The story
Founded by Tikhon on Dec 29, 1999.1
The site was launched on 29 December 1999 and was originally called "Orthodoxy 2000". As Hieromonk Ignatius (Shestakov) recalled, "Before Pravoslavie.Ru, it seems, there was nothing useful at all. There were only a few weak church websites that almost nobody read. There were a couple of projects, but they had more of an oppositional character. Or there were libraries, but not a journal. <...> In those years we had a very right attitude from the very beginning: to write for everybody-believers and nonbelievers-to help people come to the Church.
In the winter of 2001, Pravoslavie.ru opened the project "Local Churches". The main goal of this project was to collect a database of the local Orthodox Churches on one information resource.
In the summer of 2004, the portal became a member of the Yandex.News affiliate program.
On 23 January 2006, it was announced that the portal Pravoslavie.Ru and the website "Orthodox Calendar" (days.ru) would unite. This event owed much to the preliminary work on the creation of the "Community of Orthodox Web Developers", of which both projects were among the initiators.
Pravoslavie.Ru took part in the first contest of Orthodox sites on Runet "Mrezha-2006," the jury of which was headed by the chief editor of the portal, Archimandrite Tikhon.
On 23 March 2006, on the eve of the opening of the IV All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which supported the restoration of the unity of the Local Russian Church, the website "Let us be of one mind" (pravos.org), which posted the most important documents on the relationship between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church Abroad, was launched. In fact, this website was an unofficial information resource of the Moscow Patriarchate Commission for Dialogue with the Russian Church Abroad and the Russian Church Abroad Commission for Negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate, which drafted Act on Canonical Communion and the reunion procedure.
Since 2008, there has been a complete archive of materials for all years.
On 29 May 2008, to commemorate the 555th anniversary of the fall of Constantinople, the editors of the Internet projects of the Sretensky Monastery launched a thematic website, "Byzantine Lesson". The immediate reason for developing the site was the widespread media discussion of Father Tikhon's film "The death of an empire. Byzantine Lesson".
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On 22 October 2008, in connection with the beginning of the "Days of Russia in Latin America", in which Sretensky Monastery took an active part, Pravoslavie.ru opened the official website of the choir of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery. The site was created in four languages: Russian, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
On 10 November 2010, it was announced that Pravoslavie.ru had registered on the social networks VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal.
On 28 June 2011, the Serbian version of the portal was launched. The new project was launched on Vidovdan, a Serbian national holiday.
In 2013, the site was blocked in Uzbekistan, but the block was soon lifted.
On 23 November 2015, the new design of the portal with simplified access to materials, new headings and sections (including a media section) was announced. The new site has been designed with mobile devices in mind.
On 6 September 2019, the Greek version was launched.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pravoslavie.ru, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3