Important - Emails have been removed from login process - Workspace Features and Email Conversion

NOTE:
Updated December 16, 2024:

The conversion is complete.

Your personal email is no longer part of the login process or your account information - only the Username and Password. Email addresses are no longer collected.

Be sure to make a note of your Username and Password now. These will be needed to login.

Invalid, bounced, or unsubscribed emails are being removed from the site starting now. The account is still active and remains. It is just the personal email that is being removed. This will also allow the site to consider these accounts as valid (see below).

For accounts with valid emails, they can still be used to login on this site up to the next 14 days. However, on or before December 20, 2025 your personal email will also be removed from this site.

This also means this site will not send to your personal email anymore. This includes notifications and password resets.

There is now an internal email assigned to you at ###@prayerws.com which will receive your emails instead. This is available in your Workspace. You can also enable Push Notifications.

Accounts were not deleted. Only the methods of login and notifications were changed due to personal emails being removed from the site database.

More Details:

Greetings all! You may have noticed some notices in places on the forum about a free PrayerRequest Workspace area that is available for each account.

One of the main purposes is for it to provide an alternate means of communication for the site. Currently, there are over 200,000 accounts here with invalid or restricted emails. The forum software itself is not even designed to work for any user with an invalid email. There are workarounds we have patched in which provide some functionality; but, this is not ideal. There is a whole subsystem at prayerrequest.com that deals with email issues and trying to work around them.

The cost to third parties, not including our admin time, just to process emails is several thousand dollars per year. This might not be so bad if it worked efficiently. But to still have over 200,000 accounts restricted or invalid makes it not worthwhile. Removing this expense will allow the funds to be used more effectively for other operations and outreach.

This new workspace subsystem has a completely internal set of emails at the domain prayerws.com (short for Prayer WorkSpace). There is one alternate email for each user at prayerrequest.com which you can see viewing Settings - Account. This email is on a dedicated separate domain can not send to any outside emails, nor can any outside emails send to it. It has no relation to any existing email.

If you try to email to it from outside it won't go through. It can only be used internally for use within this site. The reason for this is that once any external use is made, email is subject to all types of restrictions and issues. Right now, this is just done as an internal mechanism to try to get these accounts fully enabled even without an externally valid email account that has not bounced, failed, or been reported. This email account itself is available now within the new Workspace subsystem. It can be used for communications and notifications within PrayerRequest.com.

The workspace is essentially a parallel system that we run on our servers that is linked from prayerrequest.com accounts. These servers are managed and run by us but hosted with dedicated server providers including some for offsite backups. Some other benefits are chat, video calls, storage (10 GB), a password manager, and office type programs available for editing files. There are also apps that run on mobile and desktop systems to interact with some of these.

The main forum site will still be in place. This workspace is a subsystem used separately for supporting functions and other features.

You can view and try it currently by clicking Workspace, then Dashboard from the Menus. Or click here: https://www.prayerrequest.com/nextcloud/

This uses a self-hosted version of NextCloud. More information about that software is here: Self-hosted cloud collaboration platform for home users - Nextcloud

Thanks for your attention. More updates to follow below...

 

[pradmin]

Update: The integration is now in place. New accounts to PrayerRequest.com are now be assigned a prayerws.com internal email instead of asking for or using an external email.

Also, any existing user accounts that are in a 'bounced' or 'invalid' state are now being assigned one of these emails as well. This will put the account back into a valid state.

That email can be checked in the Workspace area as mentioned previously. It is only available within prayerrequest.com and can not be sent to or from outside emails.

In addition, due to this assignment process, email addresses on any accounts at prayerrequest.com are no longer changeable. If any are found invalid, they will be automatically migrated over.

Existing valid emails will still be used for about the next 14 days. However, on or about December 20, 2024, your personal email will be removed from the site as well.

Be sure to make a note of your Username and Password before December 20, 2024. These will be needed to login after that. Email will no longer be part of the login process - only the Username. There are some options for password recovery which is discussed at the Help Desk for Account Issues at PrayerRequest.com.

Further updates to follow.

 

[Echynx]

Hello! To change your username, you typically need to follow these steps:

1. **Log in to your account**: Access your account using your current username and password.

2. **Navigate to account settings**: Look for an option like "Account Settings," "Profile," or "User Settings" in the menu.

3. **Find the username change option**: Within the settings, there should be an option to edit your username. This might be labeled as "Edit Profile," "Change Username," or something similar.

4. **Enter the new username**: Type in your desired new username. Make sure it adheres to any guidelines or restrictions (e.g., length, characters allowed).

5. **Save changes**: Confirm and save your new username. Some platforms may require you to verify the change via email or another method.

6. **Check for confirmation**: Ensure you receive a confirmation that your username has been successfully changed.

If you're having trouble, check the help section of the platform or contact their support team for assistance.

 

[pradmin]

Hello, how do I change my username?

Hi. In settings menu, then Change User Name. It should now allow a change anytime you want.

 

[pradmin]

Emails are no longer being sent out to external email addresses. The conversion process will be completed in the next few days.

 

[pradmin]

Personal emails addresses have been removed from the site database. Login will accept Username and Password. Emails from our site are no longer being sent to your personal email.

Each member here now has an internal use only email @prayerws.com which the system will use to receive emails instead. This can be accessed by the envelope / arrow icon at the top right of each page. It can also be seen in Settings - Account: https://www.prayerrequest.com/account/



In this way, all active members now have valid / enabled forum accounts regardless of the status of their email. Previously invalid emails caused members accounts some restrictions that were partially worked around. All emails will also be delivered since they stay within the site and do not use any other site or network which filter them.