All the staff from Web-Empowered Church, Vine Hosting, and Christian Technology Ministries International are meeting on July 17-21. Since our team is spread many miles apart, we all get together once per year for planning, fun, and fellowship. We are meeting near Dayton, Ohio, USA at Ginghamsburg Church. This year's theme is "Improving the User Experience in Everything We Do." Please pray for the team and our time together as we discuss and plan for our exciting future serving you and the Christian community around the world.

UPDATE: July 21 - Thank you for your prayers. Our meetings went really well.

It is a great encouragement and blessing to the WEC ministry when we learn of churches and ministries using any part of WEC. It also encourages those who are helping to fund WEC. Please consider requesting to list your website on the WEC Examples Page. Just login and then click on the "LIST YOUR WEBSITE HERE" link to begin the process. We usually review new requests and make them live on the WEC website at least once per month. Also, if you'd like to encourage WEC without listing your website on the public WEC Examples Page, then please go to the WEC Participate Page and fill out the form there. Entries there are tallied and reported to the WEC leadership. Thank you for partnering with us in ministry.

The new version of the WEC Starter Package for TYPO3 version 4.2.1 is now available on the WEC Installing Page. In addition to the minor upgrade to TYPO3, the package includes updates to several extensions. The WEC-TYPO3 Server, which allows you to run the WEC Starter Package locally on your own PC or Mac, is also updated and available.

As part of the upgrade to TYPO3 4.2, all the WEC templates have been improved and updated. All the WEC templates can be found on the Template Repository Page. You can also see the updated WEC Starter Package and updated templates on the WEC Demonstration Website.

We recently released several updates to WEC extensions. Please update the WEC Discussion Forum and the WEC Servant Matcher because the new versions include some minor security enhancements.

WEC Discussion Forum version 1.6.3 – Improved security, please update. Attached files and image files are now limited to only the allowed file types; RSS feeds include a reference to the character set used in the RSS feed; added features to support categories; and fixed "More..." link problem.

WEC Prayer Connector version 1.7.4 – Improved security, please update. Improved XHTML validation by updating the template.

WEC Servant Matcher version 1.1.1 – Added an option to view all ministries or skills when the page first displays. More...

On June 23-25, 2008, Mark Stephenson joined the other TYPO3 Association Active Members near Hamburg, Germany for a series of planning meetings. Mark came away excited about the future of TYPO3 and the quality of the TYPO3 Association leadership. Among the topics, the group discussed how to improve communications between the TYPO3 Association and the TYPO3 community, plans for transition to the new TYPO3 version 5, and a TYPO3 conference in the United States. Thanks to Juergen Egeling of punkt.de Mark made it there and back without any issues and even survived the Autobon at 200 Kilometers per hour. Thanks to those of you who prayed for the trip.

God is good!
Mark

On June 23-25, 2008, Mark Stephenson will be near Hamburg, Germany to gather with the other TYPO3 Association Active Members. You may not know it, but Mark is one of the leaders of the TYPO3 Association. You can see the list of Active Members (leaders) on the TYPO3 Association Website . Please pray for safe travels across the ocean and for a productive time together as the group works to help ensure TYPO3 remains as good as it can be. Of course, TYPO3 is the core software we use in Web-Empowered Church, so we want to participate and to help. As users of TYPO3, please consider joining the TYPO3 Association . Funds collected go toward making TYPO3 better. More...

If you have clicked on "Take a Tour" on the front page of the WEC user website then you have seen the WEC introductory presentation. That is the one with video and changing charts that uses the WEC Flash Presentation extension . We just updated it and we hope you enjoy it. We also created a new brochure for WEC and Vine Hosting. The new two-sided tri-fold brochure is available as a PDF download at the bottom of the About page. Please feel free to print it and to hand it out if that is helpful.

At the risk of telling you about a capability that might result in a not-so-good ministry website, I'd like to tell you how to add a Google Gadget to your WEC-TYPO3 website. Actually it is quite easy. Here are the steps:

The WEC Starter Package for TYPO3 4.2 is now available for your web server and for your local PC or Mac . The package includes:

1. A different set of revised WEC templates and a new default template
2. All new sample page content with additional instructions
3. The new Calendar Base extension replaced the old Extended Calendar extension
4. Most of the extensions have been updated

This version of TYPO3 has many new user interface features. Many common links, buttons, and menus in the TYPO3 Backend have changed appearance and/or location. To help you learn the changes, we created a WEC How-To called TYPO3 4.2.x User Interface Differences . More...

As you may know, the main WEC staff members are spread out in about 7 different U.S. states. We communicate almost every day via Skype and instant message, but once per year we get together for a time of planning, learning, and fellowship. This year we are meeting near Dayton, Ohio at Ginghamsburg Church. During our last weekly meeting, we discussed adding a day to our meetings and hosting a mini WEC Conference that you can attend. It could be held on July 17, 2008. Please let me know if you'd like to attend an informal WEC conference and what you would like to see and to get out of it. You can send your thoughts to me via e-mail at Mark@WebEmpoweredChurch.org.