Wondercafe2

[Mendalla]

Wondercafe2

Best way to sum it up is read this page from the site:

Who We Are

Short version is that we are a group who used to hang out together on a church-run forum (though we aren't all part of that church or even Christian). When the church shut that forum down, we started up our own non-denominational, non-sectarian spin-off forum (hence the "2" in the name), settling on Xenforo as the software after some discussion and review of other options. We are on 1.5.22 and looking at upgrading to 2.x, probably once 2.1 ships.

The original styles were done by @Russ and I've done a bit of tweaking this year as I've built some familiarity with the environment. We are having some discussion (at least among the Council, as we call our mods and admins) as to whether to just upgrade the existing styles to 2.x or to actually look at a revamp of our look as part of the upgrade.

 

[JoyFreak]

Love the crazy story! What a holy forum, all the best!

 

[l3ta]

You should totally upgrade and give your forum a fresh new look. PixelExit is about to release NOVA, a clean, minimalist style with nightmode built in. Speak with the council about it TODAY

 

[Mendalla]

And we are now upgraded to Xenforo 2.1.0 with a cleaned up style from @Russ and Xenporta as our new portal page.

WonderCafe2

A site for discussion of spirituality, religion, and life

wondercafe2.ca

 

[l3ta]

Looks awesome. Colours wanna make me go get a latte

 

[Mendalla]

One change I had Russ make during restyling is to make the image in the top right of the page easily changeable. He made it a style property so I can just upload a new image via ftp or cPanel File Manager and then change that property to point to the new image. Right now, we've got trees with Fall colours, during the summer we had a beach scene. Both were cropped from photos donated by members. We will probably switch to something Christmas-themed come December. Thought it was a neat feature to highlight.

 

[Mendalla]

We have now been running 2.1 on Wondercafe2 for a year and things are chugging along. We continue to pleased with the product.

Did some rearranging of our forums recently. Created some new categories to better highlight our "core" forums on religion and spirituality. Added a couple new forums. All quite easy with Xenforo. Did have to consult @Russ on one thing that I couldn't figure out but otherwise, the ACP was all I needed.

Also, my spring header image, some blossoms photographed by a member, is up.

And I must give a shoutout to @Jaxel, too. Xenporta was a nice addition (implemented as part of the upgrade) and helps with keeping a nice-looking and up-to-date home page.

WonderCafe2

A site for discussion of spirituality, religion, and life

www.wondercafe2.ca

 

[Mendalla]

Now running on Xenforo 2.2. No real huge changes. Added a suggestion forum, activated question threads in most of the regular forums. My plans for an article forum are on hold since I haven't had much interest expressed in providing some content to get it rolling. I'm writing for a competition on another site right now so can't really do anything for it myself. And I got my graphic artist friend from work (she also did our logo) to do the icons I needed for the PWA so that is active now.

Thanks to @Jaxel and @Russ for getting their respective add-on and style updated in good time. Made the upgrade a lot easier not having to wait for those.

WonderCafe2

A site for discussion of spirituality, religion, and life

www.wondercafe2.ca

 

[Lee]

I signed up, I've been looking for a good spiritual forum to join for a while. I hope that's ok.

 

[Mendalla]

I signed up, I've been looking for a good spiritual forum to join for a while. I hope that's ok.

Ah, that's you. StopForumSpam blocked you on username and I was debating whether to accept. Good thing you told me.

 

[Lee]

Ah, that's you. StopForumSpam blocked you on username and I was debating whether to accept. Good thing you told me.

I mean, it is just my name - sorry about that

 

[Mendalla]

I mean, it is just my name - sorry about that

Apparently it is too common. Or some spammer is out there pretending to be you.

 

[interforo]

Wondercafe2

Best way to sum it up is read this page from the site:

Who We Are

Short version is that we are a group who used to hang out together on a church-run forum (though we aren't all part of that church or even Christian). When the church shut that forum down, we started up our own non-denominational, non-sectarian spin-off forum (hence the "2" in the name), settling on Xenforo as the software after some discussion and review of other options. We are on 1.5.22 and looking at upgrading to 2.x, probably once 2.1 ships.

The original styles were done by @Russ and I've done a bit of tweaking this year as I've built some familiarity with the environment. We are having some discussion (at least among the Council, as we call our mods and admins) as to whether to just upgrade the existing styles to 2.x or to actually look at a revamp of our look as part of the upgrade.

nice! what did you use for the home page / portal?

 

[Mendalla]

nice! what did you use for the home page / portal?

Xenporta by @Jaxel is what we are using since upgrading to 2. I think I mentioned this in another post further down.

 

[Mendalla]

We have finally got our first use of the article forum and I think it's a bit of a cool one. One of my fellow admins underwent treatment for cervical cancer a few years ago and is using an article forum to collect and share her reflections on that journey. Most of these were originally posted on social media but she is doing some editing and including other material, including posts with reactions and comments she received from friends, including other current and past board members.

The Unexpected Journey

When they said, "Hey conversations about cancer don't make me squirm", she said "Hold my beer."

www.wondercafe2.ca

 

[Lee]

Wonderful use of the article forums, @Mendalla - thank you for sharing.

 

[Mendalla]

Been almost a year since I last bumped this. The aforementioned article forum ran its course and now we've started a new one. It's a blog for a retired minister who is posting drafts of chapters from a book he's toying with. Some interesting ideas and discussions coming out.

Aspects Of Faith

Sharing draft chapters from the book Aspects of Faith by Reverend Jim Kenney of the United Church of Canada

www.wondercafe2.ca

Otherwise, discussion continues on. I've considered moving my stories over but they will likely get even less traffic on WC2 than they are on the current writing site.

 

[Mendalla]

Aspects of Faith has come to its logical conclusion (all chapters are posted). However, a member who went through the experience of having and surviving breast cancer will be sharing her thoughts and journey with us in our latest article forum, Breast Cancer! That Wasn't In My Life Plan. This is a bit of a follow-up to our first article forum, which dealt with the cancer journey of one of our founders/admins.

 

[Mendalla]

For over a year, I have been running a feature in our Religion & Faith forum called Bible Passage of the Week (bit of a misnomer since it has only rarely been weekly as things turned out). Each thread discusses a specific chapter or group of verses from The Bible. They were tagged with a prefix called BPoTW (the acronym).

With a couple dozen of these threads in existence, we decided to move them from R&F to their own forum, with me as editor/moderator. I have a few other members, including two ministers, who might be starting threads in addition to myself. I had thought about doing it this way in the first place but wanted to see how it went first. The success of a series I did over December hitting on the key passages related to Christmas kind of clinched it.

Bible Passage of the Week (BPoTW)

For our weekly discussions of passages from the Jewish and Christian scriptures

www.wondercafe2.ca

In other WC2 news, I have stepped back to a degree. While I will still do sysadmin work under a separate account (e.g. upgrades, making site and styling changes), I have removed my day-to-day account from Council, aka Staff. There's been some tension and stress there of late and I am not in the best frame of mind, or health, these days and needed a break from dealing with crap.

 

[Mendalla]

With our tenth anniversary (all of it on Xenforo, we started on 1.3, I think) looming in 2024, I have made a change to how I handle the image in our header. Up 'til now, I have either found something online with a CC license or used something taken by myself or another member. However, beginning this summer, I commissioned (yes, I paid her) an artist from Alberta, Canada who has been a member forever (like, going back to the board we branched off from) to produce seasonal images that we can then rotate through year over year. So for this year, we did Summer, Fall, and now Christmas. In the New Year, we will have Winter, Easter, Spring. I had used, with permission, her art before but decided to formalize the arrangement so she can actually get something out of it.

This is the site header right now, with her Christmas image up.