Site Upgrade and Changes

The site has just been upgraded from the place that makes the forum software. It was a major upgrade.




The look of the site right now is the default appearance out of the box. The previous site looked similar without the customizations.




I will be reviewing the custom parts of the site to see which can be re-enabled as time goes on.




For now, it may take a little looking around to find things. The site will run slow for several days as some upgrade processes are still running in the background.









Friends were removed from the latest forum software. Now they are followers. So any friends you had before will need to be re-added as followers. Since it involves receiving notifications, they weren't migrated over. Otherwise, there could have been too many unwanted notifications.




It is necessary to do these upgrades since security issues will only be fixed on the latest version of the software.









Thanks.

 

[NEWHOPE]

i think this upgrade after looking at it its cool ,,, However i still like the the old one that able to see prayer and chat at the same time . please change that and we are good to go-.

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[pradmin]

3 minutes ago, hearme said:




Thanks, it looks nice and clean now. Landing page on old version was a little bit too packed.









I have 2 ideas:




1) If you gonna keep it in forum view and not revive old thumbnail view then maybe you could add forum for discussions? Chat/PM is good thing but sometimes we would like to have discussions that receive input over long time periods like several days. And that are afterwards searchable and reachable.









2) We con really need this fancy thumbnail mode back.




You could just add checkboxes to in front of every request at https://www.prayerrequest.com/forum/3-new-prayer-requests/ and then in pager bar you could add just button 'Pray for checked requests' that could execute javascript that just collects topic ids into array and then posts it to server. And then is in server you just split the topic id list into array and then loop over array. That you should be able to do just in some 5-8 hours. and should be minimal code.




If you code your own custom thumbnail thing that would take again ages. But now we could just mouse hover the topic title and when we've finished reading just check the checkbox next to topic title.....









And actually one more thing that could come handy: Give us back ability to manually edit bbcode because the link above is way too long lol


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Thanks. Those are some good ideas. It's still early to even know what will work since the upgrade is still background processing many tasks for days. Also, too much customizing makes it harder to upgrade. Lately the software was updated every 2-3 days. So I can't really go back and revisit the modifications each time.









For discussions, there used to be other forums but were almost never used. The problem also became people would post their prayer requests in there instead of keeping them in one place where everyone watched.









The social groups application has been updated to where any person can basically create their own group including forums and whatever else. I'm not quite sure if its stable yet, but will see how it works out after things stabilize a bit.









You should be able edit the raw message code by clicking on the Source button in the editor.

5 minutes ago, NEWHOPE said:




i think this upgrade after looking at it its cool ,,, However i still like the the old one that able to see prayer and chat at the same time . please change that and we are good to go-.







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Thanks. Maybe after awhile the previous chat program will work. It doesn't work yet with this version of the forum even though its been out about a year. For now, the built in chat is being used until something better comes along. There is an option to open it in a new window however.

 

[Rick1]

Is there going to be a 'quick response' added like we had before? Right now all I can figure out to do is copy and paste.

 

[pradmin]

Just now, Rick1 said:




Is there going to be a 'quick response' added like we had before? Right now all I can figure out to do is copy and paste.


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Maybe at some point. Right now just copy and paste.

 

[hearme]

Edit:

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The other option was to completely erase the board and use different software that sort of looked like the previous layout. This would entail starting with nothing on the board - no posts, no accounts, no blogs, nothing. And the functionality still would not be there.


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I am happy that you didnt do that. Because then someone might covet someone's else name or just pick completely new name and then it would be mission impossible to tell who is who.









Social groups look kinda cheesy. Forum would be better. You could still try this again since it is now cleaner layout. You can always just delete entire forum with it content if people post there so many prayer requests that it's not even worth moderating it. I mean just create it and let's see if people use or abuse it. Time has moved on, people are different, site is different.


As for upgrading every 3 days, I dont think the html views are changed that much. You could just have some custom php file to which requests are sent. And that just loads minimum functionality from IPB and does the stuff. This way you dont have to touch IPB's code.


Or if they update this html stuff also then you could just write some patch_views.php that would automatically find right place from template files and inject extra jh/html there. This way you dont have to update it over and over again, you would just run simple php file once and it would modify all the html files for you.

 

[pradmin]

1 minute ago, hearme said:




Edit:









I am happy that you didnt do that. Because then someone might covet someone's else name or just pick completely new name and then it would be mission impossible to tell who is who.









Social groups look kinda cheesy. Forum would be better. You could still try this again since it is now cleaner layout. You can always just delete entire forum with it content if people post there so many prayer requests that it's not even worth moderating it.


As for upgrading every 3 days, I dont think the html views are changed that much. You could just have some custom php file to which requests are sent. And that just loads minimum functionality from IPB and does the stuff. This way you dont have to touch IPB's code.


Or if they update this html stuff also then you could just write some patch_views.php that would automatically find right place from template files and inject extra jh/html there. This way you dont have to update it over and over again, you would just run simple php file once and it would modify all the html files for you.


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Forums were tried for quite a while before. It had relatively little use and it confused many people posting prayer requests all over the place. That's why the site right now pushes everything into one forum.









Updates were a major hassle. Every update required revisiting about 30 modified templates, 20 system files, and hundreds of images and other settings. Automated patching might or might not have worked depending on what else changed. Usually various things were broken each update. So, I'll be trying to avoid things that require that and rather depend on stand alone applications or hooks that have been developed.

 

[hearme]

Other think is also that it might be healthy for us having to type.









Other wise some of us might just read the title => God let that happen => check; and so on. I mean no serous prayer. But now we could prompte more personal approach.









Like sometimes if I wrote half page long request and then got "I prayed for it" in 30 secs and I really wondered if they were just said in vain. Because for me it took some 40 secs just to read it trough from beginning to end. And now how is it possible that someone in 30 sec does not just read the request but also pray for it?









I know I myself have sinned against it too but what I have been doing recently is that I take fewer requests and pray decently rather than just ok bless this relationship god , check, God help her get job, check, God let she get healthy baby, check. .... Instead what I have been doing now (in last few months) is that if I see request that leaves me cold I skip it and instead pray longer for requests that actually touch me. And write custom responses to those that really break my heart.









And I think not being able to mass post would promote this kind of behavior. Because God knows our hearts. God knows if we pray wholeheartedly or not. Otherwise it could happen that since we have over 10000 posts on this site we think that we are uber prayer warriors and we think that when we go to heaven God surely has to give us reward for it. And then God would most likely say something like this: "Yes you indeed prayed for 10000 people but lets take a look into it - only 20 prayers were acceptable to Me, because with others you didnt even mean it when you prayed it... you just check check check and then bang next page... check check check.... . And look, now that you hoped that you would receive a reward for it I will reduce the beauty of your crown for this selfishness."














One thing that I personally prefer if it wasnt restored: automated response to old prayers. It confused me because when I started on this site it took me a while before I understood that it is robot and that I wont get any actual benefits from that prayer. And it created mess in topic list. Because I often thank people few days after they have prayed for me and then I went to my content > topics only to see what topics have new responses in order to see if God has spoken to me trough someone or If there's someone I didnt thank yet. And then this automated response caused me confusion because I wasnt able to tell if this topic contains any actual new responses or not before I opened it because due to automated response it got marked as if it had something new in it when in fact it was just automated response.

 

[Keety]

2 hours ago, hearme said:




And I think not being able to mass post would promote this kind of behavior. Because God knows our hearts. God knows if we pray wholeheartedly or not. Otherwise it could happen that since we have over 10000 posts on this site we think that we are uber prayer warriors and we think that when we go to heaven God surely has to give us reward for it. And then God would most likely say something like this: "Yes you indeed prayed for 10000 people but lets take a look into it - only 20 prayers were acceptable to Me, because with others you didnt even mean it when you prayed it... you just check check check and then bang next page... check check check.... . And look, now that you hoped that you would receive a reward for it I will reduce the beauty of your crown for this selfishness."














One thing that I personally prefer if it wasnt restored: automated response to old prayers. It confused me because when I started on this site it took me a while before I understood that it is robot and that I wont get any actual benefits from that prayer. And it created mess in topic list. Because I often thank people few days after they have prayed for me and then I went to my content > topics only to see what topics have new responses in order to see if God has spoken to me trough someone or If there's someone I didnt thank yet. And then this automated response caused me confusion because I wasnt able to tell if this topic contains any actual new responses or not before I opened it because due to automated response it got marked as if it had something new in it when in fact it was just automated response.


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You know, I agree that it some cases praying with automated responses gets abused. However, I think that even if people were forced to type out a response, it is still likely to happen.









Automated response can be useful for people if they prayed in the Spirit and just want someone to feel encouraged that there were people praying. I know there are a lot of people that pray for requests and never leave a response, and I've wondered at times if I should leave a response, but then I thought about it a bit more. A lot of people here are broken and desperate, and it's nice for them to know someone took the time to pray. Again, a cookie-cuttered response might not be as encouraging if they dig deeper and choose to think of it in that way, but like you said, God knows the heart of those who prayed.









What I think is this, God sees every prayer request posted, and He knows all our needs and desires and loves us so deeply. It really doesn't matter if 100 people prayed or only 1 person prayed, because it only matters if there is faith in God. We can choose to be hurt by people's automated response or lack of responses to prayers, or we can choose to trust God and think the best of people. Let God be the judge of those who prayed with wrong motives, and let's just trust that God will definitely reward everyone who desire Him.









And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)









Anyways, I don't mind either way whether or not this feature is restored. I pray the Lord will guide in this matter in Jesus name.

 

[Prayerblue7]

Thank you so much for upgrading and all it involves. I understand and was wondering about security; we have been blessed. Be patient folks and do not let the enemy make us discouraged on the contrary a small chance to use those fruits of the Spirit in bearing up and praying even more. IF one is weary, pray on, even if you cannot post it- God will hear it and those prayers will sail on through like golden arrows hitting their mark! Sorry now I am doing some type of Charles Spurgeon crossover; must have one of his writings in




mind btw bless you all and can anyone point me to how to get that little picture back by my user name ? Thanks

 

[Stitcher]

Is it possible to set the default to no email notifications for everyone, until they set it to do otherwise?









After the upgrade, the site started emailing me notifications, even though I had it set to send nothing to email, on the old site.









Some folks have apparently marked email as Spam, and I'm worried that more will do it.









thanks.