Receiving candles when people light candles for your requests

Dear Users-

In our ongoing efforts to improve the speed and functionality of the site, we have temporarily disabled the feature that calculates candles earned from other people lighting candles for your prayer request. We discovered that the way in which this function was built was creating a lag in timing that caused many users to time out on a page. It also created issues with the lighting of candles. Disabling this feature offers a 2-pronged solution; we can increase speed and usability on the site while giving us time to figure out a better solution for candle distribution. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and we thank you for your continued patience.

the PA team

Site Down

Due to an unexpected issue with prayabout’s hosting company, the site went down for maintenance early this morning (EST). The maintenance took much longer than they anticipated, leaving prayabout functionality down until around 10am this morning. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We will be posting maintenance scheduling here in the future so as to avoid worry or confusion. 

Thank you,

the PA team

more site work

Dear Users-

We realize how important this site is and how frustrating it can be when it doesn’t work they way it should. We are continuing over the next two weeks to do some major work on the site. As we push fixes, they can affect how the rest of the site works. Please notify us when a feature acts up at helpfulpeople@prayabout.com and remain patient. We care about making the site better. Unfortunately, some pain along the way is necessary to figure out how to fix prayabout long-term. Thank you for your understanding.

the PA team

Candle lighting fixed

Dear Users-

Thanks to diligent work by our developer, the candles are working again. If you experience any problems, please email helpfulpeople@prayabout.com.

the PA team

Candles not lighting

Dear Users:

We have been informed by several of you that you are receiving error messages when you try to light a candle. Please be aware that we have been notified of the situation and are looking into the cause and how to fix it. As soon as we have more information, or have the problem resolved, we will let you know. Thank you for your ever continuing patience.

the PA team

Site fixes

For the next two weeks, we will be doing some major overhauling on the site. We hope to dramatically reduce the wait time and sluggishness of the site as well as take care of some of the more frequent user-related problems. Please check the blog to learn when we will be pushing these changes, as they may affect use of the site at that time. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

 

the PA team

What’s appropriate?

There have been some issues in the past few weeks regarding posts on the site. The staff at PrayAbout has been alerted to these issues and is looking into how to best deal with the situation. We are working very hard on a fair and just solution. Please check back in for further details in the next few days. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

the PA team

Update on 6/4/08

Every member of this site comes to receive prayer and support for issues in their lives. As part of the user agreement that every member agrees to upon joining the community, each member is required to respect the other members of the site. Even when one does not agree with another’s lifestyle or religion. Please notify us at helpfulpeople@prayabout.com if you feel that you are being harassed in any way by other members of the site.

Thank you.

the PA team

Seeing all of your responses:

Over the past few weeks, we received many support questions regarding prayer request responses. Some users were only able to view up to 10 responses even though they had received more. Last week, we made a temporary fix to this issue. Last night, our development team completed the permanent fix to this issue. If you are still unable to view all of your prayer responses, please email helpfulpeople@prayabout.com and let us know your user name and the last time you encountered this issue. Thanks!

 

The PA team

Your candles will burn longer:

We have received some requests from users to extend the life of candles once they are lit. On Tuesday afternoon, we updated the site so that the candles will burn for 36 hours. This means that each time you light a candle in support of a prayer, that prayer will receive an extra 24 hours of flame. Let us know what you think of this latest change and keep your suggestions coming.

the PA team

Problems with submitting responses and losing candles because of that.

We are getting inquires on why some responses are not being posted. We are looking into this and consider the problem urgent. Your responses should be safe and should get posted once the problem is resolved. More soon

PA Staff

UPDATE: May 7th at 8:00p EST

We’ve identified several problems and one has just been fixed. We are working on the second. It looks as if someone submitted a prayer response with programming logic with the purpose of bringing down the site. This is not the first – nor will it be the last – effort to hurt our community. These things only make us stronger. Thanks for your patience, prayers, and support. More updates as soon as we have them.

UPDATE: May 7th at 8:45p EST

The problems have been fixed.  The responses that have been put in await approval so that they get published.  There is a very large backlog, so please help approve them at this link:

http://www.prayabout.com/volunteer_audits/new?content_type=Reply

Thank you and thank Mathieu Martin, the ace programmer that fixed the issue. We will be correcting the site so that it will not be disrupted in this manner again.