We are working on a video that will help promote WEC and are in need of additional testimonies and ministry stories. If you'd like to help us expand the web-empowered church movement and to encourage more people to invest in this ministry, please email Mark(at)WebEmpoweredChurch.org. We are looking for written stories and testimonies as well as people who are willing to appear on camera or an audio recording. Thanks for your support. We are blessed to serve.
In Christ,
Mark

The TYPO3 Association Security Team identified a security vulnerability with one of the extensions used in the WEC Starter Package called "Modern Guestbook / Commenting system (ve_guestbook)." Learn more here. We encourage you to update this extension as soon as possible.
 
If your website is hosted by the Web-Empowered Church / Vine Hosting then this update was made for you automatically and you do not need to take any more action.
In Christ,
Mark

The entire Web-Empowered Church and Vine Hosting Team has been pretty busy lately since we are in the process of moving our hosting operations to a new data center in Washington Court House, Ohio. Until now, we have been leasing space from a company in Philadelphia. In an effort to provide churches and ministries around the world with the highest level of service and to support our continued growth, we prayerfully made the decision to make this move.

Our old location was smaller and harder to access. Our new facility is over twice the size and includes adjacent office space. In addition, the new facility is in close proximity to additional Web-Empowered Church staff.

Last month was an exciting time for WEC as we helped host the first ever TYPO3 conference in North America. For us, the event began on April 15th with some of you joining us for a pre-TYPO3 conference WEC day. During that time, the WEC team spent time teaching on various topics selected by the attendees at the beginning of the event. It was a blessing for us to spend time with some of the WEC Community.

In short, the TYPO3 conference was awesome! Since this was a first, we were not sure was to expect. We were thrilled when over 80 people registered. Attendees came from 20 different states in the U.S. and the international community joined in with people from 11 different countries on 4 continents. The presentations were excellent and taught us more about TYPO3 now as well as the bright future ahead. The social times were great too. Since the event was held in Dallas, Texas, the theme was cowboys and the old west. So the main poster showed cowboys on horses. Presenters got cowboy hats and bandannas, and the social event was a BBQ complete with old western gun fights. For most of us, we were most impressed by the quality of the TYPO3 community. There is a real spirit of friendship, partnership, and mutual respect. In many ways, this is what makes TYPO3 strong.

Calendar Base extension version 1.1.2 was recently released. The WEC team is joining with the TYPO3 community to help develop this extension. The extension is included in the WEC Starter Package. The update added a security fixed, fixed a bug where the plugin's week start day was not honored if a backend login was active, and improved error handling when dealing with event categories and notifications. We encourage you to upgrade to this latest version.

As you may know, the first TYPO3 Conference in North America will be held on April 16-18, 2009. The majority of the WEC team will be attending and many will be presenting as well. We look forward to seeing you there.
In addition, we are offering a unique opportunity to the WEC community. We heard that several WEC churches will be attending so we decided to give you an added bonus. On April 15, 2009, we are conducting an informal day-long Web-Empowered Church event. We will start at 9 am at Irving Bible Church (the location of the conference). We plan to give you an opportunity to meet each member of our team and to ask technical questions in this informal training and demonstration event. There is no charge for this day and you do not need to attend the TYPO3 Conference to attend the WEC event. More...

We added several enhancements to the Staff extension. The new version includes: support for departments stored  in records; you can now show a random staff member displayed by the day, week, or month; we updated the template and added template markers; the staff directory listing can now show up in the website search results; added ability to sort by more fields; added Greek and Dutch languages (Thank you translators!); the template now supports 'start date' and address; you can search by name and department; and the manual was updated.

The updated WEC Starter Package is now available for TYPO3 version 4.2.6. Version 4.2.6 includes an important security patch, and this package updates to the latest extensions versions as well. We also have the WEC-TYPO3 Server that you can run on your PC or your Mac for local training and experimentation. You can see the WEC Starter Package in action  by checking out the WEC Demonstration website. (Note: the WEC Starter Package does not include the WEC Template Viewer box).

The TYPO3 Security Team has issued a security bulletin for the main core TYPO3 software used with WEC. New versions of TYPO3 have been released to correct this problem. Even though it is unlikely that your website will be compromised, it is important that you update your version of TYPO3 as soon as possible. If you are hosting with the WEC/Vine then this update is already in progress and you do not need to do anything. Our team have been working on updates since it was release early this morning (February 10, 2009). The new TYPO3 software is on the TYPO3 Packages page.

Please join the entire WEC Team and many of the key developers of TYPO3 on April 16-18, 2009 near Dallas, Texas. Meet Kasper, a Christian and the original developer of TYPO3, and several other key developers of TYPO3 version 4 and the new version 5. You will learn a lot and will meet some very dedicated and skilled professionals. Please sign up now to get the early bird price reduction. Learn more on the T3CON09-Dallas website.