Posted by Scott L
Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:26:00 GMT
Hey all, so I have spent the last few days adding a bit of a new face to the eBible front page. Since we introduced the ability for people to add their pictures and profile info, we have watched in amazement at how many people have been doing it. We wanted to bring this right out front and show everyone who else is using eBible.com. We also wanted an easy way to show you the latest notes people were adding, as well as some recent popular topics people were tagging verses with. Let us know what you think about this and if there were something else perhaps you would like to see up front there. I gotta give Mark kudos for working hard this last week on the Javascript API and taking what I had originally done to the next level; it is really starting to get cool now! Besides the above there has also been a bunch of small bugs and things cleaned up as usual.
There are so many different things we (Team eBible) can spend our time on here and we need your help prioritizing as always. The general vision is making eBible a place for Christians to come together around God’s Word. We dream of a place where people are studying the Bible with others from around the world as well as people in their local church and small groups.
There are always bug fixes and user interface tweaks to do, but as far as functionality and new features, what do you guys think eBible is lacking in? Post a comment, start up a discussion, we really need to keep hearing from you!
Posted in Ideas, General | 3 comments
Posted by Mark
Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:17:00 GMT
Last night we launched a new Javascript API called eBibleicious. Why did we call it that? Well … why not is the better question?
It is a very simple way to make your blog, CMS or website eBibleicious. Just one line in fact to make every Bible reference on your site come alive in 4 cool ways. So check it out and let us know how we can make it better. The idea is to now use it to make really simple blog and CMS plugins for the world. The first one is a simple Wordpress plugin that should be out in the next week or so (email me if you want to help test it now).
But the bigger story here is that we are looking for help with a lower-level API – the ultimate eBible webservice. In two years we have built a strong foundation of backend code and licensed some great Bibles and reference content to match. We are using Ruby on Rails and so doing a REST-like API that returns beautiful XHTML is pretty straight forward. The goal is to open up our platform so that no developer will ever have to go through all the pain and expense fun that we did. The feature requests we keep getting are awesome but we will never be able to build every online Bible related feature or service or application out there. That is where you … and the eBible.com API come into play.
So let’s hear what you want specifically in an API, what you want first, or what you want to build with an API to help work backwards from there.
Posted in Releases | Tags api, developers | 10 comments
Posted by Mark
Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:50:00 GMT
Posted in General | 1 comment
Posted by Geoff
Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:33:00 GMT
We’d like to take a moment to thank our users and Spotlight sponsors for supporting eBible.com.
We currently have six great ad sponsors for the month and wanted to share with you a bit on what’s happening with each of them:
His Move – if you are looking to either Buy or Sell your home, His Move helps connect you with a Christian Real Estate professional anywhere in the country. If you are looking for an appraiser, home inspector or property manager, His Move can help too.
Laridian iPocketBible NLT for your iPod – Laridian has released the New Living Translation (NLT) for your iPod! Choose either the iPocketBible NLT text and MP3 audio, or iPocketBible NLT text only. Within your iPod, you can use the Verse or Subject index
to start your reading anywhere in the Bible, read the text of the NLT, and even listen to a professional, dramatized reading of the NLT as you read the text.
Richard Beeston – Richard Beeston is an engaging and entertaining Christian performer who connects with his audience through powerful music and honest lyrics. His latest album, Infant Logic. is a passionate rock album that releases the energy of his dynamic vocal talents and songwriting skills. The album includes the No. 1 independent single, ‘I Give in To You’ (indieheaven.com), which has received nation-wide airplay in Australia, and regional airplay in the US. The release of the album brought nominations for Male Vocalist of the Year, Song of the Year, and Contemporary Artist of the Year, with the Indie Alliance ‘Momentum Awards’ in the US. If you are a fan of artists like Coldplay, John Mayer and U2, you will certainly want to have a copy of Infant Logic in your collection.
Mobile Ministry Magazine – Mobile Ministry Magazine explores the use of mobile technology and how it can be used by ministers, missionaries, and many others as a means to augment their abilities to share the Gospel. Read more about their mission to educate and edify at the intersection of faith and technology.
BibleMemory.us
- BibleMemory.us is simply an email-based Bible memory program. New features include being able to deliver Bible memory verses via RSS. Sign up for a FREE 14 day trial. The program is completely customizable and allows you to easily memorize verses you’d like to learn.
Logos Bible Software 3 – Energize your Bible study with the powerful desktop software from Logos. Logos Bible Software 3 offers more content, better tools and incredible value. It’s been said that the third version of a software application is where everything comes together in a big way. The refinements, enhancements, and additions you’ll see with Logos Bible Software 3 show this to be true.
eBible.com is currently selling 7 sponsorship ad spots for the month of May ranging between $55 and $85 for the month. If you are interested in being one of the 7 Spotlight ads that rotate on eBible.com for the month of May, please visit SpotlightAdNetwork.com for availability and pricing.
Posted in General | 3 comments
Posted by Mark
Fri, 06 Apr 2007 22:58:00 GMT
Happy Easter to all you eBiblers! We have something more relevant than chocolate eggs to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ this year – more ways to use, understand and share the Word of God. That is right, a big new release of eBible.com has just gone live. Here is a rundown of the major changes:
Premium memberships
Basic membership accounts at eBible.com will always be free but we have just introduced a premium membership option for those who want a little bit more from their online Bible. This is a way for those of you who believe in this project to help towards the continued innovation and improvement of the site. See the details here but the basic idea is more content, more features and no ads for $99/year (only about $8/month).
And I see we have a few more eBible.com t-shirts laying around so why don’t we say that we’ll send the first 20 premium members one. Upgrade here! (and as a heads up we will be including a discount coupon code in next week’s first eBible.com newsletter. if you want one now, email us and tell us how you are going to spread the word about eBible and we’ll see what we can do for ya)
User Profiles
eBible.com has quickly become a worldwide community of people seeking God through His Word. But we haven’t provided a good way for everyone to get to know each other up until now. The next time you login you should be directed to your settings page where you should fill out some more information about yourself. Maybe even upload a photo like Lisa has already. Let other eBiblers know what part of the world you’re from, the church you attend, your favorite verse or passage, your testimony and more.
eBible Points
eBible Points is a new way to recognize the people who are using and sharing God’s Word through eBible.com. The more time you spend with your favorite online Bible, the more points you will accrue. While eBible points won’t get you free trips around the world, they will give others an indication about your seniority at the site. Everyone starts off as an “eBible Novice” and with enough points you will soon be an “eBible Enthusiast”. Here is how you can work your way up to the highest status, “eBible Scholar”:
Advanced Search
Our ever improving search engine now has new tricks up its sleeve to help you retrieve that verse you kind of remember and help you discover new ones using keywords and topics. Just click the advanced search link to reveal advanced search options or directly enter the new syntax in the search box yourself.
- Search for a specific phrase by putting quotes around your search (“light of the world”)
- Search for phrases that DO NOT include certains words by putting a minus in front of the term (“light of the world” -city)
- Limit your search to only one or more specific Bible translations (love NASB)
- Narrow your search to a specific section or book of the Bible by including it right in the query (love Pentateuch)
Did you mean __?
Looking at the webserver logs it is clear that users have a tough time spelling many of the big words in the Bible just like us. I mean how are you supposed to find verses about Nebachnezzar when you can’t spell it?! Introducing …. eBible.com’s new Did you mean feature:
Besides the above features there are a bunch of bugfixes in this latest release thanks to the emails we have received from all of you. Now it is your turn to let us know how we can make your online Bible better. We need to keep hearing from you. Even if you have emailed or posted a blog comment before … let us know again by posting a comment below.
Finally, brethren, farewell. Become complete. Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. (2 Corinthians 13:11)
Posted in Releases | 13 comments
Posted by Geoff
Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:42:00 GMT
I wanted to send out a quick post to all the individuals, ministries, bloggers, business and Christian organizations who have inquired about advertising opportunities on eBible.com.
We are happy to announce that effective today we are re-launching our Spotlight ad program (premium graphical and text based ads). Our earlier text based ad program (CrossAds) has been discontinued due to performance issues that were slowing down the speed of eBible.com. With that being said however, our premium advertising program (Spotlight) has been very well received and returned some strong results for those who organizations that utilized this ad program (especially after we introduced our new pricing).
As before, the Spotlight ad program only allows seven (7) rotating advertisements per month. With so few ads being displayed, our advertisers are guaranteed premium visibility, great value and 14% of all the traffic that is visiting eBible.com on a daily basis.
Currently pricing for March is very affordable, with aggressive rates as low as $50 a month to be one of the 7 graphic and text based Spotlight ads. With strong site traffic increases month over month, the ad pricing for March, April and May are a great bargain for the savvy marketer who knows the expense of other graphical ad placement alternatives available at other places.
To encourage early reservation and ad placement, we have lowered prices for those advertisers who place and ad early. Wait too long and you’ll have to pay a little more. To see the current availability of Spotlight ads for March, April or May or immediately reserve and place your ad, please click here
If you would like the full Spotlight program details, you can find them Visit here
Some other changes to the Spotlight Ad program:
We have implemented a fully automated, secure ad placement and payment system for our advertisers so that you can reserve, place and make payment on one of the 7 monthly Spotlight ad spots online in just minutes. This is a very quick and easy way for advertisers to get their product or service in front of the thousands of users who are using eBible.com on a daily basis with a minimal amount of time required.
You will also notice that we often refer to the “Spotlight Ad Network”. We are looking for premium Christian websites and bloggers who are interested in generating advertising revenue through the display of Spotlight Ads. So if you have a leading Christian website or blog that has substantial traffic and are interested in being apart of the “Spotlight Ad Network” e-mail me at sales@spotlightadnetwork.com
for the possible inclusion of your site to the Spotlight Ad Network.
Thanks.
Geoff LaFleur
Posted in General | no comments
Posted by Mark
Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:51:00 GMT
Last week we heard from a few of you in the blog comments that increasing “interaction and community” at eBible.com was important to you. Let’s dig in a little deeper here to find out how exactly we can do that.
What does it mean to study the Bible online together?
Our goal is to enable that at eBible.com but what does that look like exactly? Right now we have bookmarks with topics and notes attached that can be shared with everyone or with a group of friends. How can we take this to the next level to allow you to study the Bible online with interaction and community?
If you are reading this blog and have never posted a comment to a blog before, this is your chance. Click the X comments link below or click on the title of this post and scroll down to the bottom. We need to hear from you!
Posted in Ideas | 1 comment
Posted by Geoff
Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:44:00 GMT
Recently we have been battling an influx in spam on the Discuss section at eBible.com. While Discuss has and continues to be a valuable tool for eBible.com users, the useful bits can be marbled with offensive links if we aren’t able to remove them immediately (which can be a full time job at times).
Since we refuse to subject our users to those inappropriate posts, we are taking down the Discuss section for the time being. We might bring back a forum in the future but for now we want to hear your ideas and comments here on the blog (such as the post below), so keep your comments coming.
Thanks for your understanding and patience while we address this.
Blessings.
Posted in General | 3 comments
Posted by Mark
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:30:00 GMT
Everyone has an opinion and we want to hear yours. If we could do one thing to improve eBible.com what would it be. Sure we have a lot of feedback from our recent survey but we want to hear in your own words which area or new feature needs our attention. We are working hard to clean up the whole hosting switch from our own hardware to the Textdrive Accelerators we are now running on. At the same time we are working on some ways to bring in revenue to keep this wonderful resource moving forward at a good pace. But what is the next big thing here at eBible.com?
- make it prettier. aka clean up the design and layout of a lot of the pages
- speed it up. optimize the database calls, javascript and IT issues that slow me down from getting the Word
- add more content. i want more Bible translations and study resources on my eBible
- more study features. i want to go deeper and need better ways to use the study titles you have. add greek/hebrew functionality and more powerful searching, etc.
- interaction and community. can you guys make it easier to study the Bible together as families, small groups, churches, etc. i want profile pages and better note sharing and more social features added
- mobile version. i want to use eBible from my wireless phone or PDA
- fix the bugs. can’t you just focus on fixing the little bugs that are there before adding new features?
- just easier. i just want ebible.com to be easier all around. i want to be able to simply search, copy and paste verses and everything else is getting in the way
- none of the above. the infamous “none of the above” option
This is just some of what we are hearing but we need your help to focus our efforts. Speak up. Add a comment below. If we could do one thing what would it be. One of the above or something else you think will make everyone fall in love with eBible.com that much more? :-)
Posted in Ideas | 11 comments
Posted by Geoff
Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:34:06 GMT
Well, first off I’d like to again thank everyone who took the time out to participate in the eBible.com user survey. We’ve already learned a lot, and will definitely be digging deep into all of your responses to help us shape where we spend our time over the coming weeks and months.
There were a lot of commonalities in both the praise and criticism that we received, which is especially helpful as it confirms both the directions that we have entered, and also identified where we can improve things.
We will share more of the survey results with you in the coming weeks to show all the eBible.com users what the community as a whole had to say.
So, without further ado, I’d like to announce the iPod Shuffle winner…..... LaRosa Johnson. Congratulations LaRosa, we hope you enjoy your new Shuffle.
Thanks to everyone for participating. We hope that we can capture all the great recommendations that you provided to make eBible.com something that we all can be proud of.
Posted in Competitions | no comments
