located in the main menu, top portion, of the forum. Clicking here you'll see all that you can do with your Instant Messages (aka Personal Messages). There's a menu now on the left ... and here's what you can do:

• New Message will allow you to send a personal message to whomever you want.
• Inbox and Outbox ... self-explanatory really ... it displays your Inbox or Outbox.
• Search Messages allows you to quickly find that personal message you've been saving.
• Manage Labels allows you to add, edit and delete labels for your individual messages ... for organizational purposes.
• Prune Messages allows you to delete personal messages that are older than ____ days. You set the criteria for the deletion (pruning).

Do you have a MySpace page?

If so you can now add it to your Profile here at the Drummer Cafe. When adding the URL to your MySpace page, leave off the following:
all you need is your specific ID name.

For example, the Drummer Cafe MySpace ID is simply drummercafe.

Also, you can add your website to your Profile as well. There's no need to add your MySpace and/or Website URLs to your signature. If people want to find you, they can view your profile or click on the icons that appear within your post ... assuming you post.

Notice on the left, just under my photo:

Notice in my post, on the left under my photo.
designates my MySpace page

designates my Website

As many of you already know, the Drummer Cafe has gone through a major overhaul. Some have voiced concern about the new dark background with light text.

In an effort to server our members, I've created a light color scheme template called Old School for the Drummer Cafe forum which all registered members can access via their Profile. If you'd like to use a different template (there's more to come), just do the following:

• Login to the forum.
• Go to your Profile.
• On your Profile page's menu, click on Look and Layout Preferences.
• Find Current Theme: Forum or Board Default, center of the page, click on (change)
• Select the new theme which uses a bright background and dark type; it's called Old School. You'll see a little thumbnail photo to the right of the link which shows you what it will look like.
• If you don't like it, follow steps 1-4 then click Default Theme to place it back the way it was.

In the upcoming weeks and months I'll be working on another template that has a light background, but that works with the overall website a little better than the "Old School" template.

Another options:

• Look at the top or bottom of every thread (where the REPLY button is); there's a menu button called PRINT. Click it! When you do, a new window pops open WHITE background, BLACK text, and no extra lights, bells or whistles (ie. images, etc.). You don't HAVE to print it out ... just read it! All posts in one thread ... at a glance.
• Use the Show unread posts since last visit feature. The link is at the top of the forum, next to your avatar (if you have one), just under the "Welcome __________". I use this one all the time! By the way, you can make more room on the page by collapsing or shrinking that top section ... just click the . To expand or unshrink, click the .
• Near the bottom of the main page of the forum, in the Forum Stats window, there's the View the most recent posts on the forum. Click it to see all of the most recent threads; not just the ones since your last visit.

There's a lot of great features on this forum. Get into your Profile and check out all of the settings are and do. If you don't know what something does, try it! If you aren't a risk taker, check out the forum's HELP feature.

Also, in the new future, there will be some template option choices for the entire website.

In celebration of the Drummer Cafe's six year anniversary on December 12^th, the Drummer Cafe has successfully moved to its new dedicated server; an Intel Core 2 Duo - 2.66 GHz processor with 4Gb RAM. My hope is that each Drummer Cafe member will have an even better experience on both the forum and the entire website with this upgraded server.

A note to forum community members: the session cookie has been renamed, so if you have problems logging in, please clear your browser cookies.

Full propagation make take 24 to 72 hours to complete. Don't be surprised if you can login at one point, then unable to access the website hours later.

Thank you for your patience.

The Reviews and Education sections now have a "star" voting system for users to vote/rank reviews, articles and lessons here at the Drummer Cafe.

I think all my reviews, articles and lessons are FIVE STAR or I wouldn't post them! 
This voting system, however, will allow me to get some quick feedback as well as allow other users to see if the content is helpful.

Speaking of voting ... be watching the Reader's Poll for ongoing surveys and polls covering a wide variety of subjects.

This has been in place for sometime although I haven't taken the time to explain how to fully use it.

YouTube uses Flash technology to embed their videos. And as mentioned in my previous post, the Drummer Cafe automatically embeds the video in the posts for you. However, here's one little step that you can do to enhance the quality of the video! Have you ever noticed how grainy and pixelated the video can look with YouTube? Well, here's something you can do ... add &fmt=18 to the end of your YouTube URLs ... and watch the quality go WAY up! The Drummer Cafe forum will do the rest!!! 

Another thing that will help the members and guests of this forum is to title your thread with the appropriate subject title, using an accurate description. AND, select this message icon for any post in which you post a YouTube URL. This let's everyone know that your thread is about or features a YouTube video! Notice how my post has the YouTube message icon? 

I've been working on developing a new feature here at the Drummer Cafe ... a live, interactive classroom where I'll be teaching on a number of subjects from week to week. The format ... a live video feed from my studio here in Nashville with participants interacting by typing out their questions.

I've been wanting to do this for some time, covering various topics that we've discussed or touched on here at the Drummer Cafe. Subjects that I feel could be explored further with the visual assistance in a Virtual Classroom setting.

Some of the subjects that I've slated for upcoming classes include:

• Nashville Number System
• Standard Music Notation
• Making Drum Cheat Sheets & Charts
• Music Theory
• Style Analysis
• and more.

I'll be scheduling these classes based on my availability from week to week, but my goal is to try and have something on a fairly regular basis. The bulk of these classes will be available to our VIP Members as a new VIP benefit with an occasional class available to the general public free of charge. Classes will be recorded and made available by airing them at a later time.

Classes are TBA, but will generally occur on Sundays @ 8pm (CST)

Per the recommendation of several of our members as well as my own frustration of the lack of resources available to the drumming community, the Drummer Cafe now has a new Calendar to show upcoming drum and percussion related events, clinics, conventions, camps, festivals and conferences from around the globe. To my knowledge there is no other such calendar available where you can see clinics and events at a glance

This new feature is still in beta as we are using Google Calendar (also in beta). The menu buttons, both in the main site and the forum, point to this new calendar. Since it is in beta, and I never know if and when I'll need to change to a different source code, I've created on URL for everyone to use: calendar.drummercafe.com.

If you personally use Google Calendar you already know that you can sync the calendar with things like Outlook, iCal and your Smartphone, as well as you own Google Calendar!

The Drummer Cafe currently has two separate calendar entries, 1) Events 2) Clinics, which are colored coded (see below) and organized onto a single calendar display: http://calendar.drummercafe.com

• EVENTS include major conferences, conventions, festivals, camps from around the world.
• CLINICS include major drum and percussion clinics from around the world.

The default display is Agenda which shows all the Events & Clinics in sort of a spreadsheet layout. You'll be able to see what's coming up next regardless of the date. You have a choice to view Daily, Weekly and Monthly too; even print out the calendar if you'd like.

If you find a clinician or event that you are curious about or want more information, you can click on the title to expand the entry. I'm doing my best to include a venue, address and additional contact information whenever possible. One of the great features with Google Calendar is that it's directly connected with Google Maps. If I provide an address for a clinic (as an example), you can click MAP to see exactly where the event is taking place. 

I've been passionate about providing this type of service to the drumming community, but could never find source code that would do exactly what I wanted. I've given up on trying to directly relate it to the Drummer Cafe's coding simply because it limits people who are not members. With the public Drummer Cafe Calendar (currently using Google Maps), it's possible to search and find clinics/events from any number of criterias (e.g. clinician's name, venue, city, state, country).

Remember this is still a beta resource. I'm going to incorporate and grow the feature as time permits.

If you are passionate about drumming clinics and events, and would like to help, you can start by checking out the Drummer Cafe Calendar on a regular basis ... and sending me any clinic/event dates that I don't have on the calendar. If everyone picks a region or clinician to cover, it would really help out. At this time there are two ways to contribute to the Drummer Cafe Calendar.

1) Send me the event/clinic information using the format that I presently use on the calendar. This way I can just copy/paste your entry. State whether it's a EVENT or CLINIC, then state the name of the event/clinic, the address (if known) or just the city, state, followed by the venue name, phone number of the contact (if known), and a URL (website address) for more information. Please check the Drummer Cafe Calendar to make sure we don't already have the date before sending in your entry.

2) Start your own Google Calendar and add drum and percussion clinics/events that are happening in your region. Once you've made your calendar entry (using a similar format layout as I have), send me an IM or email with your Google calendar's URL and I'll add it to the Drummer Cafe Calendar. This method will REALLY help me out because I don't have to spend more of my time making entries; we are sharing the duties.

More than likely I'll be able to cover many of the major events as I get these news releases sent directly to the Drummer Cafe.

If you have any further questions or suggestions, please let me know. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to have a set-up where key individuals can add content directly to the Drummer Cafe Calendar with no assistance on my part.

Bookmark: calendar.drummercafe.com

Enjoy!