Site Features and Updates

Greetings,

It's been awhile since I posted an update on the technical aspects of this site. Things have been busy behind the scenes on the website over the last month.

Here's a rundown on what's been going on and what's still to come.

- Post as anonymous feature. This allows prayer requests and replies to be posted as the @Anonymous member. This popular feature was present and used over 100,000 times up until a couple years ago and is now back. This allows one to post requests and replies without them being posted under your account. I do have the ability as the administrator to look them up in the case of a problem or abuse.

To use it, a member must be first signed in. Then there's a checkbox near the posting area that says Post as Anonymous. Just check that box before clicking the submit button. Then the request or reply is posted as if it were done by @Anonymous. Naturally, when using it don't be too specific as far as posting names or exact details or else it defeats the purpose. This might be good to use when you have a regular account here and want to post something that people don't associate directly to you.

- Server hardware has been upgraded to faster and more capable equipment. Server software has been updated to modern operating system and software releases.

- Forum software has been brought up to date as well.

- Backups are now done daily.

- Mail capacity has been increased. An instructional email campaign on prayer to new and existing members is now back in place. It will roll out over the next month to new and existing members. It contains about 20 emails on various aspects of prayer and is in addition to the newsletter. The idea is to try to engage members once they have prayed to continue in prayer and spiritual growth. Some people actually do return to the site even after years of being gone.

- Chat has been removed. It was very resource intensive and little used. Despite being on the site for a long time, it only received a relatively few number of messages per day. This low volume of messages could more simply be done on people's profile posts, private messages, or other areas of the site. This is more efficient than processing a rarely used but resource intensive chat program on every single page load of the entire site.

- A new version of the forum software (Xenforo version 2.2) should be released soon. It contains many new features. That will be evaluated after it is released based on it's stability and how it works with the modifications we have. Here is a link to the features in the new release that is coming:
https://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/?prefix_id=49

- As funds are available we also try to reach out to attract new members to the site. Thanks to existing donors who have made this possible to some extent. We can reach hundreds of new members seeking prayer on the Internet to come to this site each day. More details are available here:

PrayerRequest.com Donations | PrayerRequest.com (Powered by Donorbox)

Donations for PrayerRequest.com web site.These funds are for running, upgrading, and expanding the outreach of this web site. Donations help to keep the software, equipment, and web hosting up to date and optimized. As funds permit, we also are ab...

donorbox.org

That's about it for now. I hope everyone is enjoying and being ministered to.

Regards,

pradmin

 

[Brother in Christ (JC)]

Any hope for those people who had their email account permanently disabled?

 

[Zherry]

God bless you all for all the upgrades and all the help in prayer you do for people in need. I pray for you every day. I ask Jesus to bless you, help you, heal you if you are sick. Continue to work for Jesus till He call us home to heaven. Be sure of this. He is answering all the prayers. He loves to see people on their knees and a humble heart that comes to Him with praise in their heart.

 

[pradmin]

Any hope for those people who had their email account permanently disabled?

That hasn't changed. It's because of how providers treat email that we need to respond that way.

See here also:

Email issues

Many of you may not be aware but it's a constant battle to be able to send email. Many providers will routinely reject emails for any number of reasons. It could be the place we send emails through, the rate, something in the email, or almost anything. Unfortunately, there's not really anything...

www.prayerrequest.com

So far one of the better email providers for receiving our email is gmail.

There is a way around a disabled email. If one creates a new account with a new email, it can be merged with the old account. I would have to do that manually and it would need to use a less problematic email provider like gmail.

But I have found that about 90% of the time, the same thing happens later to the same person for some reason. That's why I stopped looking for ways to reactivate emails because when I did it just made matters worse and it would just happen again.

 

[Brother in Christ (JC)]

That hasn't changed. It's because of how providers treat email that we need to respond that way.

See here also:

Email issues

Many of you may not be aware but it's a constant battle to be able to send email. Many providers will routinely reject emails for any number of reasons. It could be the place we send emails through, the rate, something in the email, or almost anything. Unfortunately, there's not really anything...

www.prayerrequest.com

So far one of the better email providers for receiving our email is gmail.

There is a way around a disabled email. If one creates a new account with a new email, it can be merged with the old account. I would have to do that manually and it would need to use a less problematic email provider like gmail.

But I have found that about 90% of the time, the same thing happens later to the same person for some reason. That's why I stopped looking for ways to reactivate emails because when I did it just made matters worse and it would just happen again.

Thank you. I'll 'stay put'. I favour protonmail.
God bless you!

 

[pradmin]

Thank you. I'll 'stay put'. I favour protonmail.
God bless you!

One can also just use the push notification system if your browser supports it. This is more likely on a desktop system. It will probably work on an android browser but not iphone based.

It will let you know of any notifications as well.

https://www.prayerrequest.com/account/preferences

 

[Steven Bobb]

Question--I may be moving within a few months, and if the new place doesn't have maybe set up for the computer and i wind up getting say a laptop, I don't remember my password offhand,{for here} and if it's a different computer,but I don't remember the password, would there be issues logging in?Or, a way around that?

 

[pradmin]

Question--I may be moving within a few months, and if the new place doesn't have maybe set up for the computer and i wind up getting say a laptop, I don't remember my password offhand,{for here} and if it's a different computer,but I don't remember the password, would there be issues logging in?Or, a way around that?

You should be able to change your password here if you are already logged in. It won't ask for your existing password. That should be done as soon as possible to get a password that you can remember or save somewhere.

Loading…

www.prayerrequest.com

 

[pradmin]

Thank you. I'll 'stay put'. I favour protonmail.
God bless you!

Also, it doesn't have to be a primary account you use all the time. It can be just a backup email account that comes in handy in some situations where a primary email is not available for whatever reason (such as account / password recovery). Some security settings on web sites even allow multiple emails to be used for that reason. You mail even be able to set that other email account to forward the emails to your primary account.

Automatically forward Gmail messages to another account - Gmail Help

You can choose to forward all of your new messages to another email address, or only forward certain types of messages. Learn how automatic forwarding works After you add a forwarding email addre

support.google.com

 

[pradmin]

Currently testing live update feature - when you're inside a topic or private message, it should update when there's a new post made without having to refresh the page. In a sense, this can be a type of chat because if you're in a private message conversation with someone it will update in a similar way without having to reload the page or wait for a notification. It also works the same way within prayer request topics.