Blog Diyiin Bi

The category “Pastor Marv Recommends” and all articles that were posted to it have been moved to Christian Internet Resources. (All links in this article will open in a new window.)

Blog Diyiin Bi is now a ministry-only blog. The only articles posted from now on that are not specifically ministry related will be those about the blog itself, such as this one. The only business-related articles that will be posted to Blog Diyiin Bi will be those about our Amazon associate store, which sells Christian books from Amazon.com, and Diyiin Bi, LLC’s Bible and Christian book store, when it goes online. Selling Christian books and Bibles is a small part of our ministry, and doing so will help keep Blog Diyiin Bi in operation. Such articles will be few and far between.

All of the links and advertising widgets that formerly adorned Blog Diyiin Bi were, of necessity, removed when the blog was migrated from b2evolution to Wordpress. Some, but not all, will be placed back, but only those that are specifically for the purpose of increasing traffic to the blog, such as the link exchange partners and webrings. Any widgets that were only ads for a business will not be added back, but will be placed on one or more of the other three blogs. When there is a review of something that will help in ministry, there will be a short article on Blog Diyiin Bi pointing to that article on Christian Internet Resources. An example of an article on CIR that will get mentioned on Blog Diyiin Bi is this link to the article about e-Sword resources that was just moved from Blog Diyiin Bi to CIR. There may also be an occasional article mentioning something on John’s Joint if there is an article there that is relevant to ministry. It is even possible that something on The Go Light will be mentioned as well. However, The Go Light is a business-only blog and so is not as likely to have articles relevant to ministry. All four blogs will have links to each other in their respective sidebar widget “Elsewhere on the Internet.” That widget displays a random selection of five links from the list of blogs and other websites from the blog’s links database. (Some of the other blogs listed there include those of my two daughters, so be sure to check out the photos they post of the cutest grandkids in the world…<grin!>)

You can find all of the “Pastor Marv Recommends” articles that used to be on Blog Diyiin Bi at http://nizhoninet.com/category/pastor-marv-recommends/. All links that each Blog Diyiin Bi article and category had before the move to Wordpress have been redirected to the new URIs on Christian Internet Resources, for those that were moved, or to the new URIs on Blog Diyiin Bi, for those that are still here. Any bookmarks you had before the migration to Wordpress will still work, but the rss feeds will need to be changed if you were subscribed to them.

Moving the “Pastor Marv Recommends” category and articles to Christian Internet Resources was the last major piece of housekeeping to be finished. All that remains is to add back some of the traffic-building links, which will be done over the next week or two.

So now, I can concentrate on writing more ministry articles. Look for more posts about our Minister’s Conference, more on apologetics, more practical Christian living articles, and more devotionals and Bible studies.

in His service,
Pastor Marv

Technorati : bible, blog, wordpress
Del.icio.us : bible, blog, wordpress
Zooomr : bible, blog, wordpress
Flickr : bible, blog, wordpress

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I had hoped to find a plugin for Wordpress that would place a search box for Amazon.com in the sidebar. Unfortunately, the only such plugin I was able to find has not been updated for over six months, and as of August 11, 2009, the API (Application Programming Interface) that allows an Amazon.com search box to work was radically changed by Amazon. So the plugin would not work.

I ended up doing what I thought I did not want to do…there is now a link in the menu (under the header photo) for Blog Diyiin Bi’s Amazon.com associate store. And I wrote another non-ministry article to let my readers know what is happening with the blog.

The store has been set up to list (mostly) Christian books. Some of the books you will be able to find in our store are not about protestant Christian topics, such as the book that is displayed on the bottom row of the first page (as of the writing of this article), which is a book about the Catholic doctrine of Mary worship. The list of books displayed on the store’s website will be refined as I find time to work on it. The store itself will also eventually be modified, so that it will display the header photo of Prayer Mountain as well as a menu to make it easier to navigate back to the blog. Until then, the link to the store will open in a new window so you can return to the blog by closing the store’s browser window. The Related Reading links will always open in a new browser window.

For now, the Related Reading list of books at the end of each article will stay, but I have reduced the display of those books to picture only and set them to display across rather than down. This results in less clutter, and will still show books that you can buy which are relevant to the tag words and phrases attached to the article. Any books you buy, whether from the Related Reading list or from the Bookstore, will help support Blog Diyiin Bi as long as you order from the links on the blog.

If you want books on topics other than Christianity, the other three blogs will have bookstores as well. As of this writing, The Go Light has one up-and-running that displays business-related books, computers, and office products. Christian Internet Resources (CIR) and John’s Joint will have bookstores within the next few days. John’s Joint and/or CIR will sell computers, electronics, music, and movies from Amazon.com as well as books.

There are links to the other blogs in the sidebar box labelled “Elsewhere on the Internet.” You might have to refresh the page a time or two to see all three of the other blogs listed since only five of the many links in Blog Diyiin Bi’s links list are displayed at one time. As the bookstores for John’s Joint and CIR are brought on-line, the links for them will appear in their respective menus, so check often.

The Go Light and Christian Internet Resources are owned and operated by Diyiin Bi, LLC, which is a business incorporated in the state of New Mexico and owned by Pastor Marv and Betsy. John’s Joint and Blog Diyiin Bi are owned and operated by Pastor Marv. Diyiin Bi, LLC, is a corporate sponsor of Blog Diyiin Bi and John’s Joint. We are looking for other sponsors, either corporate or otherwise.

Pastor Marv

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Since Blog Diyiin Bi (BDB) is now fully operational using the Wordpress platform, several posts related to the move from b2evolution to Wordpress have been deleted. This should be the last such article unless another major change is made to BDB. Minor changes may be briefly mentioned in other articles, or not at all.

The next article you see here will be ministry-related. There will be no more “Pastor Marv Recommends” articles. New articles that would previously have been posted to that category will be posted instead to one or both of the new blogs, Christian Internet Resources (CIR) and The Go Light (TGL). “Pastor Marv Recommends” articles that were on BDB from before the move to Wordpress will be moved to the new blogs as well. The only exception to this will be when Betsy and I get our online Bible and Christian book store in operation. There may be an article announcing the grand opening, and there will be links to it in the sidebar. And, when I put rss feeds from the other blogs in the sidebar (which is a planned minor change to the “Elsewhere on the Internet” box), there will be links to the latest articles on TGL and CIR, including articles promoting the bookstore.

Just in case you might have bookmarks to any of the pre-Wordpress articles and back pages, and also because many articles have links within them to other articles, the plugin “Pretty Links” has been installed on BDB. All permalinks for pre-WP posts and categories will be redirected, via the Pretty Links plugin, to the new WP permalink on BDB or, in the case of those articles moved to one of the other blogs, the appropriate permalink there. That means your old bookmarks will still lead you to the right page with no additional action needed on your part. All of the back pages, such as the “Links from Pastor Marv Recommends Articles” page, are still on BDB in the original location, although I may remove the link trading partners pages since they appear to have been wasted effort. Should any of those pages be moved to another blog, an appropriate redirect will be made using Pretty Links. Unfortunately, I could not redirect the rss feeds, so if you subscribe to the posts feed or the comments feed, you need to re-subscribe. The new feed links are in the “Meta” box, and the feed link for posts is also in the upper right corner of the header photo.

There is now a “Print This Post” link for each article. It will display a printer-friendly version of the post. Even though the header, sidebar, and footer will be displayed on your screen after clicking this link, they will not print. The printout will include the “Link To This Post” box and the Amazon.com “Related Reading” book list. The link from which you can order the Amazon.com books will not be printed; only the picture, title, and description for each as displayed after the post. So if you want to order one of them, please click on the link before printing, if you print an article. (Or temporarily bookmark the link.) If you just search for the book from some other web page, such as google.com, Blog Diyiin Bi will NOT get the affiliate commission for the sale. I am looking into installing another plugin that will put a search box for Amazon.com in the sidebar, and that will help alleviate (but not eliminate) the link-does-not-get-printed problem. If that plugin is installed, you will be able to type in the title, ISBN, or other information that identifies a book, even if it was not listed in “Related Reading”. Then, if Amazon.com has it, you can buy it through the search results links and BDB will get a commission.

It is possible that I will decide not to keep the Amazon.com “Related Reading” links on BDB…it is still an open question. If they stay, the number of books listed can be set to any number, so maybe the four now being listed is too many or not enough. I would appreciate any comments about the “Related Reading” book list, pro or con, from the readers of this blog. The Amazon.com “Related Reading” links will definitely stay on TGL, and will most likely stay on CIR. I may also put an Amazon.com mini-store on one or both of the other blogs, but not on BDB.

Thank you for your patience during the past couple of weeks. There will be some good articles on BDB in the near future, so stay tuned!

God bless you,
Pastor Marv

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Blog Diyiin Bi will be moving soon. Not to a different domain name or a different host, but to a different blogging platform. Check out our progress here.

When the move is completed, the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier {often called “web address”}) of Blog Diyiin Bi will be the same as it is now – http://diyiinbi.org. The old permalink for each individual post and comment now in the blog will be redirected to the new permalink for individual posts on the new platform after they are moved and the new installation is taken live. The same applies to the URI for rss feeds. That way, anyone who has bookmarks or other links to any Blog Diyiin Bi posts, or who subscribes to one of our rss feeds, will not have to change anything. (Although it might be a good idea to change it. But wait until the move is completed!)

When Blog Diyiin Bi was first started in May this year, I had absolutely zero experience with blogs. I knew nothing about the different blogging platforms available, and had never posted an article or comment to someone else’s blog! So I looked at what was available from the hosting provider where diyiinbi.org is located and chose the b2evolution platform.

It was a decent choice for a beginning blogger, especially one who, like me, has had some experience writing software and so is not afraid to experiment. Were I not serious about blogging, Blog Diyiin Bi would probably stay with b2evolution.

However, by the time I started up two other blogs to move the eCommerce aspects of Blog Diyiin Bi elsewhere and keep Blog Diyiin Bi as a ministry-only blog, I had done more research and found that the Wordpress platform is by far a better choice. It is used by literally millions of bloggers – some, like the four blogs I now have, are self-hosted, and many others are hosted on websites like blogger.com.

The move can be almost completely made without taking down the current b2evolution installation, so that articles will still be posted to Blog Diyiin Bi while the new platform is being set up. (Unless the move is completed as fast as I think it can be done!) If you want to follow the progress of the installation and setup of Wordpress, the new blog is temporarily at http://diyiinbi.org/blog. I will be posting articles directly related to the setup of Wordpress, partly for testing purposes and partly to keep interested Blog Diyiin Bi readers informed about the progress of the move.

The last step of the move will involve exporting all articles and comments from b2evolution and importing them into Wordpress. After that is completed, b2evolution will be uninstalled and Wordpress will be moved from diyiinbi.org/blog to diyiinbi.org. (A two-minute task…) All of the exported/imported articles’ URIs will be mapped from the old b2evolution permalinks to the new Wordpress permalinks and the move will then be completed. (Probably a two-hour or more task, but the blog will be up and running on Wordpress while that is being done.)

One difference you will see after the move will be that most of the commercial links and ads that remain on Blog Diyiin Bi will be gone. There will still be a page for link trading partners, and the webring and other traffic-building links will be there, but any eCommerce-only links now on Blog Diyiin Bi will be moved to one or more of the other blogs. The PayPal Donate button will remain, and whenever we get our online Bible and Christian book store up-and-running, there will be a link to that, probably in the “blogroll” section of the sidebar. I’m still debating whether or not to put links to related books from Amazon.com at the end of each article. That will provide some income to help keep Blog Diyiin Bi “on the air,” and it will also be a source of information for readers of the blog, but it is a commercial endeavor. I definitely will have links to Amazon.com on the other three blogs, since they are specifically in place for eCommerce. Christian Internet Resources (CIR) already has the links to related books at the end of most articles, but I ran into some technical difficulties implimenting that on the other two blogs. Related books may not be found for some articles, since finding them depends on the tags associated with the article.

One reason I am still undecided about putting Amazon.com links on Blog Diyiin Bi is because Amazon.com’s search engine sometimes returns links to inappropriate items. For example, on CIR, when testing the Amazon.com plugin, I put the tag “announcements” on an article. Amazon.com’s search engine placed a link to “Pink Bubble Gum ‘It’s A Girl’ Cigars,” complete with a thumbnail picture of the box of cigars, right there with the links and thumbnail pictures of several books…

Keep your eye on Blog Diyiin Bi. The move may be completed as soon as the end of today if there are no unexpected glitches.

God bless you,
Pastor Marv

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Within the past week, my brother, John, turned over administration of his blog, John’s Joint, to me.

John’s Joint first went online May 30, 2007, as a project John was doing for a contest where he works, Pikes Peak Library District (PPLD). (He is an IT support technician for PPLD.) When the contest was over and he had won an mp3 player, he kept the blog online, posting articles about everything from the newest software and operating systems put out by Microsoft to political satire and serious political comment. He even posted articles about the trip he made to help set up 70 of the nearly 200 computers that had been donated to Southwest Indian Ministries. (The three articles are here.)

John didn’t have time to properly keep up with John’s Joint, and so asked me if I wanted to take it over. When he asked me, I was in the middle of a project, creating two new blogs as spin-offs from Blog Diyiin Bi. I first said no, but after serious contemplation on the matter, changed my mind. So now, I have four blogs to find content for! Anyone want to be a guest author for any of the blogs? If so, use the “Contact” form on any of them and let me know. You can place links to your own website and/or advertise your offline business (or ministry, for Blog Diyiinby posts) in articles you write.

Some of the changes made to John’s Joint in the past few days include upgrading the blogging platform from Wordpress 2.7.1 to the latest, 2.8.4; changing the display theme; and doing a lot of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There will be no substantial changes to the type of content – John and I are pretty much in agreement on politics, we both are “geeks” (see the About John page on John’s Joint for links to a couple of “geek tests” on which both of scored well over 90%!), and we both are Christians with very strong Bible-based pro-family values. And while articles I write for John’s Joint are more likely to be about the latest Linux software and Pentecostal doctrine rather than Microsoft software and Lutheran doctrine, John will still write an occasional article about Microsoft’s latest and the doctrine of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. (And no, we don’t plan to have any theological debates on the pages of John’s Joint! Except maybe just for fun…) Both of us will also write articles on a wide range of other topics, including bragging about our grandkids. (I have six with two more on the way, and John has one.)

Other changes planned for the next few weeks on John’s Joint will include more fine-tuning for SEO, changing the header photo (John will be sending me some digital photos of the beautiful scenery in Colorado, including some of Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods; he lives in Colorado Springs) and possibly changing the theme again if I find one that looks better among the 900+ free themes that are available for Wordpress.

The name of the blog will remain “John’s Joint.”

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.

May God richly bless you,
Pastor Marv

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When Blog Diyiin Bi was started in May of this year, it was intended to be a commercial profit-making venture. It quickly evolved into a ministry blog, and the commercial aspects of it now look out-of-place mixed in with devotionals, articles on apologetics, and other Christian ministry posts.

So Blog Diyiin Bi is getting a sister blog. All new articles related to eCommerce that would have been in the “Pastor Marv Recommends” category of Blog Diyiin Bi will instead be on the new blog, The Go Light.

The “dofollow” plugin has been installed on The Go Light. It disables the “nofollow” attribute for links in comments on the blog. Leaving a comment about an existing post will result in the search engines indexing your websites that are linked to in the comment. And, of course, any comments with inappropriate content, including links to inappropriate websites, or comments with more than a couple of links, will be deleted without notice. Repeat offenders may be blacklisted on all blogs that I moderate. I reserve the right to delete without notice or explanation anything that I deem inappropriate, whether spelled out on this website or not. See the About Us page on The Go Light for more on this. In general, and there may be exceptions to this, a comment will not be deleted just because the author of it disagrees with me. This policy also applies to Blog Diyiin Bi.

The Go Light is a blog about ways of building traffic to a web site and means of converting that traffic to sales. The name “The Go Light” is a play on the phrase “Stop Light.” Thus, our Go Light is at the intersection of Ways and Means! We will also have reviews of online business opportunities. After all, why build web traffic if you don’t have something to convert into sales?

Over the next few weeks, most of the advertising in the sidebar and footer will be moved from Blog Diyiin Bi to The Go Light. The PayPal “donate” button will remain, as well as advertising and links aimed at getting more traffic to Blog Diyiin Bi. Also, everything on the page that lists links from the Pastor Marv Recommends articles will stay in place, as well as any articles already posted.

Blog Diyiin Bi will, for the time being, continue to have reviews of software and Internet resources that are of interest to Christians, especially those who are involved in ministry. But we are developing another new blog, Christian Internet Resources, that will take over most of Blog Diyiin Bi’s “Pastor Marv Recommends” articles that are not posted to The Go Light. We had hoped to launch both new blogs at the same time, but ran into technical difficulties related to hosting (Christian Internet Resources is hosted with a different company than The Go Light and Blog Diyiin Bi) and so must delay getting it online for a few days.

The Go Light uses the Wordpress blogging platform. Blog Diyiin Bi is built on the b2evolution blogging scripts. At some time in the near future, Blog Diyiin Bi will be moved to Wordpress, but that will be a major project which will possibly result in the blog being down for a few days. The move will be made because Wordpress has about ten times as many plugins and themes to choose from as does b2evolution, and it is difficult to find client software that works with b2evolution. This post is being written using BlogDesk, a freeware program that allows articles to be written on your PC and then uploaded to Wordpress and many other blogging platforms – almost everything except b2evolution! So, since this article will be posted to both blogs (with minor changes) it must be copied and pasted from BlogDesk to Notepad (or some other editor), re-edited for Blog Diyiin Bi, and then copied and pasted again to Blog Diyiin Bi’s article editing page.

in His service,
Pastor Marv

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We had a few technical glitches moving from diyiinbi.com/blog (where web space was donated by Diyiin Bi, LLC, whose home page is still under construction) to a new hosting account all our own on http://diyiinbi.org.

In the course of the move, we managed to lose all of the posts and comments from the old installation…so it’s like we are starting all over again.

First thing in the morning, we will (re-)post the schedule for the annual Southwest Indian Ministry camp meeting. Camp meeting starts Monday, June 1, and runs through Saturday, June 6.

Please remember to update links and rss/atom feeds, and tell everyone you know about Blog Diyiin Bi.

God bless you,
Pastor Marv and Betsy

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