{"id":108,"date":"2012-12-19T13:46:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T13:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/biblicalstudies.org.uk\/blog\/?p=108"},"modified":"2025-12-29T21:17:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:17:44","slug":"end-of-year-review-for-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalstudies.org.uk\/blog\/end-of-year-review-for-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"End of Year Review for 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Let me begin by thanking all those who have helped to make 2012 the most successful year since biblicalstudies.org.uk’s launch. I have greatly valued the contributions of all those who took the time to pray, post a comment, e-mail a question or just contacted me to point out a broken link. I have put together a brief summary here of what I consider to have been the highlights of the last year and my plans for 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New material added in 2012<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The following journals were added to the site in 2012:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Ashland Theological Journal<\/a>
Churchman<\/a>
Grace Journal<\/a>
Grace Theological Journal<\/a>
Haddington House Journal<\/a>
Mainstream (Baptists for Life and Growth)<\/a>
Melanesian Journal of Theology<\/a>
Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society<\/a>
Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of these, two (Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society<\/i> and Churchman<\/i>) took a total of 7 months work to complete. The remainder were added using existing scans supplied by the various publishers. The websites currently host between 18,000 and 19,000 peer-reviewed theological articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increase in Visitor Numbers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Following the release of Churchman <\/i>journal there was a significant increase in visitor numbers to the site, reaching over 64,000 in October and 60,000 in November. This put biblicalstudies.org.uk’s ranking in the top 400,000 websites in the world according to Alexa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Site Support in 2012<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In May I had the privilege of attending the European Leadership Forum<\/a> in Hungary and through contacts made there received a grant from a Charitable Trust. This has allowed me to upgrade my computer hardware and software and begin a major site-wide design update to make accessing the site via mobile devices easier. Also as a result of the Forum <\/i>I took on paid advertising [from Tyndale Seminary Europe] for the first time since the start of the current recession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things That Just Didn\u2019t Work<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In order to keep focused on your main purpose it is necessary from time to time to prune away those things that didn’t quite work out, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple File Formats<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Over the years I have experimented with a variety of file formats to see which could be accessed most easily, including pdf, iPaper and djvu. Of these pdf has proved to be the one which most users can use and so I am in the process of removing iPaper from the site and were necessary re-scanning djvu format articles into pdfs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple Languages<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Getting  articles translated into other languages has been time-consuming and not particularly successful. So, for the time being I am putting this on hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Next Phase in Development<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For the last 12 years I have had a list of journals in mind that I wanted see on-line and have concentrated my efforts in making that a reality. Over the last  months, truly remarkably, I have seen the last two on my list “fall into my lap” as it were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has brought me to the realisation that it is now time to move on the Phase Two of the Theology on the Web project, something that has only taken form in detail over the few weeks or so. Phase Two involves a slight shift in focus from adding new material (though more will still be added), to making the 18,000-19,000 (soon to be over 21,000+) articles easier to find on-line. To this end I plan to convert the tables of contents pages into database-friendly CSV files for incorporation into Tyndale House’s Scripture <\/a>Tools for Every Person (STEP) software<\/a>. Within that superb (and free!) software package the articles will be linked into the verse structure offering the readers relevant secondary literature to enhance and inform their Bible study. This process should a couple of months to complete, but will mean that many more people will gain access to the resources I already have on the sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking forward to 2013 I hope to make the following my priorities for the year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n