QuakerQuaker

Quaker discussions this week:

• Becoming the church we dreamed of. "My fondest wish – that Northwest Yearly Meeting would remain united – did not come true. It was tempting to grieve that rupture indefinitely … and, to be honest, the grief is not going away soon. However, it is a wonderful comfort to realize that nothing so far is blocking my existing friendships and actual collaborations…"
• New discussion started by Kirby Urner: Quakerism and Charter Schools
• Reflection from Keith Saylor: "Founding Quakerism: “Their chief design... to reduce Religion to Allegory?”" 
• Reflection from James C Schultz: "The Presence of God" 
• New discussion started by Kirby Urner: Quaker Whalers 

Help out QuakerQuaker's work to unite Friends in conversation! You can make a one-time donation via Paypal (http://bit.ly/quakergive) or learn about other ways to provide ongoing support on our Donation Page  (http://www.quakerquaker.org/page/support).

Can you believe it: the QuakerQuaker.org domain name was registered twelve years ago next month. Who would have thought that an all-volunteer side project with the quirky tagline would be continuing along? Thank you all for all the support and use over the years. Primitive Christianity Revived, Again, and Still Going?

Site update

It’s been awhile since the last update about the QuakerQuaker website. I’ve come to the conclusion that moving the main QuakerQuaker.org site over to a new social network service (WordPress) is not a good option. There’s two developments that made this an easy choice:

1) The current Ning service decided not to increase its monthly charge as it had announced. That means the various costs come out to about $50/month, which remains possible due to the generous ongoing donations I receive. 

2) No one really started using the new site. It’s always dicey to move a social networking site. It’s not something to do if you can find another option, as many of the more occasional users won’t go through the hassles. So for now, staying with Ning is the best option. 

Quick numbers:

The concept of QuakerQuaker was bubbling about in early 2005 but it was December when the name was finally registered. Some current numbers in honor of our almost-twelve year anniversary.

• 3,389: Members on QuakerQuaker.org. 
• 5,257: Likes and follows on Facebook
• 3,163: Followers on Twitter
• 143: Months since the QuakerQuaker name was registered.
• 4,000: Web articles that have been shared (approximately)
• 168: Quaker blogs followed every day to find new content to share.

Any donations Friends could make to the Paypal account would be very helpful for the move. You can start by going to http://bit.ly/quakergive. Other options are available on the…

Everything's not quite ready, but it's time to move QuakerQuaker over to the new server. It will be powered by BuddyPress, a variation on WordPress blogging platform. It's still very much an experiment in progress, but that's fitting in with the history of QuakerQuaker. I've announced some of the changes on a blog post there:

Time to switch QuakerQuaker

When the switch happens that site will become QuakerQuaker.org and this will be temporarily Ning.com/quakerquaker until I close it down. Please send all feedback as comments on the new site. I'll be traveling on a family vacation soon and not as available on email. Having everything at one spot will help!

Also, as I say there, the Paypal account is currently about $30 short (and the vacation means I can't front any myself this month). You can use the PaypalMe account to help out. Thanks in advance.

—Martin for QuakerQuaker.

Hi QuakerQuaker readers,

The biggest changes in half a decade are coming to QuakerQuaker. The Ning.com service that powers the main website is about to increase its monthly charge by 140 percent. When I first picked Ning to host the three-year-old QuakerQuaker project in 2008, it seemed like a smart move. Ning had recently been founded by tech world rock stars with access to stratospheric-level funds. But it never quite got traction and started dialing back its ambitions in 2010. It was sold and sold again and a long-announced new version never materialized. I've been warning people against starting new projects on it for years. Its limitations have become clearer with every passing year. But it's continued to work and a healthy community has kept the content on QuakerQuaker interesting. But I don't get enough donations to cover a 140 percent increase, and even if I did it's not worth it for a service stuck in 2010. It's time to evolve!

There are many interesting things I could build with a modern web platform. Initial research and some feedback from fellow Quaker techies has me interested in BuddyPress, an expanded and social version of the ubiquitous WordPress blogging system. It has plugins available that claim to move content from existing Ning sites to BuddyPress, leaving the tantalizing possibility that eight years of the online Quaker conversation can be maintained (wow!).

I will need funds for the move. The subscriptions to do the import/export will incur costs and there will be plugins and themes to buy. I'm mentally budgeting an open-ended number of late Saturday nights. And the personal computer we have is getting old. The charge doesn't hold and keys are starting to go. It will need replacement sooner rather than later.

Any donations Friends could make to the Paypal account would be very helpful for the move. You can start by going to…