This blog will deal with anything that strikes my fancy.
Be it the latest PLR products, MRR products, affiliate opportunities, site scripts or
site services.

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About Upgrading:

As will all previous software releases, we recommend that our current users wait a couple of weeks to upgrade live sites. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. The phpLD staff will be very busy over the next couple of weeks helping people, and getting accustomed to supporting the new version. If you have problems during the upgrade, there could be some delays in getting help for you, and we know that can be stressful when your site is having trouble.
2. It is very common for us to locate small bugs after the release. Usually, they are very minor, but nevertheless, waiting to upgrade may very well help you not have to worry about this. Last year in 3.3, we had a couple of minor updates after the release.
3. You’ll find documentation in the supporters forum about upgrading including the changes that need to be made to the templates.
Playground-Directory.net
Just over a year ago we released phpLD version 3.3 which was our most popular release to date. Since then we have been collecting requests from our users, and implementing new features, followed by careful testing. We have put a lot thought, research and time into this release (version 3.4), and we are very excited about providing it to you.

About Upgrading:

As will all previous software releases, we recommend that our current users wait a couple of weeks to upgrade live sites. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. The phpLD staff will be very busy over the next couple of weeks helping people, and getting accustomed to supporting the new version. If you have problems during the upgrade, there could be some delays in getting help for you, and we know that can be stressful when your site is having trouble.
2. It is very common for us to locate small bugs after the release. Usually, they are very minor, but nevertheless, waiting to upgrade may very well help you not have to worry about this. Last year in 3.3, we had a couple of minor updates after the release.
3. You’ll find documentation in the supporters forum about upgrading including the changes that need to be made to the templates.

About Upgrading:

As will all previous software releases, we recommend that our current users wait a couple of weeks to upgrade live sites. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. The phpLD staff will be very busy over the next couple of weeks helping people, and getting accustomed to supporting the new version. If you have problems during the upgrade, there could be some delays in getting help for you, and we know that can be stressful when your site is having trouble.
2. It is very common for us to locate small bugs after the release. Usually, they are very minor, but nevertheless, waiting to upgrade may very well help you not have to worry about this. Last year in 3.3, we had a couple of minor updates after the release.
3. You’ll find documentation in the supporters forum about upgrading including the changes that need to be made to the templates.

New features in phpLD 3.4

Frontend editing and administration
1. Site Admin - This admin is able to edit virtually everything on the frontend, in addition to having access to the backend administration
2. Super Editor - This user will have all rights of the Site Admin, except they will not be able access the backend administration.
3. Editor - This user has rights for a specific category as well as any sub-categories below the level of the assigned category.
4. User - Items that a user submitted will be editable subject to the admin’s approval.

User Management in Admin
There is a new section in the admin area called User Management where the admin can work with user rights, so in addition to the user groups outlined above, the admin can also edit specif actions. For example, the admin may want to grant the ability for a user to edit their own article, or let them add new pages.

Now available in 42 Languages
Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Hindi, Croatian, Indonesian, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Serbian, Swedish, Sutu, Sami, Thai, Filipino, Turkish, Ukrainian, Venda, Vietnamese, Chinese.

Hits Table Cleanup
When upgrading phpLD, your hits table data will be deleted. The main purpose of the hits table is to not allow people to keep clicking on their link to “bump” it up. After the upgrade, the table will again start getting data. The reason we delete the data on the upgrade is this table can become quite large, and some servers timeout, so this will help avoid this problem. In 3.4 we are also deleting older data. So if the admin uses the default setting to not allow people to register a hit more than once in 24 hours, data older than 24 hours is now being deleted.

Adding RSS Feeds to Categories
When editing a category in the admin, there is now a field to enter an RSS feed for the category. phpLD uses the Simple Pie library to show the feed in the category. The feed appears after the links but before the message about submitting when no links or articles exist. By default title that appears before the feed is “{category name} News”.

Delete As Spam
In the Administrative Backend, when viewing links there is now a button called “Delete as Spam”. So the admin can any or all spam submissions and delete and ban the ip and domain, all in a couple of clicks.

Switch from the FCK Editor to the MCE Editor
After some testing, we felt the MCE editor is far superior, and we are now using this editor. This is the same editor used in Wordpress. We will be able to do more with this editor in the future, and already have some plans for additions that will be possible under the MCE editor.

Require Email Confirmation
When registration is not required to submit a link, there is now an option to Require Email Confirmation (can be used when registration is required too). After a user submits a link, they will receive an email where they have to click the link to confirm the submission. There is also a function that checks for unconfirmed links, and removes them after X days. Note, a link that has received a payment will never be deleted, except manually by the admin.

Category Sorting in Admin
When editing a category, there is a new field called Sort Order. You can change the value and the category will override the default sorting and appear sooner or later depending on the value you assign.

Close Category to Activities
There is now a Permissions link for each category in the Administrative Backend, and it will be possible to Close the category to any or all of the following:
Link Submission, Article Submission, Ratings. Comments

Consolidation of Regular and Featured Links in Admin
We have combined the display of Regular and Featured links into one area, so there is no longer be a Featured Links link in the admin backend. When you search, you will be searching both. You can still sort by Link Type, and featured links are clearly identifiable in the list.

Comments and Ratings for Links
Now the admin can enable this feature for links, and this is no longer a mod. Thanks to VSDan who offered this mod for a long time, and supported us in adding this mod to phpLD 3.4.

Multiple Mod Rewrite Options (SEO URLs)
There are now several different options for setting up mod rewrite rules, and you can find this in Settings >> Search Engine Optimization.

Article Payments
Now the admin can enable this feature and receive payments for articles just as is currently done for links.

Remember Page When Logging In
When logging into the frontend, you will be returned to the page you were visiting after login.

Admin User Interface Improvments
AJAX collapsable menus on the left side
Ability to search for links, articles, users or categories from the admin homepage
Buttons to quickly add an article, page, link or category
More statistics on the admin homepage

Fixed Advanced Search Bug
On the frontend when trying to do an Advanced Search on a directory using many thousands of categories, the page would crash. We now have AJAX enabled on advanced search and this solves the problem.

Improved Security
While this only affects a small number of users, some servers still use setting for Register Globals and Magic Quotes that are not recommended. We have added some code to check for this, and add slashes to prevent injection attacks on this type of server. We were actually already quite secure, but this adds on more layer of protection for these special cases.

Less Attention to Reciprocal Links
On a new installation by default there is nothing about reciprocal links. You have to turn this feature on now. There have been plenty of indicators that doing massive reciprocal link campaigns can affect rankings negatively, and while there will always be some who have a use for this feature, we will have it turned off by default.

Another Free Template
We have a new template called Chrome that is free to use. This is in addition to the Professional template.

Dated Release of Articles
Set a date for when an article will be published. That way you can load multiple articles and see your content changing daily.
And much more! We’ve also gone through many of the pages of the admin, and made small improvements, corrected spelling, and much more. We hope this latest version will be the best to date, and look forward to getting your feedback, as well as seeing your site running the latest version, and making use of its features.

Thank you for using our product!
phpLD Team

www.phplikdirectory.com

Thomas Pryde New York Times October 2008

Many of us might read the New York Times article and be outraged at the idea of using a violent video game as the “hook” to attract teenagers to church to hear a gospel message. But I fear we have become all to comfortable with this type of evangelism, just without the obvious “worldliness.”

In my eleven years in pastoral ministry I have personally organized and/or promoted and attended the following bait-and-switch evangelistic events.

March Madness Party: Invite all of your friends to church to watch the final game of the NCAA Final Four. There will be free give-aways, door prizes, and crazy games during half-time and commercial breaks. (There is no way we will allow our teenagers to watch the worldly commercials.) At half-time we will also have a special speaker share a short gospel message, followed by a call for a decision.

[Although I have never personally participated in one, the same idea is used all over the country for an
NFL Super Bowl Party. I would probably have done this as well, but the churches I have served in wouldn’t allow us to cancel the Sunday Evening service.]

The Super-Fun Teen All-Nighter [Name changed to protect a para-church organization]: You start with going to some type of Pro sporting event. After the game there is a rally with all kinds of free give-aways, door prizes and crazy games. Then the short gospel message with an invitation. The rest of the night is spent riding go-carts, playing arcade games and bowling.

3-on-3 Basketball Tournament: Gather as many teams as possible to play for the city championship and sometime during the middle of the tournament have a well-known basketball star share his personal testimony, followed by a short gospel message and invitation.

Christmas Dinner Theater: An evening of food, Christmas music, and drama, with a short gospel message and an invitation back to church on a Sunday inserted during the intermission.

Theme Park Youth Rally: A day of fun at your local theme park with a required rally inserted somewhere in the middle of the day where a short gospel message is given followed by an invitation.

4-Man, Best-Ball Golf Tournament: Eighteen holes of best-ball golf, followed by an all-you-can-eat barbecue rib dinner. Throw in some door prizes and a short gospel message and there you have it.

Unfortunately this list doesn’t include all of the gimmicks I have employed to attract the unsaved to an evangelistic event. And I also didn’t include all of the gimmicks I have employed to “motivate” Christians to invite their unsaved friends (Sunday School contests, Camp scholarships, VBS prizes, etc.). Without a change of philosophy I might be only a year or two away from the Video Game Party, just change the game from Hal0 to Madden 08.

The philosophy driving these events goes something like this:

The unsaved won’t come to church just to hear the gospel.
Neither are we willing and/or able to go to them to SHARE THE GOSPEL.
Therefore we must “bait” them with something they want to do so that we can ambush lovingly share with them the gospel.

The usually unspoken advice we give people is: “Don’t tell them about the gospel message that will be shared. Just tell them about all of the exciting things they are interested in.”

At the end of the event when we are counting up the professions of faith, we become even more convinced that this “works.” “Just look at how many people trusted Christ. I can’t wait until we do this again next year!”

I do not know the historical background on this type of evangelism. I don’t know who the first person was to suggest this method, nor what the initial response was. But in 2007 this approach to evangelism is not only accepted, it is also promoted by almost every stream of fundamentalism and evangelicalism.

When we seek to hide the “hook” of the gospel inside an attractive “bait” of any kind we have become pragmatists. We have declared our belief that we must resort to the unseemly advertising tactics of the world, or people won’t be saved.

What happens when these events stop “working” as well? What will we do when the unsaved get tired of our bait-and-switch? What will we stoop to next? Are you still enticed by the door prizes at the local car dealership? Are you still attracted by the “chance” to win that new car?

Most of us would criticize and have criticized the churches that offer money for people to be baptized, plasma TV’s to visitors, or Awana bucks for bringing visitors (Oops, did I say that?). Yet we employ the same kind of methods and call it an evangelistic event.

What have I been doing? What have I been thinking? Am I willing to change?

Since evangelism is all over the New Testament I continue to ask where are we finding this specific philosophy and methodology exemplified?

On a personal note:
What have I been thinking, an unchanging message is still the same message for a changing world!

God is the same yesterdaay, today and tomorrow!!
I pray the strength not to CONFORM to the ways of the world

Father forgive us we know not what we do
Father HELP US!!

WHAT WE WIN THEM WITH IS WHAT WE WIN THEM TOO!!

EVANGELISM IS NOT A PROGRAM!!

First thing is there is VERY limited support for the free version.
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Save time and money by just buying a good domain name, spend 25.00 for a fully supported script and then build a site
that can go from pr0 to pr3 in one updates.

See you there and remember if the deal is too good to be true …….

It is.

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that Jesus Christ is not the only way to heaven during a campaign event in North Carolina.

While answering a question about his Christian faith, Obama said he believes that Jesus Christ died for his sins and through God’s grace and mercy he could have “everlasting life,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

But he also believes Jews and Muslims and non-believers who live moral lives are as much “children of God” as he is, according to The Associated Press.

As an example, he spoke about his late mother who was “not a believer.”

“[S]he was the kindest, most decent, generous person that I have ever known,” Obama said, according to the Times. “I’m sure she is in heaven, even though she may not have subscribed to everything that I subscribe to.”

Obama’s response came amid the recent controversy surrounding his former Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who made inflammatory remarks about race and America in sermons he delivered many years ago.

The Illinois senator, who has made religion a cornerstone of his campaign, has denounced the comments – which included “God damn America” for its racism – but refuses to distance himself from the pastor, whom he compares to an uncle.

During his response on Wednesday, Obama praised his church, Trinity United Church of Christ, especially its choir, and said it was very warm and welcoming and is like any other church in America in that it exists to praise God.

Obama also said he believes in putting the Gospel to action here on Earth and treating people with “dignity” and “respect” as children of God, according to the Los Angeles Times.

————————————————————————————–

Race, Religion and the Roots of Obama’s Faith
I would love to support an African-American for president. But Barack Obama won’t get my vote in November.

Like so many people in this country, I’m embarrassed that we haven’t yet elected an African-American president. It’s been 40 years since Martin Luther King Jr. went to the mountaintop and envisioned a glorious future of racial harmony. I want to see that, too. I share King’s dream.

But when I listen to Barack Obama’s campaign speeches, as stirring as they sound, I feel empty. Obama is not the embodiment of King, and his political sermons don’t make me stand and shout hallelujah. His words about hope and change are hollow. I didn’t fully understand this until recently, when I gained more insight into Obama’s religious roots.

Obama has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1987, the year he says he rejected agnosticism and accepted Christian faith. But what kind of Christian faith? Thanks to recent media reports, we all know that Obama embraced the faith of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose inflammatory sermons have been played, replayed and debated on CNN, Fox News and countless Web sites during the last few weeks.

“No one could attend a church for 20 years—especially one led by such a controversial and outspoken radical as Wright—without knowing what that pastor believes.”

Wright has been Obama’s pastor for more than two decades. He married Barack and Michelle Obama in 1992 and later baptized their two daughters. He counseled Obama during his early political life on Chicago’s South Side. Wright’s sermon called “The Audacity of Hope” became the inspiration for Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention. That led to Obama’s best-selling book by the same name. Until this month, Wright served on Obama’s presidential campaign. He has been a quiet and abiding force behind Obama’s impressive rise to political messiah status.

But after the media stumbled onto Wright’s incendiary, hate-filled rhetoric—including a sermon in which he said Sept. 11 was a wake-up call to “white America”—Obama had to distance himself from his maverick pastor. And Obama disappointed us all when, in true Clintonian fashion, he claimed that he really didn’t know Wright spewed so much venom from his pulpit.

Yeah, right. Are we to assume that Obama was sleeping during 20 years of sermons? Considering the decibels produced by Wright’s impassioned oratory, I don’t think that’s possible.

No one could attend a church for 20 years—especially one led by such a controversial and outspoken radical as Wright—without knowing what that pastor believes. Consider these uncomfortable facts about Wright:

** He pastored Trinity, the largest congregation in the ultraliberal United Church of Christ (UCC), from 1972 until this year, when he retired. Fully committed to an agenda of black empowerment, Trinity is also known in Chicago for its inclusion of homosexuals. It has helped lead the UCC’s aggressive efforts to sanctify gay marriage. (Oprah Winfrey, our national New Age priestess, is also a member of Trinity—which makes me wonder what they teach kids in Sunday school.)

** Wright proudly touts himself as a disciple of liberal theologian James Cone, author of the 1970 book A Black Theology of Liberation. Cone once wrote: “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community.” (Note: This is called idolatry—fashioning a god in your own image.)

** Wright, who is 66, has often aligned himself with non-Christian influences including the militant African National Congress and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Trinity’s magazine honored Farrakhan in the 1980s. This year Obama deftly distanced himself from Farrakhan and said he does not share his pastor’s support of the Muslim leader. (Nice try, bro, but we needed to hear a much stronger denunciation of Farrakhan’s toxic beliefs.)

** In various sermons that have reportedly been removed from Trinity’s bookstore recently, Wright clearly condemns the United States. He once said the song “God Bless America” should actually say “God Damn America,” he has claimed that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus to kill black people, and he often rants about “the United States of white America” while denouncing white evangelical leaders.

Perhaps before we welcome Obama as our national savior we should consider the questionable prophet who anointed him when he was just a young politician. Personally I don’t trust the oil that Wright has used to christen this new king.

I understand that African-Americans who have been mistreated in our society are frustrated. Racism is wrong and it must be continually challenged. But Martin Luther King Jr., a man who believed the Bible, taught us in the 1960s that the path to racial healing begins with forgiveness. Jeremiah Wright has rejected that path. He preaches a gospel of hate, bitterness and alienation. He is certainly not empowering the black community with a counterfeit religion that idolizes race, ignores biblical holiness and denies Christ as the only source of salvation.

Obama says he will bring change to America. I can predict that if he wins the presidency in November, and his infamous pastor has even minimal influence on his years in the White House, it will take a generation to recover from those tragic changes.

J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma. He invites you to share your political views on our Web forum by clicking below.

charismamag.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2258

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Skype, which is owned by auction website eBay Inc. and based in Tallinn, Estonia, said the attack begins when a Windows user receives a chat message with a link in it from someone in their contact list or an unknown user.

The chat message comes in several versions and is “cleverly written” to fool users, Skype blogger Villu Arak wrote on Monday. The virus, called w32/Ramex.A, will only infect a user’s computer if they follow the link and download the related software, which is disguised to look like a JPEG picture. Infected computers will then send similar messages to other Skype users. In his post, Arak did not say whether the virus caused any other problems.

Skype said it had alerted several antivirus companies about the worm, adding that F-Secure and Kaspersky Lab have already updated their products to detect and remove it.

Skype, which celebrated its four-year anniversary two weeks ago and has nearly 220 million users worldwide, last faced major adversity when it suffered a massive outage in the middle of August. The company said the outage, which left millions of customers without its internet-based phone service, was caused when a large volume of users rebooted their computers to install a new Windows update

You can read the original story here:

www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/09/10/tech-skype.html