The new look-and-feel and technology of echurch.co.za

written by Dries Cronje

You might have noticed that the echurch.co.za community website has undergone a look-and-feel update. Actually, the changes run much deeper than that...

We have made a complete technology switch... The old website made use of WordPress and BuddyPress software to enable us to host useful content and ways of interaction for a tribe of followers of Jesus. Unfortunately, we had some serious issues with the BuddyPress software.

BuddyPress is at present heavily targeted by spammers for the creation of fake accounts, and there is no way to moderate the creation of new user accounts. This wasted much time on the administration of accounts. Further, BuddyPress is not very reliable and stable yet, and often something goes wrong during the account creation process causing new users to be able to neither sign in nor create a new user account (the email was already registered).

We have had huge success with our Afrikaans website on the Ning platform, and therefore we have decided to switch the English website over to Ning as well. We are confident that the experience will be superior to all our subscribers, readers and visitors.

We do apologize for the effort of having to create a new user account, but this is a once-off switch. We won't be moving again soon...

Please do not hesitate to give us a shout if you have any queries, comments or questions.

Regards,
Dries Cronje
echurch.co.za