Delve Into Jesus News

Emailing Members

arsindelve — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:13:31 GMT

One of the first features we put in place (but never finished) was the ability for members to email one another from the website. One of our new members, Weedy, asked me about this last week, which reminded me, "hey we never finished that feature!" So, we've gone ahead and completed it, and it is now active. Thanks, Weedy!

We think this is an excellent way to increase the sense of community and fellowship which is such an integral part of being a member of Delve Into Jesus.

Here's how it works: If you click on any member's user name, you will see their profile and from there, you will see a tab called, "Send a message". Here, you can type the message and it will be sent to them by email.

To protect everyone's privacy, you will never see the recipient's email address, and the email will show as originating from Delve Into Jesus so that your email address will never be appear to them. The staff at Delve Christian Ministries will monitor all correspondence to make sure there is no abuse or harassment.

If you prefer that other members not have the ability to email you, you can turn this feature off in your own profile.

Congratulations to IgnitedFaith who was the first to find this new feature, and who sent the first email yesterday.

Creative Writing

arsindelve — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:34:03 GMT

In the past few weeks, we've had requests to post poems and stories our members have written, but they did not fit into any of the existing categories. They were not articles, nor were they devotionals or reflections. Yet, we felt strongly that we should share what the Holy Spirit has placed on their heart to share. So, we decided to start a new section of the site called, "Creative Writing".

We finished that change last week and it is now ready and waiting for you. if you have any kind of Christian-themed creative writing you'd like to share, go ahead, don't be shy! You can find "creative writing" under the "Encouragement" menu above.

We hope that this new section of the site will be a blessing for both writers and readers alike. We can't wait to read the creative and brilliant compositions our talented members will come up with. Enjoy!

Conference

arsindelve — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:38:56 GMT

Delve Christian Ministries will be attending the Internet Ministry conference this year. The conference takes place in Grand Rapids Michigan from October 20 - 23. We're very excited about what we can learn from those who have been doing this much longer than we have. No only that - we can't wait to meet all the people in the amazing Gospel.com community. We hope to see you there!

http://www.internetministryconference.org/

Church Site Evaluations

arsindelve — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:18:21 GMT

I received the following from Tony Whittaker, over at "Internet Evangelism Day." I think this is an amazing resource, and I am delighted to share it with you.

New Advance for Church Websites
Free Church Site Evaluations Now Available Online

Summary

Churches can now receive a free customized 15-page report about their websites, enabling them to develop strategies to reach outsiders in their communities.

And this year's international web outreach focus day - Internet Evangelism Day - will be used by churches around the world on Sunday 27 April 2008

"How can our church website help us reach out into our community?" Churches often find it difficult to know how to build sites that will engage with outsiders in their area.

A new online tool has been released by Internet Evangelism Day, which provides churches with a free 15-page evaluation report. Users assess their own website by answering 55 simple questions in the tool questionnaire. Their customized report is immediately displayed online, ready to print or save. Its recommendations are tailored with specific practical suggestions, based on the questions that were ticked. View the design tool here:

www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/design

A church site which has been prioritized for non-Christian visitors can be remarkably effective in reaching the community. "Week in, week out, more visitors turn up at our church on a Sunday because of the website, than anything else," writes one growing church in London UK.

Church leaders have welcomed this new resource:

"This competent evaluation tool and rating service provides a valuable service to churches and Christian ministries that will help them strengthen their effectiveness in outreach through the Internet." - Dr. Sterling Huston, Director, North American Ministries, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

"Most church websites are not evangelistic. The new Church Website Evaluation Tool can help rectify this problem. This is a wonderful tool." - Dr. Bill Gordon, Evangelism Response Center, NAMB.

"There is no silver bullet for a great ministry site. However, this checklist is an invaluable tool to identify critical areas for improvement. Every church should study this regularly and act on it!" - Gary McClure, LifeWay Ministries.

This Evaluation Tool is just one of a range of pages at www.InternetEvangelismDay.com that help Christians learn to use the Web to reach the world. Internet Evangelism Day also encourages churches to hold a web awareness focus day on or near 27 April 2008, to explore this huge potential. Their site offers free downloads (PowerPoint, video clips, drama scripts and handouts) so that churches can create ...

Number of Visitors

arsindelve — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:19:53 GMT

I thought I should let everyone know how much things have picked up over the last few weeks. In the summer, we were averaging about 10 visitors a day. This month, the number is around 250 per day! Praise God!

The biggest reason for the increase is our partnership with Gospel.com, and their launch last month of the Gospel.com website. We receive more visitors from them than from any other source. Our relationship with them has been more fruitful than I could have ever imagined, and I am so immensely grateful for the work they're doing.

The other increase has come from the hard work we put in earlier in the year making the site ready for the search engines. Today, that hard work is paying off, with nearly 50 people per day finding us through the various search engines.

Thanks to everyone, especially Gospel.com for their help in getting us this far. Let's pray that by this time next year, the numbers are even bigger.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Rusty Wright

arsindelve — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:26:14 GMT

I'm delighted to announce that international lecturer, award-winning author, journalist, and syndicated columnist Rusty Wright has generously given his permission for his articles to be published on Delve Into Jesus. In the coming weeks, we will be posting some of his work in the articles and reflections sections of the site.

Rusty's specialty is communicating Christ to secular audiences in biblical, culturally appropriate ways. He holds Bachelor of Science (psychology) and Master of Theology degrees from Duke and Oxford universities, respectively. An associate speaker and writer with Probe Ministries, he trains Christian leaders, broadcasters, print-media and Internet professionals in effective communication with secular audiences. You can find out more about Rusty here: http://www.probe.org/Rusty/

We are extremely grateful to Rusty for allowing his work to be featured here, and are very anxious to begin sharing some of that great content with you.

Small Changes

arsindelve — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 23:59:33 GMT

As you can see, we've made some very small cosmetic changes this week which, I think, give the site a lighter feel and a more professional look. With every change we make, we are closer to the vision we have for the site and eventually, someday we'll be totally happy with the design and call it quits. We're closer now than ever. As always, please let us know what you think, positive or negative!

New Home Page

arsindelve — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:11:27 GMT

Thanks to an excellent suggestion but member "davec", we have started work on a new personalized home page, customized for each user. It will show you

1) All items you created which have new comments since you last viewed it
2) All items you have commented on which have new comments since you last viewed it
3) All discussions you have joined which have new posts since your last post
4) All items you have not yet read.
5) All items which are new since your last visit.

Numbers 1, 2 and 5 are done, and if you want a sneak preview, you can head over to http://delveintojesus.com/members/userhome.aspx

Please note that the code which tracks your viewed items went in two weeks ago, so any items you viewed before then will not be tracked. This means that if you commented on an item two months ago and someone else has commented since then, it will not appear in this list. You will have to go back and review all items so the system gets caught up. This will not be an issue for new members, only members only than two weeks.

Once all 5 items are done, we'll spend some time making it look all nice and pretty, and then we'll announce it and add it to the menu.

DIJ Is Done

arsindelve — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:54:52 GMT

It's hard to believe, but we started development on Delve Into Jesus about a year ago. At that time, we had a pretty clear vision of what we wanted, and we've spent 12 long months making that vision come to life. As we approached the one year mark, we set the end of September as a goal to have the site completed. As a result, there has been a flurry of new features on the site in the last month as we ticked off the remaining items off our to-do-list.

Today, we put the last pieces of the puzzle into place, and declared that we are done. That is not to say that the site will not evolve over time, but we are saying that we have achieved the vision we started with. From this point on, all development will be driven by member suggestions, but we do not have any plans of our own for changes at this time.

All of that is with respect to development. We will still continue to add content frequently such as new articles, reflections and devotionals. We will continue to promote and advertise the site as well.

What's next? Well, we never want to sit still! We will be starting work soon on a brand-new site at factsaboutjesus.com. Once again, we have a clear vision of what this website will look like when it's complete, and we don't think it will take nearly as long as Delve Into Jesus. We will keep you posted on our development of our new site as time goes on.

Email Notification

arsindelve — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:31:20 GMT

We've just added a new feature I'm very excited about. Now, you can be notified by email whenever we add a new devotional or reflection. All you need to do is go to the reflection or the devotional main page (the "What Are" pages) and click the link. If you ever change your mind, one click is all it takes to unsubscribe.

Resource Progress

arsindelve — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:02:33 GMT

If you hunt around the site, you can find some evidence of the progress on the resource section - just enough to give you a taste. The bulk of the work is done. We have a few ends to iron out, and everything should be live by the weekend.

Dr. Craig

arsindelve — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:05:22 GMT

Dr. William Lane Craig, whom you may remember as one of the world-leading experts interviewed in Lee Strobel's Case For Christ and Case For a Creator has very generously agreed to allow us to reprint some of his articles here on Delve Into Jesus. We are very excited about having this material on the site, and very grateful to Dr. Craig for sharing this important writing with us. The first article, "Does God Exist?" is available now, with a few more to follow in the next couple of days. Many thanks to Dr. Craig and his staff. You can learn more about Dr. Craig from his website, http://reasonablefaith.org

Spread The Word

arsindelve — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:52:09 GMT

We want your help getting the word out about Delve Into Jesus. We're going to start two new promotions. The first is simple - if you have friends, family or co-workers who could benefit from learning about this site, send us your address and we will send you a dozen business cards. We'll even pay the postage. All you have to do is hand them out.

The other promotion is going to involve linking to us from your own personal or corporate website or blog. We want to offer some incentive since it's a lot of work to maintain a list of links. I think the incentive will come in the form of Amazon.com gift certificates - something like x dollars per website which links to us, or x dollars for every tenth person who links to us - something like that. In any case, we will iron out the details soon. In the meantime, let us know if you have already put up a link to the site and we'll enter you for whatever incentive program we dream up. Details will follow soon.

DIJ Mobile

arsindelve — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:00:55 GMT

I've started work on a "mobile" version of Delve Into Jesus. It will be very stripped down, with no images, no logging in and no feedback or comments. It will simply be a way to read articles, questions, devotionals, reflections, discussions and prayer requests on your mobile device. It should be very fast and easy to use. You can preview it at http://mobile.delveintojesus.com. The only thing working right now are the most popular articles, but the rest shouldn't take too long.

Let me know what you think, and whether or not you think this will be useful.

Comment Changes

arsindelve — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:17:43 GMT

I've made several improvements to comments today (yes, yes, I'm supposed to be working on the resources section, but I was on a roll). First, it handles paragraphs correctly now. Some people were adding multi-paragraph comments only to find their spaces were removed any everything got lumped into one giant paragraph. This will no longer happen. Second, if you are logged in, you will be able to edit your previous comments. Please note, though, that editing a comment will cause it to go back to "Pending Approval" status. These changes were long overdue - thanks for your patience. Now, back to resources....

More Rating

arsindelve — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 01:35:23 GMT

Up until now, only articles could be rated by our members. Today, I added the ability to rate devotionals and reflections. I think it's important for our members to be able to give us feedback about the kind of content they like and don't like so we can respond accordingly. (Naturally, questions, prayer requests and testimonials will not be rated.) There are also new pages to show you which articles, reflections and devotionals are the highest rated. The "All Articles" page can be sorted by rating, popularity and date, and the devotionals and reflections page will have this very soon as well.

So, please don't be shy - let us know what you think. All it takes is one click on the number of stars from 1 to 5. Your vote will be recorded immediately, and the total rating will be updated in real-time.

Resources

arsindelve — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 15:36:05 GMT

At long last, development has begun on the last remaining section. Stay tuned for details!

Awful Incident

arsindelve — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:35:11 GMT

This week, as I was monitoring the web site statistics I noticed our bandwidth was very high. Extremely high actually, far more than any of our web sites could explain. Our normal daily usage is about 0.3 GB. For the last three weeks in August, it was averaging 75 GB per day.

When I investigated, I found that someone had been using our FTP Server illegally to store and transmit illegal movies and pornography. I was sick and disgusted and I felt violated. I stopped the FTP server and deleted the files, but the damage was done. I don't know how they got access, but I will have to investigate that soon. When I called our Internet Provider (GoDaddy.com) and explained the situation, I was told it was going to cost us 1,700 in extra fees.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that we cannot possibly afford such a bill. I had to face the real prospect of shutting down the site and dissolving Delve Ministries. In desperation, I placed a call to the office of the president at GoDaddy. After explaining the situation to one of their senior staff, he offered to allow us to upgrade our package to one which could handle the extra traffic and waive the overage fee. The cost of this is still substantial, but no where near the original cost I was quoted.

I have a few things I need to pass along to everyone.

1) Check your bandwidth on your server very regularly. If you have a feature on your server which will shut it down if you go over the bandwidth, turn it on. Go Daddy offers this and we did not use it because we were certain we would never come anywhere close to the limit. Previously, we were only using about 30 of our allowed 500 Gb. I will turn it on now, that's for sure! Please don't assume that GoDaddy or anyone else will let you off the hook if this happens to you.

2) This was an amazing and extremely generous thing for GoDaddy to do for us, and it basically saved the ministry. For this, I will be loyal to them for as long as we need a server. Please show your support for them and visit them for hosting and domain names if you need this service. They're a little wacky, and some of their ads may cross the line of good taste, but I never let that bother me. They are good people.

3) I can't remember when I prayed so hard about something, and God came through to save his ministry. Thank you God for always being faithful!

Changes to Paths

arsindelve — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:37:49 GMT

Two quick changes here. First, some people had commented that these pages were a litte drab, so I have added images to the top of each one to spice things up. Also, discovery paths have been divided into two categories (Investigating Christianity and Christian Living) to make them easier to find. I may add more categories down the road if necessary.

New Article Series

arsindelve — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:01:37 GMT

I'm very happy to announce a new series of articles (which have also been combined into a discovery path) on Delve Into Jesus. "Dealing With Difficult Trials" is a series authored by Steve Miller of Legacy Youth Ministry Resources, and was originally written as a lecture series for youth pastors. We are extremely grateful to Steve for allowing us to offer this series. These articles are a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone, even if you're not dealing with hard times now. As Pastor James McDonald says, if you're not going through hard times right now, just wait, they're coming!

Site Search

arsindelve — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:37:41 GMT

If you've been following the news here on Delve Into Jesus, you know that the problem which has been occupying my time has been searching. It's so important that people are able to find what they're looking for, and we have had very mediocre search functionality since the day we launched. A few weeks ago I said I would implement Google then didn't, and last week I did the same again.

The problem is that every time I work with Google's tools, I remember why I did not want to work with them in the first place. If I use the very basic tools, I cannot manipulate the search results which means that I cannot tell you how popular or highly rated an article is. I can do this by using Google's AJAX API and webservices, but it's an enormous amount of work. Finally (and this is final, I promise) I decided to drop Google and make the current search work really well since it was already 80 percent done.

To begin with, I fixed the discussion search which had been broken since day one. Next, I sorted all the search results by relevance, so that those items with the search term in the title come first, followed but those with the most occurrences of the search term in the body. (Search for "prayer" and look at the titles, you'll see what I mean). Finally, I created a unified search which searches the entire site, and made it accessible from the front page.

So, finally, I am pleased with how it all works and I think I can say that I am done with searching. Whew!

Google Search

arsindelve — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:54:33 GMT

The searching on this site is not great. The article search is okay, the discussion search never worked, and there is no way to search the entire site.

A few weeks ago, I posted that we would soon have search functions on the site provided by Google (called their custom search engine). I'm usually pretty good about implementing things soon after I announce them, so what happened?

I could not find an easy way to display the results without showing ads on the side. There was a way to get results and display them manually, but it was very complicated and I gave up after a few hours. I decided to move on to more important things and come back to it later.

Yesterday, Google announced a business version of their custom search engine with no ads at a cost of 100 per year. I was just about ready to go ahead and purchase it, but something told me to hold off. When I went back and looked at the control panel for the custom search engine, I found a feature which permits turning off ads for non-profit organizations. Bingo! Was that feature there before? I'm not sure, otherwise I would have seen it. I think this new feature coincides with the launching of the business version.

Anyway, now that the advertisement problem is out of the way, I'll finish up this week. There will be specific searches for articles, prayers, reflections, devotions, questions and discussion. There will also be a search for the entire site, which I will try to cram on to the front page. Someday I still want control the results so I can show relevant information (for example, show an article's rating or popularity as part of the search results) but this will do for now.

Gospelcom.net

arsindelve — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:25:29 GMT

We're very proud to announce that Delve Christian Ministries is now a member of the Gospelcom.net Ministry Alliance. Gospelcom is a fantastic organization that has helped many Internet ministries get off the ground by providing leadership, technical support and promotional assistance. They have also started several of their own ministries such as the very successful BibleGateway.com. We are very excited to be part of this alliance, and we look forward to many years of growth, partnership and success with them.

Incorporation Final

arsindelve — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:46:36 GMT

The documents arrived on Friday. It's official, Delve Christian Ministries Inc is a separate, legal entity. I will take the next three weeks and work with the other directors to create the mission statement, constitution and by-laws. If you're interested in seeing these, keep an eye on the corporate web site. So much work to do!

Statement of Faith

arsindelve — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:52:26 GMT

Delve Christian Ministies (our parent company) has adopted the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals which is as follows:

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

More Down Time

arsindelve — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:33:29 GMT

The site was down almost another two days. Ugh! I finally had enough and have moved DIJ onto a dedicated server hosted with a well-known, reputable company. It costs 3 times as much, but if the site doesn't keep going down, it will be worth it. I apologize profusely, but if you know me at all, you know how much it upsets me when the site is down. Believe me, no one is more concerned about it than I am. I woke up 1.5 hours early this morning just to complete the move before work.

There are still some DNS issues to work out, and the site may experience some coughing fits as a result, but I should have that resolved before the end of the weekend. The server has enough horsepower for 1,000 times the amount of traffic we have, and enough space for 10,000 times more content, so this should keep us steady for years.

Article Rating

arsindelve — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:20:28 GMT

Well, I've been busy! I've completed another new feature which has been on my mind for a while, and that is article rating. Users can now rate an article from 1 to 5, and you can see the average rating that users have given. This will serve as feedback to article writers to help us know what you like and don't like, and what is important to you. One thing left to do is to permit you to search by rating, and to see which articles are the highest rated. I'll work on that later this week.

Favorite Articles

arsindelve — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:51:41 GMT

I've added a new feature - favorite articles. As you browse through, you can flag articles as your "favorites" and then access them conveniently from the "Favorites" page on the "Articles" menu. This should help anyone who is doing research or is interested in one particular topic.

Downtime

arsindelve — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:19:58 GMT

Well, the site was down for nearly two days, and as you can imagine, I was beside myself. I couldn't sleep and I could hardly think of anything else. No data was lost, thanks to my own paranoia and obsessions with backups, so that's good at least.

There's no big, exciting story, just that the server had a heart attack and died. Unfortunately, the support staff where the site is hosted was not as motived to get the server up and running as I would have liked. Someday soon, I would like to have our own dedicated server so that we don't have to rely on anyone else for support. I'm in the process of making those arrangements now and hopefully the finances will work out.

DCMI Website

arsindelve — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 07:50:36 GMT

The Delve Christian Ministries Inc. website is now ready. It will grow in time as we add more content and more ministries, but all the pieces are now in place. Once we've created the company's constitution and by-laws, there will be a link to download those. If you want to check it out, the address is http://www.delveministries.com (and of course, there is a link to it on the bottom of every page).

Incorporation

arsindelve — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:39:39 GMT

Well, I came to a very difficult decision last night. I have decided to incorporate a non-profit business for the purposes of running and administering this web site. There will be a board of directors who will meet to decide the constitution and by-laws of the site and once that is done, I will incorporate and relinquish control of the site to the board members (of which I will be one) and all major decisions will be in our collective hands. I expect that the board will vote to authorize me to be the CEO ( i.e the one to run the web site's day to day operations) but who knows, maybe they'll fire me! I guess I better pick people who like me.

I have had a very hard time getting people to see this web site as something other than my own personal site. It's been difficult getting people to see it as a ministry because it's completely under my control and I do not have to answer to anyone. I hope this step will go a long way towards changing people's perception of this as MY site. Once that is done, I will work to try to get some recognition for the site as a legitimate ministry. This is a very long, tough and expensive road to go down, so I appreciate all of your prayers and support.

Thanks, Carter

arsindelve — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 18:56:25 GMT

Sometimes I am afraid that I am so wrapped up in the site that I can't see it clearly anymore. In particular, I am afraid that I have missed a very obvious topic for an article. To help me think clearly, I asked my four sons for article ideas at the dinner table this evening. To my surprise, the two best ideas came from my nine-year old, and they were fantastic ideas! Carter suggested I explain why Christians have missionaries, and why the symbol of fish and lambs are associated with Christianity. Thanks, Carter, I'll get to work on those right away.

And Comments Too

arsindelve — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:48:55 GMT

Along with questions, you no longer need to be logged in to comment on an item - this includes news, questions, articles, prayers, reflections, etc. If you are not logged in, it will appear as an anonymous comment and you will not be able to preview it before it's approved (since the web site will not know it's your comment). I still recommend logging in before commenting since we want Delve Into Jesus to be a community where we all get to know one another, but I hope this change will encourage more people to contribute.

Anonymous Questions

arsindelve — Thu, 31 May 2007 12:52:04 GMT

I have been wanting to make this change for a long time and many people have suggested it, so today I am happy to finally say that you no longer need to log in to ask a question. The site will recommend that you create a login first but if you choose, you can ask a question without ever creating an account. You will lose the ability to be notified by email and you will lose the ability to track all your questions, but those options are still available for those who want them and are willing to create a login. I hope that this change will open up the site and make it far more accessible, breaking down any barriers and resitance people might have previously had.

Search By Google

arsindelve — Wed, 30 May 2007 11:08:00 GMT

I've made a decision to let Google do all the searching for the site by using their new AJAX Search API. I am able to do this because I've spent so much of the last two months reworking the site to optimize how it functions on Google. By breaking up articles and discussions into their own directories and paying attention to page titles, descriptions and URLs, I can request that Google search only articles or discussion, depending on what the user wants. There are several upsides to this. First, Google will be able to search everything on the site, whereas the current system can only search what's in the database. Second, Google is the king of determining importance - so that if you search for "Gospel Of Mark", it can intelligently rank which articles are the most relevant. For me to write code to do this would take months and it would never be as effective as theirs, since they are world leaders in this area. I will be manipulating the results so that they won't even look like Google search results. For example, Google only gives a snippet of the article title, so I will look it up using a webservice and give you the full title. It will be integrated very tightly with the rest of the site and you'll hardly notice except for a tiny Google logo. Now, the bad news. Nothing will appear in the search results until Google gets around to indexing it. This can take days or weeks. Right now, only four articles are indexed, but that's because about three weeks ago I changed all the URs for articles. Anyway, I think this is a fine trade off. Let me know what you think, but I believe you'll be very pleasantly surprised by how simple and powerful it is once it's done. Give me about a week or so and it should be up and running.

Mark's Articles

arsindelve — Tue, 22 May 2007 20:30:11 GMT

Mark asked me to pass along that he is still working on his series of articles on science and Christianity, but that his research is taking longer than he thought. He should be wrapping up his research in about two weeks, and then he wil start writing after that. Stay tuned!

Discussion Features

arsindelve — Tue, 22 May 2007 20:25:33 GMT

I have been hard at work the last two weeks improving the discussion area. The big change is that you can subscribe to discussions and topics to be notified by email anytime someone adds a new post. You are prompted automatically to subscribe whenever you post, and you can also subscribe anytime by clicking the link at the top of the discussion. You can unsubscribe anytime using the link right from the email, or from the discussion itself.

I have also done some work on searching, but it is incomplete and buggy, so I will keep working. It's accessible from the menu if you want to give it a try (a beta test, if you will).

Historical Jesus

arsindelve — Wed, 02 May 2007 08:29:15 GMT

While Mark is working on his series of scientific articles, I will be working on a set of articles which look at Jesus and Christianity from an Historical / Archaeological perspective. I will be looking primarily at issues such as - "Is the Bible Reliable?", "What evidence of Christ Do We Have other than the Bible?" and "What Evidence Do We Have of the Resurrection?"

I will be using some of my own lecture notes and research, but I will also be relying very heavily on Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ, since he has done such an amazing and thorough job. I hope you will enjoy the articles, but you should also do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of his book here: The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Scientific Articles

arsindelve — Tue, 01 May 2007 19:07:07 GMT

My good friend Mark is going to begin authoring a series of articles about science and Christianity, since this is an interest of his and he's quite knowledgeable in that area. These articles will include information about evolution, the origin of life and reasons why the universe had to be created by an intelligent designer. I hope you'll give these a read when they're done. They should be good, and I'm looking forward to it myself.

Break Time

arsindelve — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:34:53 GMT

I've done a lot of work on the site in the last two weeks, so now it's time to take a break once more. I will continue to write articles and reflections during this time, but I won't be changing or adding to the site for at least two weeks. I am WAY behind on my school work, so I need to do what I can to catch up. After my break, I will work on the resources section, and maybe add some advanced features that are needed in the discussion area. Bye for now!

Discussion

arsindelve — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:55:58 GMT

Later today I will start work on discussion / forums. I think this section, when complete, will go a long way to adding a feeling of community to Delve Into Jesus. I look forward to getting to know you all in the discussions. It may take about a week or so to complete this section, and I can't put it up until it's completely done, so you won't see any changes to the site until then. If you have any suggestions for how you want the forum to work, now is the time to let me know.

Testimonials

arsindelve — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:38:56 GMT

I've added a new section to the site under "Encouragement" called "Testimonials". This is where our members can offer their "testimony" about what Jesus has done in their lives and share the story of how they were saved. Please feel free to go ahead and share what ever is on your heart. I will be adding my own testimony a little later today, and I look forward to reading all about what God has done in each of your lives.

Rejecting the Cure

arsindelve — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:12:29 GMT

This week I will be working on a new set of articles which will comprise a new Discovery Path called "Rejecting The Cure". These articles will look at Jesus as the "cure" and examine all the potential reasons why people reject Jesus. For example, some people don't want to believe they're sick, some want to heal themselves, some think the price is too high while others will look for other means to heal them such as Eastern religions or new age cures. These series of articles will, I hope, serve to help those who have not accepted Jesus examine their real motives for not doing so and perhaps see those reasons in a new light.

Discovery Path Change

arsindelve — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:55:44 GMT

I've made the changes I talked about last week, so now everyone can follow discovery paths without logging in and it will still track your progress. It uses cookies if you're not logged in, and will use your user name if you are. Be aware that if you don't log in, the web site cannot track your progress across multiple computers since the information is stored locally. If you log in first, it can track your progress no matter what computer you use since your progress will be stored on our servers. So, if you access Delve Into Jesus from work and home, or from multiple computer at home, you're still better off logging in first. Thanks to those who suggested this change - I hope it will open up the site to many more people.

Less need for login

arsindelve — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:35:19 GMT

A few people have commented that they don't like having to create a user account and there is too much on the site that requires you to log in.

The most obvious place you need to log in is before asking a question or posting a prayer request. Originally, there were a few reasons why I ask people to log in before posting anything to the site. First, this allows people to keep track of all the items they've created from the 'Your Account' menu. Next, it allows people to be emailed whenever someone else replied to their post. Finally, I like the idea of creating a community where people get to know one another, not just a place where people post anonymously and never get to know one another.

While I still think all of these issues are important, I agree with everyone who commented that they HATE creating a login, and so I will make some changes this week:

You will not have to be logged in to send an article to someone by email.
You will be able to ask a question or post a prayer request anonymously without logging in. If you do this, you will be notified that you will not be emailed whenever someone replies and you will not be able to track or edit your post. It will truly be anonymous and once you post, you will no longer "own" it. You will be encouraged to create an account, but if you decide not to, you can still post.
You will not need to be logged in to post comments or replies.
You will not need to be logged in to follow discovery paths. I will track your progress using cookies, not your user account. This means that your progress will not be consistent if you use a different computer, but this will affect very few people, I think.

So, I'll get to work on all this. Thanks for all the excellent feedback and suggestions!

New Server

arsindelve — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:25:09 GMT

This week, we moved Delve Into Jesus onto a new server. The performance on this server should be much, much better than it was before. I know there were lots of times when the web site did not respond, was down, or took several clicks before it came up. That should all be in the past now. This new server also gives opportunity for growth. As the volume of traffic increases, we can add more disk space, RAM or CPU as needed with very little down-time. It's not as inexpensive as the previous host (which was, ahem, free) but this seems like the right long-term strategy. Wish us luck!

Lots of changes

arsindelve — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 22:08:01 GMT

Oh my, lots of new stuff - related articles, discovery paths, emailing articles, printing articles, article options, article summaries and more. My to-do list is getting shorter and shorter. I really feel like we're at a point where the site is very much functional and can be of real service to someone who is looking for answers. We need many more articles, and I need to complete the discussion area, but for the most part, I think I can declare that the site is now basically operational. Yay!

Seven and Counting

arsindelve — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:03:20 GMT

Whew! Seven articles, yet there is still so much more to say! This weekend I will work on some much needed features. These include a link to latest articles from the members page, and a "Latest Articles" page. More importantly, I need to complete the "related articles" feature, which will allow you to see other articles with similar topics at the bottom of the page, so you don't have to go searching. After that, I'll write some more articles and maybe in about a week or two, I'll get to work on the discussion page, since I think that will be an important feature soon.

Articles Done

arsindelve — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:22:53 GMT

I've gotten to the point where the article section is complete enough to start creating and posting. The searches are also done, including browse by category and search by phrase. There are some little things I'd like to improve, for example, I think each article should point to other, related articles. Also, the article creation screen is not quite what I want it to be, but it will suffice for now.

I will spend a little more time working on Knowledge Paths in coming days, but for the most part my focus will shift to writing articles for a few weeks. Without that, the site is practically useless. Then, in a few weeks when the most important articles have been written, I'll start work on the discussion and resource sections, which are the last two remaining areas.

Questions & Prayer

arsindelve — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:58:39 GMT

Two weeks ago, I listed 4 things that still needed to be completed for "Questions", which in my mind is a very important part of the site, perhaps second only to articles. Those 4 items are now done. Members can add questions, moderators can approve them, other members can search by phrase or urgency and can post their responses. If they desire, the person who created the question will be emailed when a response to their question is posted.

I have also completed prayer requests. It was quick because this section is almost identical to questions, except that there is no "answer" to a prayer request so it is in fact a bit simpler. The only thing left is to find a way to show a random prayer request. This is not something that can be done easily with NHibernate, so I will have to hit the database directly, something I was trying strenuously to avoid.

Once that is done, I want to provide a way for members to see all their questions and prayer requests from their profile. Here, they will be able to view, edit, search, sort and activate/deactive them from one common place. That should take about the rest of this week.

Then - onto articles, the heart of the site. I have done so much groundwork that I actually think this will be rather quick. The only difference between an article and, say, a prayer request is that articles have to be assigned to a category.

All these changes are on my notebook, but I will upload them to the site when I get home tonight.