Selecting a webhost

The choice of a webhost is one I've made multiple times, and I've always landed on the same one: One.com. I've also recommended it to several of my friends for their web projects. Some reasons why:

To advertise or not to advertise

I just signed up for the Google AdSense program with my Blogger account. I guess that kind of gives away which side of the fence I've fallen on. I haven't previously advertised on any websites I've made, for the following reasons.

• I want my motivation for the work I do to be the glory of God. Not the hope of revenue.
• Ads can be annoying to site visitors.
• I fear inappropriate ads may be displayed on my site.
• I don't want to encourage excessive consumerism, with is basically what drives the advertising industry.

So why advertise on the blog then?

• Well, if I can get money for doing what I'd do for free anyways, why not?
• I want to test out AdSense for any future projects, to figure out whether the program is smart enough to show appropriate ads that fit with my values.

 I've wrestled a bit more with the idea of putting advertisements on my newest project, Expositor's Bible. The mix of Bible and advertisements just seem inappropriate in some ways. However, making the site is requiring a lot of time. And if the site makes it big and draws a substantial amount of traffic, it will require much time and money to keep it going, monitoring it, developing new stuff, hosting it, perhaps licensing costs to use some Bible translations and resources and so on. And there's a limit to how much of these expenses both time-wise and money-wise I can cover myself. Not to mention, it would be absolutely awesome if I could do that for a full-time job, in stead of sneaking in a few hours here and there between all the other things that need to be done.

So how can I create the needed revenue from the site? There are a few options

• AsSense. Maybe, but does it work well with an AJAX-based web application? And will it show appropriate ads?
• My own advertising scheme. I could develop an advertising program myself from scratch. I have some ideas for how to make a sensible program for AJAX-based sites, that would display relevant results. But I don't want any of you nice folks to steal them, so I won't tell you exactly what they are. If I go with this option I could also allow other sites to join the advertising program, and it could be a whole business on its own. Do I really want to get into the advertising business though? We'll see...
• Membership fees. I could charge to join the site, or create one free and one paid version, where the paid version would include some non-free material like some Bible translations and resources. People generally don't like paying for content online though.
• Asking for donations. Could be annoying to users and subtract from the seriousness of the site. Thank you for ruining that, TV-preachers with Rolls-Royces and private jets...

Other good suggestions are also received with thanks. Does anyone have any strong opinions against advertising on a website?

Would a bible by any other name smell as sweet?

So believe it or not, someone already snagged the domain name bible.com. And just about every variety of it you could imagine. Naming a website is a crucial part of making it, because you're stuck with whatever name you pick. If you want to change it later on you're more or less starting over from scratch when it comes to building a good page rank in Google, and you're bound to loose some of you user base.

I wanted a name that would bring associations to serious and diligent study of the Word, and perhaps also bring attention to the fact that I'm expecting preachers to find this online bible highly useful in their preparations.

So after much consideration, I ended up with Expositor's Bible. I've purchased the webdomain ExpositorsBible.com, I put up a temporary placeholder site there for now, directing visitors to this blog.

As for timeframe, I'm expecting to launch the site some time this year. But I won't dare to make any promises just yet.

What's that smell?

"Dead flies make a perfumer's oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor." (Ecc 10:1)

 The fragrance of the knowledge of God is a sweet perfume. But even the sweetest perfume can be made to stink by dead flies. Careless men who ignorantly roll around in Gods word, without ever savoring the knowledge of God from it.

I long to see the supernatural power of God displayed like in the days of old, as we all read about in the Bible. And I believe that years of being indoctrinated with secular naturalism has done us a great disservice in making us stop believing, expecting and desiring such miracles.

Yes, I want to see Gods supernatural power on display, but I also have a measure of knowledge off him. So I will not believe any spirit who claims to be of God. And when I saw this clip, I must say the perfume offered had a very distinct odor of dead flies.



Let's desire Gods supernatural power, but not so much that we throw all discernment aside, and fall for charades like these. This is nothing less than divination. Not to mention a clever attack on Christians who speak up against heresy.

It works like this: "Well meaning Christians" are speaking negatively off Todd Bentley (as they should). But according to Word-Faith theology, we are little Gods, so the words we speak have an indwelling power to create the things we speak. So in their minds, criticizing Todd Bentley is creating a negative power, a curse, that endangers him of being assassinated. Thankfully Bob Jones is there to "break the curse" (A practice I can't remember reading about in the Bible). I'll end with one of the few Bible passages I could come up with in relation to curses. Break this one, Bob Jones!

"But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed" (Gal 1:8-9)

Coming soon, to a computer near you!

I'll be back with more details later, but I have a new project going that I think will be of great interest to those of you who love the fragrance of the knowledge of God. I'm developing a new online Bible study tool, aiming to be equipped with all the features of a fancy deskstop Bible study application. And some more (most significantly access from just about any computer that can get online).

Some planned features:

• Fancy search capabilities
• Multiple translations (Whatever I can get my hands on)
• Parallel view to compare translations
• Take notes
• Drag and drop stuff
• Various references (Again, whatever I can get my hands on)
• And much more

If you have any good ideas for features, or any other good suggestions, please leave a comment.

Now to satisfy my geeky friends: The website will be heavily AJAX-based, with a PHP backbone. I'll blog as I go about all the fancy-schmancy geeky stuff I'm doing. But I believe my lovely wife is in the process of setting the table for dinner, so until later, may the peace of God reign in your hearts.