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Overview |
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Overview |
The PrayerRoom.org is a web-hosting project whose purpose is to provide an electronic prayer room for any church or non-church christian ministry that would like one, independent of their web hosting capabilities. The site will also host a prayer room of it's own.
The site and services that it provides will be offered on a non-profit basis.
Many churches have a prayer list that they maintain and print in the Sunday bulletin. This information usually is not highly detailed, and It may be just a list of names. For the online prayer room, we want to be able to list the same information, and optionally add the capability to click-on a listing to see more detail. For example, some churches might have "Bob Smith" on the prayer list; and want to be able to update members to say that "Bob is out of the hospital now and recovering fine".
When someone enters a prayer request via the internet, they probably want most requests to show-up immediately, but some may have details that should be passed on to the people in the "caring group" (or whatever it's called in the church), or pastor, instead of displaying on the website.
People who post prayer requests may wish to change, add-to, or delete their requests; and all requests should expire after a specified number of days.
Persons responsible for looking after the prayer room for the church may also wish to change, add-to, or delete any requests posted, as well as enter their own. They should also have the option of making any request non-expiring in the case of requests relating to chronic illness etc.
Site visitors reading the requests should have an opportunity to click a button that says they are praying for the request, and optionally leave a word of encouragement. Although it is important for someone to be able to click a button to say that they are praying for the request, no statistics on the number of times it's being clicked should be displayed to the public.
Identities of people posting requests can't be determined reliably without requiring that users register to use the prayer room, but requiring registration should be an optional setting. Users should specify their name on any request or response to a prayer request, and have a record of their posting the entry stored on the computer they're using by default (a browser cookie would be used). A user can choose to create a password associated with their name, or leave it blank. If they choose to provide a password, they will need to provide an e-mail address that an "I forgot my password" reminder can be sent to.
Passwords would be required for users who have administrative responsibilities both to give people authorization to do certain functions, and insure that someone else doesn't decide to leave comments while pretending to be someone else. A password change function will be provided along with the ability to send an "I forgot my password" reminder e-mail.
The ability to administer the prayer room would be given to a person or persons at set-up time. People granted the administrative capability would be able to grant it to others.
It's important that churches with minimal internet hosting capabilities still be able to have the prayer room page take-on the look and feel of their site. Each church will probably need a style sheet that will allow their prayer room page to blend-in well with their existing site design.
Site design should be compatible with contemporary internet browsers and mobile devices.