We recently introduced the component of being able to send individual reading prompts to team members. This has been well recieved and added a new fun element to being part of a team and scripture reading. In addition to this, it is now possible for one team to challenge another team and be able to view the collective the progress of each team. We also thought it would be fun for the team in the lead to be recognized with a flag to indicate their achievement (kind of a capture the flag thing).

As we continue to enhance and make this the best program possible we are now expanding into the area of Social Netowrking which will allow individuals to find, connect, share and communicate with one another in a LDS safe enviroment. We are very excited about this and are nearing completion.

This past week we decided to completely remove Google Ads from our site due to the continual issue of anti-mormon ads constantly appearing. Trying to manage and stay on top of every ad that was appearing what just too labor intensive, especially when considering the miniscule amount that we were receiving to place them there in the first place. Having them on our site was causing far more damage than it was worth and we apologize to those individuals who were offended by their presence and who have questioned our purpose and intentions with this site.

To this point, we are very dis-satisfied with Google ads and it inability to effectively control and filter the type of content that appears in their service. This is probably more of an issue in the "LDS" and "Mormon" advertising space than most, but we will no longer include these ads on our site and run the risk of subjecting our users to unwanted and inappropriate anti-mormon materials.

Thank you all for your continued support and understanding.

If you are a facebook user, you can now have our daily quotes on your profile with our new LDS Daily Quote application:

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=18639833512&b&ref=pd

This year we have now added the long awaited and frequently requested weekly reading program for Seminary!

Create or login to your account at: ReadTheScriptures.com to get started today!

You can even create a team and invite your entire class to join for motivating and encouraging each other.

The new Gospel Doctrine -Book of Mormon study schedule for 2008 is now completed and available!

Just login into your existing account and select "Gospel Doctrine - BofM" from the drop down list to add it to your reading schedules:

The schedule advance or reverse feature is now done! You can manually change the position of your reading schedules in the online reader. We have had many requests for this feature since we started this program, and it is finally here. Many of you will find this feature useful as you complete your scripture reading using other methods and want to advance your schedule to the correct position without having to click on the complete button multiple times for each completed day. In addition it is also possible to reverse your position to a previous day in case you missed one.

This new feature allows you to select the amount you would like to increase or decrease your schedule by from the drop down list. You can advance or reverse your schedule by increments of -10 to +10. Once you have selected the amount just click on the "Go" button to confirm and apply your changes. You can also click repeatedly on the "Go" button to advance or reverse your schedule with the selected amount. 

Over the last few months we have received a small number of request to remove the message stating the days behind an individual is when they fell behind in their reading assignments. Some people have found or interpreted this message to be discouraging and/or negative, which certainly wasn’t our intent. Since we made the change and removed the statement a couple of days ago, we have received overwhelming feedback indicating that there is a much greater number of users that want to have this statement returned. I am now working on trying to come up with some sort of compromise.

Since this recent change wasn’t very well received, I thought it might be a good idea to post the changes I have planned to complete on the site in the next little while. I would welcome any further feedback if there are any other concerns or additional suggestions on any of these items. These are in no particular order or priority:

-   Unlimited Scripture Highlighting
-   Ability to save a scripture in a personal favorites section
-   Display other team member's online status
-   A downlist on the Web Reader that would increase or decrease reading schedules forward or reverse 1-10 positions
-   Multiple invite and tell-a-friend email addresses
-   Ability to print out reading chart schedule

It is always exciting to see continued growth and usage of the site by users around the world. I thought it might be interesting to share some of this info. This map overlay shows each country using the site from September 1st - September 23rd.

In comparision the following map shows the site traffic from the beginning of the year: