BibleShared.com The Official Blog

BibleShared.com Transitioning to New Servers

2010-02-26T21:41:00.001-08:00

BibleShared.com may experience disruptions in service over the next few days as it is transitioned to a new off-site hosting service.

We'll update you when the transition is finished.

BibleShared.com Updated for IE8

2009-03-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 this week, and as a result you may have noticed that the notes display looked funky. This issue has been resolved and everything should now be back to normal even as you are using Internet Explorer 8.

However, there is a planned refresh of BibleShared.com for this fall, with new features, and better performance, so stay tuned.

Downtime

2008-09-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

BibleShared.com will be unavailable today between the hours of 8am and 7pm. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Database Server Updates

2008-06-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Hello,

If you experience any errors on the page today it's because the database server is being updated. This will increase security and performance in the long run. Everything should be back to normal by this afternoon.

Thanks for your understanding!

- Nick

Timeout Issues

2008-06-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally got to the bottom of the Timeout issues. BibleShared uses SQL Server on the backend to store the bible data, user data, and notes data. Unfortunately, in my haste to get the site up and running, I forgot to properly configure the way it handles logging. This miscalculation finally caught up with me. The log file has been growing at a rate of ~100 MB / day to the point that 10 minutes ago it reached 24 GB.

The server its running on happens to run a set of hard disk drives that backup the data as its being written. When trying to back-up large sets of data there is a noticable delay in writing. The large file size combined with this delay was too much for the web site to handle. It took the delayed response as meaning the database server was down, and it gave up.

Fortunatley, all that was needed was a simple configuration change. It should be up and running smoothly now.

This article provides an excellent technical overview of the problem and the solution:
http://www.nigelrivett.net/TransactionLogFileGrows_1.html

Login Process Timeouts

2008-06-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I've noticed an increase in error reports indicating that there have been timeouts while logging on. I'm not really sure why this is an issue right now, but I'll try to get to the bottom of it.

BibleShared.com API

2008-04-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I've been hard at work on BibleShared.com this last week, and am excited about some of the new things in store. This might not interest much of the general public, but for software developers and web designers, this might generate some excitement.

I'm working on developing an open API for BibleShared.com that will allow programmers to create software and web sites that use the features of BibleShared.com. Imagine being able to access your notes using a program on your cell phone, or searching the scriptures by sending a text message. These kinds of thing, and more will be possible.

It will be implemented as a SOAP web service which should have .NET programmers especially excited. An API Key will be required for applications to be able to call its methods, but that will be provided for free to those who request it. To access any information for or about a user, direct authorization must be granted by that user through an interface already implemented on BibleShared.com.

Currently the following methods are planned to be supported:

AddNote
AddNoteComments
CreateSubGroup
GetAuthCodeStatus
GetChapterAddress
GetNewAuthCode [Done]
GetNote
GetNoteComments
GetPassageText
GetPassageURL [Done]
GetProgress
GetRecentNotes
MarkAsRead
SearchBible [Done]
SearchNotes

If you are a developer and would have interest in programming against this API, let me know in the comments, and suggest any methods you would like to see. No destructive methods will be supported (i.e. there will be no "delete" operations offered through the API).

On an unrelated side note, the Verse of the Day widget is still planned, we just need more verses to feature. Please leave comments with your favorite verses. Thanks!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Global Notes Complete

2008-03-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

Well, the Global Notes functionality of BibleShared.com is now live and available for exploration.

I went ahead and marked all of my own Shared Notes as Global Notes so that they will be available across all of the groups of which I am a member. This adds around 8 pages of notes to each and every one of these groups -- I hope the groups' administrators do not mind the flood.

This brings me to an interesting tidbit about Global Notes. If you are a group administrator or a moderator, you can prevent specific Global Notes from appearing in your group by simply deleting them as you might do with any other especially offensive note. This will not actually delete the note, but instead add it to a blacklist for your group. Though the note is not entirely lost, this process cannot be reversed, so don't delete notes casually.

Enjoy the new feature! I'm going to bed.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Coming Soon

2008-03-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

Let the screenshot to the right be a teaser of what is to come. If you look carefully at the icon, and the extra piece of information included under the text of the note you just might be able to figure it out. Otherwise, I'll just say it. Global Notes.

Have you ever posted a note in one group, and wished that you could see it in another group? Have you been a member of a group for a long time, and want to join another group, but don't want to lose your notes? Well soon you will be able to set certain notes as available everywhere, and as long as you are a member of a group, these notes will appear there.

This should provide a better experience for members of groups, as well as group administrators that are just starting out, as they can migrate all their existing notes without having to change anything at all.

Currently, on the "Recent Notes" list, you see notes that are either "Shared" notes, or "Private" notes which you have direct permissions for. Global Notes makes this a little more complicated. Now you will see a note if any of the following is true:
- The note is global and the creator is in your group
- The note is shared and it was created in your group
- The note is private, not written by you, you have permission, and it was created in your group
- The note is private, written by you, and was created in your group
- The note is completely private (i.e. "Only I can view" was selected), and written by you in any group.

Let me know your feedback on this feature that is in development by posting a comment.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Verse of the Day Widget

2008-02-24T12:59:00.000-08:00

Hello All!

I've been hard at work getting new things prepared for BibleShared.com. Among those things is a widget that will show the "Verse of the Day". Unfortunately that requires going through the Scriptures and picking out 365 different verses to feature. That's a LOT of work!

Just going through my own margin notes, I can come up with around 80-100, but I need your help! If you have a favorite verse, or one that you think should be a "verse of the day", post it as a comment to this blog, and I'll see what we can do about including them in the rotation.

Thanks to TwinkleMom for the suggestion!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

KJV and Search Features

2008-02-16T22:51:00.001-08:00

In my January 18th blog, I promised to develop two search features by the 17th of February. Well, it is the 16th and both of those features are now available for general use.

It is now possible to view the text of the Bible in both the King James Version (KJV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB).
It is now possible to search the Bible and search margin notes.

Both of these features were planned since the very beginning in one way or another, but have been put off until now. My only concern through all of this is that the navigation is starting to get cluttered. I may eventually unify the search so that one page searches both the Bible and margin notes. Until then, this is what is available.

UPDATE 2/17/08 11:00 PM: I unified the two search pages into one page, and added an advanced search page for searching the Bible. It looks so much better now.

I hope you all enjoy these new features, and make frequent use of them!

Facebook Group

2008-01-21T23:08:00.001-08:00

For those of you who use Facebook and like to join random groups, you can now join the BibleShared.com group at the following link:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7284667412

Enjoy!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Vacation

2008-01-18T22:53:00.001-08:00

Well, I'll be headed out on a much needed vacation tomorrow. As such, support requests and group creation requests may not be answered in a timely manner. If I have internet connectivity I'll try to get to those as I can, but I cannot make any guarantees.

I'm fairly certain reading plans will be added (in some capacity) in a future version, along with configurable email notifications as well. I probably will not include native support for text messages, simply because I don't want BibleShared to be responsible for running up peoples' cell phone bills. However, if you put in the email address for your cell phone, it won't bug you about it.

Another feature was suggested by Pastor Marty of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Everett, WA (my home church, and the origin of BibleShared.com). That feature was a prayer journal. This will most definitely be incorporated in some future version of BibleShared.com, I just don't know when at this point.

I will make one promise though. On or before February 17th, 2008, I will finally unveil fulltext searching of the Bible AND margin notes. It MIGHT even search multiple versions of the Bible under the hood so that if the wording stored in your memory isn't the NASB, it will still find it. Right now I have the KJV, NASB, and NLT indexed (with only the NASB published), so it is possible to do this, but don't hold me to it. I still have to research the legal implications of this with regards to the NLT.

I do have a random question before I go: Would you like the option to switch the Bible view so that it displays the King James Version of the Bible? Let me know via a comment.

Anyway, enjoy the next week!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Two Feature Requests / Comments

2008-01-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

This last week I've received two feature requests that I'm seriously considering implementing in a newer version of BibleShared.com.

The first request comes from Jacob of Southwest First Assembly of God in Lakewood, Colorado. He recommended that BibleShared.com add a "Reading Plan" feature wherein a user can create/follow a specific Bible reading plan, and track his/her progress as (s)he reads through the Bible (or a portion thereof) in a predetermined order.

The second request comes from Dan of Overlake Park Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Washington. He recommended that a user be able to set an option that has BibleShared.com send him/her emails if (s)he does not read the Bible on a certain day. This would not be enabled by default (so as to reduce unwanted spam), but could be enabled if so desired.

Post your comments, and tell me if these are something that you would like to see in a future version of BibleShared.com.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Blog Widget

2008-01-08T17:41:00.000-08:00

Starting today, you can now add a BibleShared.com widget to your blog that will display your current reading progress.

For details head over here:
http://www.bibleshared.com/widgets.asp

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Bug Round-up

2008-01-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

So it has been 4 months since the initial launch of BibleShared.com. This has allowed enough time to pass for bug reports to begin piling up. I fixed a few issues today, and will continue to work through these issues throughout the next few weeks.

Here's a list of all the issues submitted thus-far, for the curious:

Fixed
- A favicon should be created -- FIXED: Now an open bible
- Include an option for sub-groups -- FIXED: Now available under "Admin"
- Cannot create a group with 32767+ members -- WON'T FIX: The group would be virtually unmanageable anyway
- Profanity filter does not work on feeds -- FIXED: Now feeds are filtered
- Bug report form should make description optional -- FIXED: Now only the title is required

High Priority
- There is no search feature
- Undefined behavior when group subscription lapses
- There is no page describing subscription levels/pricing
- There is no password reset feature

Normal Priority
- User notes page pagination UI error
- User can change their password to nothing (but then cannot log in)
- RSS feeds need to be protected with a key value
- Session can time out while writing a note
- Bad grammar in closed forum thank you message

Low Priority
- UI looks awful on IE6 under Windows XP at 800x600 resolution
- Switching group and clicking "Edit Note" on note from previous group gives incorrect message
- Hitting the back button after switching a group forces sign-in
- Error message "User "" is not a member of this group" is seen after removing self from group

Feature Requests
- Re-create sign-up page to make more sense
- Widget to add to blogs to track bible reading progress
- Memory verse list
- Cancel button on delete confirmation page
- Copyright info bar extends too far to the right
- Button backgrounds are too light and hard to read
- Blog link should be moved

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

In-person is best

2007-11-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally arrived on-site with the BibleShared.com database server. Upon investigation I found that it was reporting that ALL DRIVES had failed -- which is ridiculous for a 3% fail rate.

Long story short, none of them had actually failed, it was just an easily resolved configuration hiccup. Oh well, I have a new drive coming in the mail for when it really is needed.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

The Fix...

2007-11-30T16:41:00.000-08:00

It will take anywhere from a few days to a week in order to get BibleShared.com back on-line and fully-functional.

I did not have any spare replacement drives, so I had to order one. Once that arrives I can replace the bad disk, and run a rebuild. Once that is complete, BibleShared.com will return.

Keep watching this blog for status updates. If you need an online bible in the meantime, I would recommend BibleGateway.com.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Outage Cause

2007-11-30T15:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I've figured out the cause of the outage. BibleShared.com's database server uses 3 hard disk drives to store the site and data. 1 of these drives went bad and caused the system to come crashing to a halt.

I'm not on-site until later tonight, so I won't be able to do anything about it until then, but it could be a few days to get a replacement drive and get everything back and operational.

This is actually the third hard disk failure I've personally experienced in the last 2 weeks. All of them happening on Dell-built computers. It's really becoming frustrating.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Random Downtime

2007-11-30T12:03:00.000-08:00

Hello,

I hate to report it, but it is so: BibleShared.com is currently down, and I have no clue as to why. Well, okay, I have some clues as to why. There's really two main servers that make BibleShared.com happen. One of them (the database server) is not responding remotely (from anywhere in the world), or locally (from it's best friend server). In the past outages have generally been due to extended power outages and the like, but this one is a little bit different.

I live about 30 miles from the server in question, but I'm headed up there tonight to see what I can do. If it's a fairly straight-forward issue (read: does not require the purchase of new hardware), I should have it fixed and working tonight.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

New Feeds & Group Creation

2007-10-26T00:46:00.000-07:00

It has finally arrived -- the ability to create new groups on BibleShared.com. In truth this ability has been present since day 1, but it had to start with an email to myself. Now this process is partially automated. Instead of sending me an email to create a group, you can create a group by clicking "Create Group" in the "My Group" section of the page. Groups for churches with more than 100 members require a small monthly fee (depending on church size) to create. This is to cover bandwidth and storage costs (it's not a cheap site to keep running!).

On an unrelated note, feeds have been completely overhauled. They now support the category filtering options already present in your feed reader.

Please continue sending in any bugs that need fixing, or feature suggestions, by clicking the "Bug" button while logged in. Thanks!

Power Outage!

2007-10-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

The BibleShared.com servers are located in Everett, WA. Unfortunately, Everett, WA is experiencing intense wind storms that have knocked out the power. As such, you will notice that BibleShared.com is currently down.

It should resume normal operation once the storms pass and power is restored. You can monitor the situation here or here.

Cookies

2007-10-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

BibleShared.com uses something called a Cookie in order to determine if you are logged in or logged out. A cookie is a very small text file a website can store on your computer to help it function properly. In the case of BibleShared.com, that cookie contains your user name and a piece of data that proves to the site that you have logged in.

I'm sharing this piece of information, because I've had reports of users being unable to log in. They can type their user name, password, and group code, and are redirected to the main page, to be presented with the log-in screen again. The reason for this is the site is unable to create a cookie on their computer to say that they have logged in. To correct this problem you have to allow cookies in your browser's settings. For Internet Explorer 7, this means selecting "Internet Options" from the Tools menu, clicking the "Privacy" tab, and moving the slider down until it indicates that cookies will be accepted.

There's a lot of FUD (Fear, uncertainty, doubt) around the Internet about Cookies, and most of this FUD has little to no basis in reality. Cookies have a legitimate purpose on many, many, many sites. Blocking or disabling cookies can cripple the Internet experience, and will definitely prevent you from being able to access BibleShared.com.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Bug Fixes

2007-09-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

I've been collecting quite a few bugs to fix on BibleShared.com over the past few weeks. I'm going to get a start on those at the end of this week. Most are straight forward legitimate bugs, others, though, are a little more subjective. The straight forward ones will be fixed. The subjective ones (e.g. "the button color needs to change") may or may not be addressed.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me explain. If you ever come across a problem on BibleShared.com, or don't like how something works, you can click the "Bug" button at the top right of the screen. From there you can write up a description of the problem you're experiencing and submit it directly to me. It will be put on my to-do list for BibleShared.com, and I will address the problem as soon as I have time. Currently I'm running BibleShared.com in my spare time, and my life is kind of crazy at the moment. As such, there may be a slight delay between receiving a report, and acting on it.

So to re-iterate: 1.) I'm working to fix bugs at the end of this week, and 2.) anyone can bring problems to my attention by clicking the "Bug" button in the top right corner.

That's all for now!

the end.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

The Proverbs

2007-08-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot of Proverbs lately, and was kind of inspired in a way. The Proverbs encapsulate complex ideas in simple phrases that are loaded with meaning, and I wanted to try and do the same. As such I will put this out there as a proverb that may or may not be true:

"Justice is only afforded to those who can afford justice."

Tell me what you think.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

A note about God's love by C.H. Dodd

2007-08-27T11:41:00.001-07:00

I found this while I was studying up on the book of John. Dodd was exploring how John used the greek terms"agape" (translated love) and "meno" (translated remain or abide) in description of the relationship Christians can have with God.

He [John] makes use of the strongest expressions for union with God that contemporary religious language provided, in order to assure his readers that he does seriously mean what he says: that through faith in Christ we may enter into a personal community of life with the eternal God, which has the character of agape, which is essentially supernatural and not of this world, and yet plants its feet firmly in this world, not only because real agape cannot but express itself in practical conduct, but also because the crucial act of agape was actually performed in history, on an April day about A.D. 30, at a suppertable in Jerusalem, in a garden across the Kidron valley, in the headquarters of Pontius Pilate, and on a Roman cross at Golgotha.

So concrete, so actual, is the nature of the divine agape; yet none the less for that, by entering into the relation of agape thus opened up for men, we may dwell in God and He in us.

-- C.H. Dodd (1953)

Server Upgrade Phase 2 Complete-ish

2007-08-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

So after church on Sunday, and after a birthday celebration with Katie (my wife), I received the go ahead to finish the server upgrades. It took 5-6 hours, but is now finally complete (kind of). In the process I had to down two of my web sites. They're not fully compatible with the new server software, so I'll have to re-work them sometime in the near future. Hopefully this will be one of the last times I have to talk about the servers on this blog.

In other news, I've been receiving a fair number of bug reports which I will get around to this week or next. And I will still be posting a blog with screenshots/descriptions of the features added at the time of the upgrade.

As promised, today I will start accepting applications to create a new BibleShared.com group. Just sign-up for BibleShared.com under the group code "test", and send an email to support@bibleshared.com with the following information:

Your user id
The group code you will want (cannot contain spaces or special characters other than ".")
The name of your group
The name of your church
The number of members in your church
A contact phone number
A contact address (including state/city/zip/country)

If your church has less than 100 members, groups for your church can be created free of charge. Otherwise there will be a monthly charge (ranging from $15 [100-200 members] to $70 [1,000+ members]) relative to the bandwidth needed to support such a large group. Each church can have 1 main group, and a reasonable number of sub-groups (formatted like this: churchgroupcode.subgroupcode). The reason for any kind of charge is that (1) it costs around $183.08/mo [bandwidth/domain registration/server hardware] to run BibleShared.com, (2) that cost increases as more people use it, (3) I personally fund the site 100% out of pocket and don't have any spare funds.

Anyway, enjoy the site, and I'll be looking forward to group applications!

Email Outage -- Fixed

2007-08-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

I just found out that the Mail Server Software that BibleShared.com relies on has been rejecting emails for the last two weeks! If emails to support@bibleshared.com have bounced, I greatly apologize. I just fixed the issue, so everything should be working properly now.

On an unrelated note, I have decided to not go forward with phase 2 of the server upgrades for another 2 weeks. I'm preaching tomorrow morning so I don't want to commit myself to another long night. Phase 1 took 6 hours longer than I had initially anticipated, and I was absolutely exhausted the next day.

The email server upgrade (which is phase 2) should help prevent this issue in the future.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

BibleShared.com Server Upgrade Phase 1

2007-08-24T02:14:00.001-07:00

The first phase of the BibleShared.com server upgrade is complete. You'll notice that page load times are much quicker with the exception of the "My Progress" and "Record Offline Progress" pages. There's really no way around those two considering the sheer bulk of data they generate and transfer. It still takes 1-3 seconds to load either one of those pages even with the best broadband connection. That said, other load times such as the "Recent Notes" page and even the Bible text pages are anywhere from 4-6x faster. Any page that causes email to be sent is now 9x faster or more.

In addition to better performance, you'll notice some new features that have appeared. I'll let those be a mystery for the time being, and post a blog about those (with screenshots) later.

Enjoy!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

Downtime This Evening

2007-08-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

BibleShared.com will most likely be experiencing a period of downtime this evening lasting anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. A new server will be added and the main BibleShared.com database is going to be up-sized and moved to this new server. During that time a message will appear on the site re-directing you to this blog post.

Also, email notifications from BibleShared.com will be disabled sometime tomorrow night/early Saturday morning while the email server is reconfigured. It may be down for up to 3 hours [most likely after Midnight]. This will only affect groups that require Administrator approval for a sign-up to occur. Be sure to check Saturday morning for any new sign-ups (they will appear as "inactive" users in the "Admin" section).

Thanks for your patience!

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.

BibleShared.com Blog

2007-08-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

This is the first installment of the BibleShared.com blog. From now on, this will be the place where you will find announcements, news, tips, tricks, and on occasion Scriptural insights.

Since I have not kept this up since the initial creation of BibleShared.com, I'm going to record some history here. On or around the 25th of January, 2007 I had a meeting with my pastor about a class I was taking at Northwest University in Kirkland, WA. The class was Pastoral Ministries Internship II, and the professor was determined to "extract at least a pound of flesh" from each of the 8 or so students in the class. Many of us in the class were already involved in full time ministry, but we would be required to set aside our main ministry duties for a semester and focus on creating something new that would solve a problem within our church.

During the meeting my pastor and I discussed the church's website and also the need for accessible devotionals that would inspire the church to read and study the Bible with regularity. Now about three years ago I toyed with the idea of user submitted devotionals for youth group, but that did not really work. I was too embarrassed to post anything personally, and no one else did either.

As my pastor was describing a place online where we could maintain a repository of devotionals, something clicked. Though I may not write a 4-5 page insightful commentary-worthy devotional every time I sit down to read my Bible, I'm always underlining things and scribbling in the margins (or in a notes file if I'm reading on my phone). Sometimes these notes can be just as valuable as full fledged devotionals. I don't say that to discount the scholarly work that goes into some devotionals, because I personally place a high value on Biblical scholarship, but I mean that they both point back to the text. More than that, within a church at a specific place in a specific time, two people might be facing the exact same issues, and seeking answers in the same place. Without a place to record one's spiritual journey through the Scriptures, these people may never realize any of this, and they could miss the comfort afforded by knowing that they are both trusting God in the same situation. I pitched the idea of a shared margin note system the next time I saw him, and so BibleShared was born.

Initially it was going to be called Shared Margins. But I ditched that name because it did not mention the Bible, and could be confusing as to what the site did. Single Word was also considered, but again this wasn't clear enough (though I did end up naming the youth group Singλe Word Ministries in reference to a single absolute truth revealed in Jesus). The clear final choice then was BibleShared.com which I promptly registered at my favorite registrar.

I immediately sought out a Bible text to use. My first choice was the NLT because of it's fluid language and use among my generation (who would be the most likely to use an online devotional as opposed to a book-based devotional). Unfortunately Tyndale, the publisher that distributes the NLT does not take kindly to their text being used on the Internet. The next choice was the NASB. I submitted a formal copyright request, but gave up after not hearing back in a timely manner. In the meantime I used the King James Version so that a text could be in place to test the features of the site.

On June 15th I received one of the greatest surprises of my life -- Permission to quote the NASB on the Internet without having to pay royalties. Since BibleShared.com operates on a budget very near $0, this is exactly what was needed. I thanked God and also Lockman's VP of Operations profusely.

After a few tweaks, and many long nights, BibleShared.com is poised for launch at the church I go to (Abundant Life Christian Fellowship) and ready for launch at churches/schools around the world.

Considering the current (read slow) speed of the site, I re-worked all the code, and ordered a shiny new server. For the technically inclined it's a Quad Intel Xeon 1.5 GHz with 2 GB RAM running Windows Server 2003. The server will arrive on Thursday and should be loaded up late Friday or Saturday night with the current version of BibleShared.com.

Starting this coming Monday, BibleShared.com will be accepting applications for new groups. This means that if you are at a church or school that does not already have it's own BibleShared.com group, you can submit an application for a group on Monday. For the time being there will be a nominal monthly fee to create a group (i.e. individual users will not be charged a single penny, EVER). Hopes are that fees will not be necessary in the future. The money would be used to pay the bandwidth bills ($104.95/month), and the cost of the new server ($862 including software), and if enough groups join, additional money may spill over into smaller churches in Washington State or be used to allow smaller churches to host BibleShared.com groups for free.

That really about covers everything for now. My next post will be after the server upgrade to provide a walk through of the new features available.

Until then, sign-up and read the Bible.

About the Author: Nick is the creator of BibleShared.com -- a web application that allows you to read the Bible, write notes in the margin, share these notes with others, and track your Bible reading progress.