Forum Updates and Announcements

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all,

As part of the server upgrade taking place this weekend (from 2nd - 4th September, 2005), parts of the Monachos.net Discussion Community message boards may be temporarily inaccesable or otherwise unavailable.

Please be aware of this! All such interruptions to normal functionality should cease by Monday morning.

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Update on service upgrade, weekend of 2nd - 4th September, 2005:

As many of you will have noted, there have been temporary periods of inaccessibility to the Discussion Community message boards over the weekend, while we upgrade the servers that host the whole of Monachos.net. These interruptions should be largely complete at this stage, and you will notice that the message board is again accessible and functional.

Please note that for the time being, the Discussion Community pages are linked under a separate host: i.e., when you click on 'Discussion Community' or another link from the main web site to arrive at the forum, you will see in your browser's address bar that the message board itself is not hosted on the main www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net) server, but on a separate server with a numerical IP address (65.108.231.116).

This is a temporary situation and the message board will soon be back on the main server. Please do not change your bookmarks in the meantime.

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Further update on server upgrade.

Dear all: please note that the server upgrade for the message forum is now complete. All forum pages should now be accessible under the proper www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net) domain, and not under the temporary IP domain (65.108.231.116) in use over the past two days.

INXC, Matthew

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Matthew,
I'm wondering if there are still some glitches with the upgrade to Monachos.
Hitting the ' key still puts some sort of new search bar at the bottom of the page which then frequently jumps as if searching for a word in the whole page above.
Also in the God & Time section the link to Jump to this Page is not working properly.
Sorry!
In Christ- Fr Raphael

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Fr Raphael (and others),

Yes - there may still be a few glitches here and there; but most should by now be sorted.

In response to your specific queries:

(a) The 'jump to page' links on e-mail sent out while the Discussion community was running on an alternate server (over the weekend) will try to 'jump' you to pages on that alternate server; however, since we've since moved the Discussion Community back onto the main server (at base address www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net)), those old pages no longer exist, and you'll simply be re-directed to the main forum page. This is only an issue for e-mail versions of posts sent out over the weekend, up through Monday morning, 5th December 2005. (You'll know if the 'jump to' link you're clicking is on the old system, because the base of the URL/address will be '65.108.231.116' rather than 'www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net)'). All current and future e-mail versions of posts should have 'jump to' links to the proper addresses.

(b) Regarding the search bar appearing at the bottom of the window when you press the ' key: this is actually nothing to do with Monachos.net, and is not in fact an 'issue' but a feature of the Firefox browser, which you must be using. Firefox has a feature that enables searching of text on pages to be live: just begin typing and the search box appears at the bottom of the browser window, as well as the page jumping to the first instance of the text you've typed, which will be highlighted. This is a nice feature if you often do word searches on pages. If however you find it annoying (perhaps because you inadvertently hit keys that initiate the search/jump), you can turn it off by clicking 'Options' from the 'Tools' menu, selecting the 'Advanced' tab of the options window that appears, and un-ticking the box next to 'Find as you type' in the 'Accessibility' section.

INXC, Mattthew

[Marie-Duquette]

Dear Matthew,

You have done amarvelous work with the up-grade! But, I do wonder about it. . .

1. It seems that the FRONT PAGE is now "missing"

2. I can't access Monachos from my "favorite places" anymore; only from "topics"

3. I miss the daily "word from the Fathers", since the FRONT PAGE is missing.

4. I guess at this point I did prefer the "Old format" where I could more easily access the "topics" as well as the message boards and links.

5. My e-mail versions come in fine! But no FRONT PAGE . . . only possibility of accessing "topics"

6. The problem may stem from the fact that my server is different from my e-mail address. should I change my e-mail address in order to obtain what is called "cookies"

7. When I try to access Monachos.net from my favorite places, I still have that "YELLOW BOX" which states that the weekend will be closed down for the updates. I did wait the seconds that it stated to wait. ... But, nothing happened.

respectifully in Christ Jesus and the Theotokos

marie_duquette}

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Marie Duquette,

Thank you for your message, though I must say I am puzzled by its contents (see below). If any others are experiencing similar difficulties, please do let me know.

In response to your specific comments:

a) I do not know why you mean by 'the front page is missing'. What front page are you referring to? The front page of the Monachos web site is at www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net/), and displays fine on my machine. The front page for the Discussion Community form is at this location (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/discus.cgi?pg=topics), and again is both present and displaying/working properly on my computer.

b) I am similarly perplexed about your comment that you 'can't access Monachos from my "favorite places" anymore; only from "topics"'. The Monachos.net website is available at www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net/) and should be accessible by any favourites/bookmarks you have had previously. The 'Topics' page is the main interface of the Discussion Community (here (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/discus.cgi?pg=topics)), and should have nothing to do with your bookmarks.

c) The Word from the Fathers (http://www.monachos.net/quote.shtml) page is still available at its usual URL, and is still linked from the front page of the web site (http://www.monachos.net/).

In general, I am not certain about the details you mention! The server upgrade that took place over the weekend was simply an upgrade of the equipment that runs the web site; it did not involve a change of any of the content on the site -- everything is still in the same place, with the same links and addresses. The only exception to this would be if you have bookmarks to specific posts in the Discussion Community, which may not (but should) continue to point correctly after the upgrade. But apart from that, all else is precisely as before, including the location of the front page, Word from the Fathers and other pages, as well as the design of everything - forum included. (The upgrade to the layout/design will come later.) I wonder if you might try looking again at the system. Do let me know by e-mail (http://www.monachos.net/feedback/email_webmaster.shtml) if you still have difficulties, as I think these might be issues peculiar to your set up and not to the web site (though others can perhaps let us know if they are encountering anything similar).

INXC, Matthew

[Marie-Duquette]

Dear Matthew,

thank you for responding to my "many" questions concerning the Monachos web site.

I just looked again at my "favorite places" and all seems to be now accessibly from there. so, I guess that I don't need to change my e-mail address. My server must have needed to go through some kind of technological thing. But, as far as I can NOW see, all is okay and accessibly.

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

marie_duquette

[Marie-Duquette]

Matthew,

By FRONT PAGE, I meant the web site's FRONT PAGE with the Icon and all the other accessible blue line. That has returned "beautifully" as always. With also the "Word from the Fathers".

Now the "yellow box" has been changed to a "white box" In case there are other glitches, I suppose.

thank you for your continued concern for the well-running of this "up-lifting" web-site. I, personally find it very instructional, especially with with well-prepared articles and links. I love reading and studying these each day.
Thank you. And may you always be blessed, as well as all persons who benefit from the wealth of Orthodoxy on the Monachos.net web site.

May the "new Liturgical year" be blessed for all of us!

marie_duquette

p.s. If I experience other glitches, I'll let you know.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thanks Matthew for the info about the Monachos update and also letting me know that what I am experiencing is a Firefox feature and not a glitch.
In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Marie-Duquette]

Matthew,

I am perplexed about the TOPIC "casual and Personal Conversations".

I can't access the newest posts -- that is, those since August 28th.

Just don't know what to make of it? I see that the last poster on September 9th was Leandros. When I click to enter this TOPIC, all I find are the post up to August 28th. I've tried opening a "new" thread called "WHAT IS HAPPENING . . .? and it hasn't posted there, so I am alerting you to this problem from the link in the "white box" at the upper right hand corner of the web site's Front Page.

Don't know if this is a problem only for me, from my computer; or if others are experiencing the same problem.

Thank you, Matthew and may the Lord God bless you always,

marie_duquette

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I tried going through the Casual & Personal Conversations & everything seems to being working fine.
In Christ--Fr Raphael

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I tried going through...& everything seems to being working fine.

Except my grammar which doesn't seem to be working so fine!

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Marie-Duquette,

Thank you for your message. As with Fr Raphael, the Casual and Personal Conversation topic area seems to be working fine as I meander through it this morning. I wonder, based on this and other queries in the past, if you might not have a cache issue effecting your interaction with the forum: i.e., either your browser or a cache at your internet service provider, that is causing you to see slightly out-of-date pages at times.

One note to keep in mind: the main topics area listing of the community &#40;as found here ("")&#41; indicates the last person to have posted in any thread in that topic, as well as the date/time of that posting - these details being updated on the main listing whenever a post is made. The listing is thus accurate at all times, <u>unless</u> the moderator has recently moved a thread from one topic area to another &#40;as was the case yesterday, for example, when I moved the thread on St Peter from the Casual Discussion to the Ecclesiology topic area&#41;.

The best way to find new messages is to click the &#39;Check New Messages&#39; link on the left-hand side of the page, which will call up a listing of all messages posted since you last clicked that link.

INXC, Matthew

[Marie-Duquette]

Matthew,
I thank you for looking into the problem that I am experiencing with the TOPIC &#34;Casual and Personal Conversations&#34;

I&#39;ve checked everything out. And, still I have no access to this particular area, neither from the TREE VIEW, nor the TOPIC itself, nor from the blue &#34;here&#34; that you have indicated in your post #750. All I get there is a BLANK page!

So, my perplexity is now more acute. I feel that I am banned from this TOPIC, since August 28th.

I do hope to go into this further at some point. Right now, I must go, for I am being PRESENT at the Orthodox Information Booth at the Greek Festival in Oaklawn,RI.

Have a blessed day! with many thanks for the very informative Forum that is produced at MONACHOS.NET

Forgive me a sinner. Pray for me as I do for all!

marie_duquette

[Anthony]

I seem to be experiencing similar problems to Marie-Duquette. &#40;My browser is Netscape 7.00.&#41;

[Leandros Papadopoulos]

Indeed the &#34;here&#34; link as it is being posted in message 750 is not working from MS Internet Explorer.

You can follow the main forum link: http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/discus.cgi

and the &#34;Casual and Personal Conversations&#34; should be found in the following link: http://www.monachos.net/mb/messages/6555/6555.html

The above links work for me with Internet Explorer browser.

[Leandros Papadopoulos]

Dr Steenberg,

It seems to be a minor problem when I access Monachos.net web site.

I use MS Internet Explorer ver 6.0.28 and every time I access the main web page www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net) I get the attached error message and afterwards as I enter in the inner web pages I do not experience any further problems.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Leandros,

Thank you very much for the report. I&#39;ve corrected the scripting issue, so that error message on the web site&#39;s main page &#40;www.monachos.net (http://www.monachos.net)&#41; should no longer appear.

As to the matter with the Casual and Personal Discussion area: I still cannot recreate this issue. The area is accessible without problem from the main forum topics listing, as well as through direct links, and messages posted there seem to be getting through fine.

INXC, Matthew

[Marie-Duquette]

Dear Matthew,
Please forgive me for being so persistent in trying to clarify the problem that I am having concerning the TOPIC: Casual and Personal conversations.

I&#39;ve tried accessing this area of the Forum through the links that Leandros presented in his post #252 above. Neither of them work for me to enter into the &#34;casual and personal conversations area.

Again I&#39;ve tried to access through the TREE VIEW and through the &#34;NEW MESSAGES&#34; links. Neither of these show the topic: Casual and personal conversations. Only all the other discussions topic.

I surely didn&#39;t want to take personally the fact that I cannot access this topic. Forgive me for stating that I felt banned from this topic.

There surely must be some explanation. Which at present, I do not know! i am just hoping that this will be clarified for me.

marie_duquette

p.s. Do you think that I should register anew?
Thank you for your patience with me at this time.

[Marie-Duquette]

Dear Matthew,
Please forgive me for being so persistent in trying to clarify the problem that I am having concerning the TOPIC: Casual and Personal conversations.

I&#39;ve tried accessing this area of the Forum through the links that Leandros presented in his post #252 above. Neither of them work for me to enter into the &#34;casual and personal conversations area.

Again I&#39;ve tried to access through the TREE and through the &#34;NEW MESSAGES&#34; links. Neither of these show the topic: Casual and personal conversations. Only all the other discussions topic.

I surely didn&#39;t want to take personally the fact that I cannot access this topic. Forgive me for stating that I felt banned from this topic.

there surely must be some explanation. Which at present, I do not know!

marie_duquette

p.s. Do you think that I should register anew?
Thank you for your patience with me at this time.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Marie-duquette,
Matthew is away for a little over a week so he will not be able to respond to your question.
I wish I knew something that could be of help to sort out your problem but I am really a techno-barbarian when it comes to these things.
One thing though- a few days ago while Monachos was being upgraded I noticed that my cookies seemed to be deleted and I had to re-register my password anew. This happened for about three days running and then suddenly stopped when Monachos seemed to &#39;remember&#39; me again. Could this be the problem?
In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Marie-Duquette]

Dear Father Raphael,
Praised be to God for your compassionate post #747.

It seems that I have again been &#34;remembered&#34; as a poster on &#34;Casual and personal conversations&#34;

Yesterday at the Divine Liturgy, how the &#34;Remember me Oh Lord when you enter into your kingdom&#34; ... at the Gospel entrance struck me with the Grace of God. The Beatitudes chanted with piety by our beautiful Choir, brought tears to my heart&#39;s eye, as I remembered that these are not only the Foundation Stone of Our Faith, but also the fulfillment of it in Christ Jesus in the Blessednes promised!

And, Jesus invites in the Gospel, &#34;Learn of me ... for I am meek and gentle &#40;humble&#41; of heart.&#34;

Surely, God had not forgotten me, even though little technological glitches on Monachos.net did for a while.

Thank you; and may you be &#34;blessed&#34;

marie_duquette

[M.C. Steenberg]

Important announcement regarding message sorting and moving on Saturday, 8th October 2005:

VERY IMPORTANT: The following message relates information that will effect your e-mail notification delivery as well as your ability to reply by e-mail. Please read it carefully.

Dear all,

Today I have spent some time organising the message structure of the Community, in order to make materials easier to find (quite a task with some 20,000 messages on-line), and improve the organisation of various areas. Some time ago we moved the 'Doctrine and Theology' area over to a layered design -- i.e. it contains sub-areas dedicated to specific themes -- and this is now being expanded to other topics.

Readers will see that similar 'layering' has now been applied to the 'Ascesis' and 'In depth' areas, organising the rather vast amounts of materials in these areas into much more sensible groupings. In addition, the 'Ecclesiology and Monasticism' area has been split apart into the new 'Monasticism' area and the new 'Ecclesiology and the Church' area. The Monasticism area has been layered and organised; though I've not yet managed to sort and layer the ecclesiology/church area. The organisation of this area, as well as the 'Casual and Personal Conversation' area, will follow soon.

* How these changes effect your e-mail delivery settings: If you have your account configured to deliver messages by e-mail, you will need edit your e-mail notification settings in your User Profile (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/board-profile.cgi) to ensure that the new 'Monasticism' topic area is ticked for e-mail delivery. If you do not do this, you will not receive e-mail versions of posts made in this new area -- even if those posts are continuations of previous threads you did receive, since they were formerly located in a different area.

* How these changes effect your ability to reply by e-mail: Since very many messages and threads have moved in today's maintenance, if you attempt to reply by e-mail to posts made before these changes, the system may not know where to find the new threads, and your e-mailed replies may not be posted. In order to ensure that your replies are posted to the forum, please used the web interface at www.monachos.net/mb (http://www.monachos.net/mb) to make your posts. Please note that all messages posted and received by e-mail subsequent to this reorganisation (i.e. subsequent to my posting of this notification message) will be posted in their new locations, and you can use reply by e-mail as before. The possibility of e-mailed replies being lost only applies to responses sent to messages posted prior to today's maintenance.

Please take some time to peruse the new organisation and get a feel for how things are organised and layered in the various topic areas. While there will be a slight adaptation curve needed for members familiar with where things were before, I feel that this new organisation will make keeping themes and topics together all the easier.

As ever, if you have trouble finding a thread, discussion or specific post, you can use the forum's search engine (http://www.monachos.net/cgi-bin/mb/search.cgi) to search the entire community.

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Important announcement: Updated Discussion Community Terms of Use

The Terms of Use for the Monachos.net Discussion Community have been updated, with the new version in place from today (31st December 2005, civil calendar). Please take a moment to read through the new Terms of Use Document, which is available from this link, and always from the 'Terms of Use' link on the left-hand side of all Discussion Community pages.

The Terms of Use document contains the Community Outline, which articulates the scope, focus and design of the forum, as well as the thorough terms of use of the forum.

Monachos.net

[Monachos.net]

Important announcement: Secure access details for Monachos Discussion Community.

When you use your web browser to access the Monachos.net Discussion Community, you may be asked to enter a username and password to access the secure forum area.

The username for access is 'user', and the password is 'monachos'.

Please note these are not the same as your username and password on the Discussion Community system, to which you will still log in as usual with your customary details. These are the entry details to the secure area in which the whole of the forum temporarily is functioning.

Why? The forum has recently been the target of some 'spambot' server attacks that have, wholly behind the scenes (i.e. in know visible way to readers), been overloading our server and causing crashes. A new release of the software that powers the forum is due within the next fortnight, but until then we will be running the Discussion Community from a secure directory that requires a username and password for access.

Full details, explanations and common Q&A are found at the following page on the main Monachos web site: Secure access to the Discussion Community

INXC,
M.C. Steenberg

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all,

Just a note that in today's flurry of activity (nearly 80 posts in the past 24 hours), we surpassed 25,000 posts in the Discussion Community. Congratulations to all on a fairly inconsequential, yet nonetheless encouraging, milestone.

What's doubly encouraging is that the better portion of these 25,000+ messages are solid, helpful, thoughtful notes worth their place in the archives.

INXC, Matthew

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

What a flurry these last few days - and I see we are up to 945 members.

I know your modesty will shy away from thanks and congratulations - but credit where it is due - thank you for all you put into this site, which brings so much about Orthodoxy to so many - and my thanks to your fellow moderators.:)

In Christ,

John

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

One friend has pointed out to me that, perhaps as part of our Lenten discipline, the site has slimmed down in terms of our individual posts.

If so, I sure hope that the ones of mine that have gone into the great oubliette of lost Internet posts are the ones I'd most like to see the back of - although I suppose, in the Lenten mood, it ought to be the other way around.

Or can someone simply not count?

INXC

John

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear John, all the posts are still there; the system just no longer counts posts in the 'casual / personal' area in individual's post counts -- just posts in the main topic areas. Nothing has been deleted.

INXC, Matthew

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

Many thanks for the explanation.

INXC

John

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

Most unnerving to be told be the computer that it doesn't recognise Monachos; mine ought to be able to find its way there without guidance!

Many thanks to you, and whoever else ought to be thanked, for resolving this problem; record time, I think,

Mind you, if it had gone off line on Bright Saturday ... !;)

With thanks,

John

[Rick H.]

Yes, Matthew, thank you very much for all of your hard work here. I can not imagine how much effort it must take to keep things running smoothly on all fronts.

And, as John has said:




Most unnerving to be told be the computer that it doesn't recognise Monachos; mine ought to be able to find its way there without guidance!



I can relate to this, but in a different way. Becuase, my computer simply refuses to sign off of monachos most of the time when she is plugged in. Yesterday, was actually a rough period of withdrawl for her, but she is fine now. I am thinking that I might have to do an intervention of sorts with her though at some point. :rolleyes:

Rick

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

SYSTEM GLITCH RESOLVED: In an apparent technological fault designed to promote churchgoing, the system was off-line for part of Pascha and Bright Monday. This issue has since been resolved.


Yes, but WHICH issue has been resolved? :)

In the Risen Christ- Fr Raphael

[Father Anthony]

Yes, but WHICH issue has been resolved? :)

In the Risen Christ- Fr Raphael

Yes please!

I want to be prepared in case of an onslaught of new faithful this Sunday.:eek: :)

In the Risen Christ,
Father Anthony+

[M.C. Steenberg]

SYSTEM GLITCH RESOLVED: In an apparent technological fault designed to promote churchgoing, the system was off-line for part of Pascha and Bright Monday. This issue has since been resolved.

Yes, but WHICH issue has been resolved? :)

This made me laugh! If only solutions to church attendance were as simple as fixing a server bug!

INXC, Matthew

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

This made me laugh! If only solutions to church attendance were as simple as fixing a server bug!

INXC, Matthew

Its kind of like the Wizard of Oz approach to church life. Just pull the appropriate lever and everyone does 'what's expected.'

No, no- I think I'll just keep with the unpredictable 'system' we have now!

Freedom may be more painful for us. But at least it leads more surely to salvation.

In the Risen Christ- Fr Raphael

[Marie-Duquette]

Dear Mr. Steenberg,

Christ is Risen!

Thank you for up-dating the terms of use and community outline.

I have tried to read the documents posted today, May, 11th and, I do find it difficult to read the size of the print., since I do have a visual impairment, and have difficulty with small print.

Previously the forum had a "LARGER PRINT" option. At this point, I do miss it.

I am sending this post in larger print; and, I do wonder if this will enable me to read the Message Board in LARGER PRINT; or, if this feature will be again provided on the Monachos.net Discussion Community.

Thank you,

marie_duquette

[Mina Soliman]

"Mark messages read" seem to not exist anymore. What happened?

[M.C. Steenberg]

"Mark messages read" seem to not exist anymore. What happened?

Dear Mina,

You'll need to be a touch more precise! The 'Mark Forums Read' link still exists at its same location on the front page of the Community; and it remains also available in the 'Quick Links' drop-down menu at the top of all pages.

Which instance of it are you referring to?

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Previously the forum had a "LARGER PRINT" option. At this point, I do miss it.

I am sending this post in larger print; and, I do wonder if this will enable me to read the Message Board in LARGER PRINT; or, if this feature will be again provided on the Monachos.net Discussion Community.

Dear Marie and others,

Thank you for this note. The large-print version of the site was inadvertently disabled during our recent update. I've corrected this, and you should be able to configure the forum for large-font display once again.

INXC, Matthew

[Mina Soliman]

Dear Mina,

You'll need to be a touch more precise! The 'Mark Forums Read' link still exists at its same location on the front page of the Community; and it remains also available in the 'Quick Links' drop-down menu at the top of all pages.

Which instance of it are you referring to?

INXC, Matthew

Yes, I meant "Mark Forums Read" :o

I see where they are now, but there also used to be one in the "New Posts" page, right under where it says:

SEARCH: New Posts

God bless.