Well, I was excited today to see that Wordpress 2.5 is now released for general public consumption! 2.5 is a pretty extensive overhaul of the Wordpress framework. The aesthetics of the overhaul will be the first thing you notice but the changes are legion. To take a look at a more comprehensive list of the changes, click here.

For those of you who read this and you are a Wordpress beginner, you may not understand or even be scared of a Wordpress upgrade. If that is true for you, I have good news! Wordpress has a new plugin available that, once it is installed, will automatically install Wordpress for you so that you don’t have to go through the difficult process of manually updating your software. For the plugin, you need to click here.

I have not used 2.5 enough yet to make a decision about whether I like it or not. I am interested to play with it, however, and see how it works out. I’m interested to hear from you as well!

What do you think?

HT: Cory Miller

Ok guys, it’s getting serious now. You voted last week for MicahFries.com in the Blog Madness competition over at SBCVoices.com and I ended up 3rd overall out of 69 total blogs. I sincerely appreciate the help! Now it gets serious, however. Tony, who runs SBCVoices.com has announced that whoever ends up winning the competition will win a $50 Amazon Gift Certificate. In other words, you can help me win books which makes this a really exciting competition.

So, if you don’t mind, would you run over and vote for me in round 2? In this round Tony is asking you to consider who you vote for based on the following criteria.

For this session I want you to consider the helpfulness of each blog, especially when they write about SBC related issues. Or suppose that Baptist was going to carry one blog post a month from from four blogs, which blogger would you suggest?

In this  round the Midwest Division has been trimmed down to the following.

1. Micah Fries
2. Provocations & Pantings (Timmy Brister)
3. Joining God In His Work (Les Puryear)
4. SBC Tomorrow (Peter Lumpkins)

To vote, click here.

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/micahfries.mp3]

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/drfrankpage.mp3]

Dr. Page’s Q&A:

[audio:http://www.sbcsmallchurch.com/audio/qanda.mp3]

As this post goes up on the web I’ll be in the middle of speaking at Impact 2008 on the topic of Affordable Technology in the small church. I’ll be adding the audio as soon as I can get it edited, formatted and uploaded.

As I was preparing for this talk I was originally planning to create a cd that included a plethora of resources. I decided against it for a couple of reasons. First, it’s pretty expensive to produce cds for more than 100 people who are attending the conference. Secondly I realized I could build a website that anyone could access and that way every person at the conference as well as those who didn’t attend can access the resources. Finally I realized that it’s easy to lose a cd. This will be available even if you lose a copy of the files I’ll provide on this site.

So, if you are looking for help with technology specifically geared to the church, you can find the early stages of this site by clicking here.

I had to write a quick note and tell you to be watching for the audio from Dr. Page. He really hit a home run tonight for all people in the SBC, but for those who are in the small church especially. It was fantastic.

I have made it abundantly clear, I imagine, over the past year or so that I am a big fan of SBC President Dr. Frank Page. He is a wonderful conservative pastor who has served well as a peace maker over his term as President. We need more statesmen like Dr. Page in SBC life.

Dr. Page is speaking now and we are recording the audio. I probably won’t have it available until later tonight because I am scheduled to speak after Dr. Page. I’ll get it up as soon as I can, however.