Blog Diyiin Bi

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

Related Reading:

Related Posts:

• New Home for Blog Diyiin Bi
• Pastor Marv Recommends has been moved
• Blog Diyiin Bi is Moving
• Yet Another Blog
• Blog Diyiin Bi’s New Sister Blog

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

Related Reading:

Related Posts:

• Pastor Marv Recommends has been moved
• Amazon.com
• The Move is Completed
• New Home for Blog Diyiin Bi
• Yet Another Blog

Blog Diyiin Bi will soon be moving from the b2evolution platform to Wordpress. During the move, progress reports will periodically be posted here.

Also, during the move, any non-move-related posts will be posted to the existing b2evolution installation of Blog Diyiin Bi, http://diyiinbi.org. When the move is completed, all posts and comments from the old installation will be available on the new Wordpress installation, and these progress reports may be deleted. (Or maybe not – still undecided.) The new installation will have the same address that the b2evolution installation now has, and the b2evolution installation will be removed.

As of the time that this post is being written, the basic Wordpress installation has been installed. There are no plugins other than the default, neither of which is enabled. There are three themes installed – the two which ship with Wordpress (default {enabled} and classic) and one I want to experiment with, dkret3.

Until the Wordpress installation is the one in use, indexing of the Wordpress subdirectory (actually, subdirectory is named ‘blog’) by robots is turned off, as is pinging of the various indexing services for the Wordpress installation. Both robot crawling and index pinging will continue to be enabled on the b2evolution installation.

Feel free to leave comments on any posts to these entries during the instalation and move. One purpose for these posts is to test things; another is to keep the blog’s readers informed as to our progress.

So check back often! The link to the Wordpress installation will be posted in the b2evolution installation of the blog.

Pastor Marv

Related Reading:

Related Posts:

• The Move is Completed
• Pastor Marv Recommends has been moved
• Blog Diyiin Bi is Moving
• Yet Another Blog
• Blog Diyiin Bi’s New Sister Blog