What's new on the website
As we build up our website, this section will contain new features with a bit of info on how to find them and/or why we've done them. Check back here periodically to find out what's new. In addition, we have turned comments on for this page, so leave us a comment or email webmaster@breslaumennonitechurch.ca if you have feedback on the new features.
November 14 2009:
Added 3 albums of photos from our 175th anniversary section. They are in the 175th Anniversary Celebration Photos section.
October 23 2009:
We created the what's new section.
Comments for Darren's blog are back!!!! In the spring, we ran into some problems with nasty computer programs putting spam comments (50 or more garbage comments a day sometimes!!!) in the comments section. As a result, we had to restrict comments to people with userids and passwords. Unfortunately, a few days later the computer programs promptly started requesting userids and passwords on the website(with funny made up names) to the tune of 5 or more requests every day which kept Jim busy denying and deleting the requests. If you requested an id over the summer and didn't get one, it probably got denied by accident and we apologize for the inconvenience.
We have done several things to beef up security on our website, in preparation for having people be able to have userids and passwords and be able to log into the website securely. Allowing people to sign in allows us to create a secure section on our site (just like you have secure sections on bank and shopping websites). The secure section will give us a place where we can put things that are only intended for our church community and not viewable by everyone on the internet. Watch for more details on how to get a userid and password in the next few weeks as we get ready to launch this new section of the website. In the meantime, keep on reading for more info about the new security features....
For security purposes we added Captchas to the comment section and to the request a userid id page. Captchas are those twisty harder to read characters that you sometimes see on web pages, that are sometimes difficult to read. Although they can be annoying, they help prove that a person is actually leaving the comment or asking for a userid and not a computer program. Hopefully we have set up the captchas so that they aren't too hard to read, and are hard enough that computer programs can't read them. If you have a userid and password on our site, you won't see the captchas either.
Another security feature we added over the summer is something that geeks call SSL. What is SSL and who cares? SSL is the feature that allows us to send data between your browser (internet explorer, firefox) to the website in an encrypted format. As we allow people to request userids and passwords and we create a secure section on our website, SSL ensures that this information is protected each and every time you log in. How can you tell if a web page is secure or has SSL? Look at the url - it will start with https:// instead of http://. Also look for the padlock icon in your browser (in newer versions of Internet Explorer you'll see a padlock at the end of the url if you are on a secure page, in Firefox there is a padlock icon in the bottom right that is locked). If you are curious you can test out our home page with SSL and our home page without SSL
Over the summer of 2009 we added the 175th Anniversary Branch and Photo Album and the 175th Anniversary Historical moments section (look on the left hand side).