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:

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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...

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

Regards,

pradmin

 

[Lewallen]

Wonderful. Explanations make sense. God bless you all for being on top of things so we will continue to offer praises to Jesus and praying for the needs of those who come with requests. Love what Jesus told us to do. Pray without ceasing. That is exactly what we should be doing. Thanks again and God bless you.

 

[pradmin]

We've rolled out a new caching system that hopefully reduces the time it takes to load the site. Copies of most images and static files that the site uses are now distributed to various locations in different continents. The site should pull the copy of the closest file to the visitor.

This is important because continents like Asia would otherwise take 50 x longer - painfully slow - to load some resources than from North America. Having most files served locally can greatly reduce the load times of pages.

Here's a general idea of where the site traffic came from during the month of August 2020:

 

[pradmin]

Groups are back. These are special areas in the Blogs, Devotions, and Groups area. They are only visible to members after they have joined the group in their account settings.

Join groups here:

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

Participate in groups here (after joined):

Groups

Special areas only available to group members. Click Here to Join a Group. After you join, you will be able to see it here. These areas are not visible to members not in the group or guests.

www.prayerrequest.com

 

[pradmin]

The system will now try to translate topics where there are posted in a foreign language. If it's possible, @Articles will post a translation in a follow up post in the thread usually within a minute. It's not perfect. But it usually gets in the ballpark.

Here's an example:

Upatanishi Kati ya mume wangu na binti ...

Upatanishi Kati ya mume wangu na binti yake

www.prayerrequest.com

There's also a sitewide language translation drop down near the top of every page. Anyone at the site can select their language and the site should appear to them in that language, approximately. The dropdown can be removed by clicking the x in the far right corner of its surrounding box.

 

[pradmin]

Just a heads up that the final version of the new version of program that runs this site has been released. I'll be reviewing it and seeing what's involved in the not too distant future.

At some point, the site will upgrade. It will probably look at little different for a few days and be temporarily missing some features that I customized until I can get them working on the new version.

 

[pradmin]

The site recently upgraded to the latest version of software. You may notice some features missing for awhile until they are put back in. Thank you for your patience.