Abba Seraphim formally launched the upgraded British Orthodox Church website on St. George’s Day. Before introducing the new website he felt it was important to recall the enormous significance and advance of electronic resources over the past few years. The British Orthodox Church’s first venture in this respect came in 1995 through its membership of Copt-Net, “a universal Coptic Fellowship for the Computer Age” but soon developed with encouragement from Shenouda Mamdouh in Cairo, who began the first Computer Department at the Coptic Patriarchate, and Father Peter Farrington – then a layman – who built the first British Orthodox website and has sustained it through many “makeovers” since then. Abba Seraphim wanted to express his appreciation and emphasise the debt of gratitude the Church owes to these pioneers whose technical skills and knowledge were a vital and enriching part of our ministry. As Father Peter’s commitments have grown it has been necessary to relieve him of these responsibilities and to restructure the website to enable the content management to be shared by a number of people rather than left to a single person.

Thanks to Trevor Maskery and ChromexStudios the new website looks very attractive and combines many of the best features of the former site with new ones, especially the scope for video talks and an enlarged picture gallery. The centralising of individual church events should make these details readily accessible and we hope to encourage local communities to contribute more effectively to the site as a whole.