Welcome to the new website! - January 2019

Jeff Downing
High Priest & Prophet

Welcome to the "new for 2019" Elf Khurafeh Shrine website! Lady Laura and I have been working for the last month or so to revamp the website. While our old site was pretty good (two Dromedary awards!), we decided it was time to spruce things up a bit. We studied current website design and found that things were bigger and bolder, so we decided to make ekshrine.com bigger and bolder as well.

A few notes about the new site. First, while we are in the process of getting things moved around, the store will be closed. If you need to pay your dues over the next few days, you'll need to do it the old fashioned way - either by check or by stopping into the office and dropping off payment there.

Secondly, our calendar of events has been broken down into four different categories - Temple Meetings, Club and Unit Meetings, Temple Events, and Public Facing Events. This was done for a couple of reasons. Primarily, we wanted to break out the public facing events so everyone viewing the calendar would know what events they could invite their non-Shrine friends to. As an organization that relies on donations and fund raisers, it gets tough to continually try to tap our nobles for the funds it requires to keep this organization going. By including your friends and neighbors, we can let them help us fund our organization, and hopefully, these new people will see how much fun us Shriners have, and they will ask to join!

Very soon, there will be a "Members Only" page also. This page will be password protected so we can limit exposure to only Nobles. Passwords will be provided to those Nobles that ask for it. You can either email me (jdowning@ekshrine.com), call or text me (810-347-1586), or ask me at any event you see me at. I'll gladly provide you with the password, but I'll request that you not share it with non-Shriners. There won't be any thing super-secret on that page, but in the event we need to put something for members eyes only, it would only be secure if you don't share your password.

Lastly, this blog page. On the previous version of the website, only the Potentate and the Recorder published any notes or information. For this version, all Divan members will be allowed to use this forum to communicate information. It is UP TO THE DIVAN to use the blog page to improve communication with Nobles that may not be able to make it to business meetings or club/unit meetings, but do happen to read the website. Also, Nobles will be able to respond to blog posts by using the comment section below. The comment section is currently not moderated, so please remember to keep discussions civil and of a public nature. Anything that may reflect badly on the Shrine or other Nobles will be removed. 

In keeping with the old site, you will still be able to read about upcoming events, see if you were a winner on the Cash Calendar, view the Arabian Knights news paper, and all of the things you were able to do on the old site. Use the navigation menu across the top to see the different things available on the site. And most of all, use the site as a way to keep informed. Also, if you notice a mistake, or something that's missing, let us know. We try to keep everything up to date, but we can only provide what information we are given. If you have information about an event, please write up a few paragraphs about your event, or send in a flyer and we'll do the best we can to get it published on either the website or  as an event on Facebook. Send any info to webmaster@ekshrine.com, and Lady Laura and I will do our best to get your information up within forty-eight  hours.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the site!

Fraternally,
Jeff Downing
​High Priest & Prophet

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