AllThingsNew

Thank you for your prayers! I recently discovered (thanks to a dedicated user) that tabs and feeds in the church directory were un-editable by churches. It turns out that a recent site upgrade left those two features crippled. I have corrected the problem, so churches may now add, update, and delete tabs through the Church Administration control panel.

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Please keep me and MaineChristian.com in your prayers over the coming weeks. I have some big decisions to make regarding the site and would appreciate your prayers. The direction of this site has veered somewhat over the past 10 years, but the primary purpose - to connect Maine’s christians - has remained. Some projects for the site that are currently on the horizon include:

• Expanding the number of churches listed in the church directory
• Completing the event directory and allowing individuals, churches, and venues to add their own events
• Adding new services for churches
• Bringing back community-based services, such as forums
• Improving the services available to businesses
• Expanding the amount of “content” available on the site

I have some specific plans and hope to explain them better in the near future, but that is a rough outline of what I believe needs to happen. Meanwhile, I need to determine the best way to fund the site. Having given up on advertising as a means of funding, I am currently funding this personally, but there will come a time when this will no longer be feasible. I have some ideas here, too, but need direction from the Lord.

Thank you for using the site and taking the time to read this.

In Him,
Nate LaClaire

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This is an important announcement for MaineChristian.com Mail users:

I have noticed an increase recently in the volume of spam coming in to MaineChristian.com Mail. In order to combat this, I have implemented a new antispam service that is available through my service provider. By default, all MaineChristian.com Mail accounts are now filtered for spam and virus content, but you will not be able to see spam that has been caught by the system (or release false positives) without completing two steps: please go to http://www.protectedmail.net/activate.php and enter your email address to activate your antispam quarantine account. Once that is done, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link that you must click. After confirming, you will have access to your quarantine and will be able to release to your email account any messages falsely quarantined as spam. All virus content is permanently deleted and will not appear in your spam quarantine.

Remember, your account is now protected from spam and viruses, but you will not be able to ensure that legitimate messages are not being marked as spam unless you complete the steps above. Please do that as soon as possible!

Please note that this free antispam service is only available to users of MaineChristian.com Mail. New registrations for MaineChristian.com Mail are currently disabled, but if you would like a free email account, please contact us and we will see what we can do.

Also, as part of our effort to reduce the amount of spam coming in, we have disabled incoming email delivery on all accounts that have not been used since before December 2006. If this is you (or if you are no longer receiving email but this does not describe you), please email support@mainechristian.com to have us re-enable email delivery.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

God bless,
Nate LaClaire, Owner
MaineChristian.com

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After over two weeks of being inaccessible from the home page, the MaineChristian.com Mail service is back online. Please accept my sincerest apology for the “downtime.” The problem related to a change that took place over a month ago, but was never properly cleaned up after. The service has actually been online the whole time, but the link from the home page and the subdomain that the service was previously hosted under were not working, causing the service to be inaccessible to anyone who hadn’t bookmarked the new Mail subdomain (http://mail.mainechristian.com/). Again, I am very sorry for the inconvenience caused by this oversight.

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I’ve been contemplating the need for another blog post for a while now and an updated Church Directory listing yesterday finally gave me the topic. I want to congratulate First Baptist Church of East Machias for providing an excellent example of what can be done with the recent Church Directory feature enhancements and for making the most of the tools made available through this site. Thank you, FBCEM! Briefly, I would like to explain what they have done to improve their listing:

• Tabs -If you visit the FBCEM listing, you will notice that they have four tabs of information. All churches have one tab labeled General, but they have added two content tabs: one with information regarding their current sermon series and one that presents their statement of faith. This allows them to additional provide information that doesn’t fit within the standard categories. It is perfect for churches without their own web sites, but is obviously also useful for churches with web sites.
• Feeds - the fourth tab utilizes another recent feature of the Church Directory: it fetches the feed from their blog and presents a list of blog posts with links to each post. This allows them to present fresh information on their Church Directory listing by simply updating their blog. Sermon podcasts can also be added as Feeds, as Poland Baptist Church has done.
• About the Church - FBCEM has provided a great About the Church description.
• Photo - wonder how churches get featured on the home page? This is it: add a photo to your listing and you’ll automatically be included in the Featured Church rotation. FBCEM provides a great photo that will assist people in finding the church.

By the way, churches that do not have their own web sites may use their Church Directory listing as a web site by utilizing the Tabs functionality mentioned above along with another recent feature that provides a “shortcut” web site address. For example, the Poland Baptist Church’s shortcut address is http://mainechurches.org/pbc, which fits in promotional materials and newspaper listings much more easily than the standard Church Directory listing address of http://www.mainechristian.com/directory/churchdetail.php?id=26, but does the exact same thing. Every church can add a shortcut address, which looks like http://mainechurches.org/ followed by a short string of characters of the church’s choosing, by using the “Shortcut” link in the church administration page.

Have questions? Want to make suggestions? Please do so!

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I am excited to announce that MaineChristian.com’s Christian Events directory is now live! For several years, MaineChristian.com has provided a link to Positive 89.3’s event listing, but now the site has its own listing, which is tied to the Church Directory for those events taking place at a church.

I’ll soon have a page for people to add events to the database directly (pending administrative approval, like Links), but for now people can contact me to have an event added. Any event in Maine that is of a Christian nature can be listed (speakers, concerts, seminars, conferences, etc.), but I maintain the right to disallow any event for any reason. Please check it out and tell me what you think!

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