Ron Graham’s Report
— for Oct-Nov-Dec (4th Quarter) 2018
This page reports my work on simplybible.com for the information of those who take a special interest in that work.
Sixteen Years Online
In December, simplybible.com completed 16 years online and entered into its seventeenth year.
New on simplybible.com
In the fourth quarter of 2018, I added 6 new Bible study items to the website. They were...
When Are Sins Washed Away?
God’s Covenant With Adam
Is Belief in a Flat Earth Biblical?
Seven More Attitudes in Prayer
YouTube ~Jesus in His Youth (Luke 2:52).
YouTube ~To Whom Shall We Go? (John 6:68).
Main Activity during Quarter
In the quarter, I gave a lower priority to adding new pages, and spent more time on adding new links at the end of existing pages. I added around 350 new links during the quarter —two or three to a page.
This means that when users get down to the end of a lesson, they find two or three suggestions of other lessons that might interest them. There's a link to activate, together with a brief synopsis of the suggested lesson.
Getting Rid of “document.write”
Much of what appears on a page is generated by programs written in javascript. This is called “dynamic page content” as opposed to something you type directly into a page. Years ago, to make your programs show something on the page you simply said, “document.write” followed by the item you wanted to appear.
That is now no longer approved of, so I have to replace it with a not-so-simple method. There are thousands instances but fortunately these could mostly be changed in large batches and very quickly with the text editor. This job is all finished and the altered scripts and pages are being uploaded to the public, series by series, over the next few months.
Another Boost to Page Speed
A new method to improve page speed has been released. This line of code helps a page to load and display more efficiently and quickly. I am adding that line of code into each page when adding the links mentioned above. This means that when I upload a page with new links, the speed improvement goes up with it. The improvement changes the page score of 90-92 to 95-99, that score being out of 100.
Solved Problem with Security Certificate
For a year or so now, simplybible.com has been running on an SSL certificate. This certificate guarantees users a secure and encrypted connection to the site. It appears that our certificate was issued while the company Symantech was selling the certificates to another company. Some certificates fell down the cracks and ours was one of them.
The certificates still worked and were still valid, but Chrome and Firefox decided they were insecure and needed to be reissued. I got wind of this somewhat late, but immediately got a new certificate issued and installed. But in the short time that the original certificate was blacklisted by Google, those browsers were marking the site as insecure.
Website Usage
The figures for page views over the quarter (total of pages opened by visitors) were as follows:
| Month | Pageviews | Visits |
| Oct | 232,366 | 156,203 |
| Nov | 240,608 | 147,309 |
| Dec | 226,831 | 146,706 |
(Source Awstats).
That is an average for page views of around 233,000 a month or a daily average above 7,000.
For the twelve months to the end of December, the number of page views exceeded 2 million. (Source Awstats).
Big Rise in Pages Viewed
The quarterly figures are remarkable and unexpected. Almost a quarter of a million page views per month is well above what we have been getting in the previous quarters. I hoped (and prayed) for some increase, but that increase, if sustained, puts simplybible.com on a whole new level around two million page views per year. It will be interesting to see if this level is maintained.
Page views Oct-Nov-Dec (Year Comparison)
2015 ❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ 361,853
2016 ❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ 404,064
2017 ❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ 344,944
2018 ❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ 699,805
Pageviews per Nation
As an indication of the site's outreach, here's a list of the countries in November 2018 in which more than 700 pages were viewed. (There are of course many other countries where less than 700 pages were viewed.)
PAGEVIEWS FOR NATIONS IN MONTH OF NOV 2018 United States...... 107,925 Nigeria............ 13,008 Great Britain....... 12,271 Philippines......... 10,897 France.............. 10,278 Canada............... 9,261 South Africa......... 8,607 Australia............ 8,171 India................ 7,540 Indonesia............ 4,824 Kenya................ 4,784 Germany.............. 3,291 Angola............... 2,964 China................ 2,631 Ghana................ 2,244 Singapore............ 1,725 Malaysia............. 1,400 New Zealand.......... 1,200 Uganda............... 1,142 United Arab Emirates. 1,116 Jamaica.............. 1,090 Zambia................. 984 Tanzania............... 962 Netherlands............ 775 (Source: Awstats)
Requests for PDF documents
In addition to pages viewed (as shown above) there were more than 4500 downloads of lessons in the PDF format:
| 2018 | DOWNLOADS |
| October | 1431 |
| November | 1564 |
| December | 1559 |
| Qtr TOTAL | 4554 |
(Source: Awstats)
Once people download a lesson as a pdf document, they can read, print, and distribute it whenever they wish, without needing to go back online to the symplybible.com website. They now have the lesson on their own computer, tablet, or smartphone. They can summon the lesson anytime, even if not connected to the internet. The document is readable even on a small mobile phone, if the phone is held sideways making the document flip to landscape mode.
When people download a lesson, they not only have it handy for themselves, but can also send it to other people’s phones and computers. So it it's very shareable. The documents don't take up much space. Three documents will fit into a megabyte.
In a year more than 18,000 lessons are downloaded. But this isn't like distributing 18,000 pamphlets, most of which will be tossed away. No, the 18,000 pdf documents are wanted and requested by people. Think back to the paper pamphlet days. How could you handle 18,000 requests per year and post them all over the world? And how would you generate requests of such volume? It would be a hugely expensive and time-consuming task. Now it all happens automatically and instantly.
Google Search Still Trending Upwards
More than half of visits to simplybible.com occur through Google search.
This graph from Google shows clicks per day (for simplybible.com on Google Search) between 31 August and 23 November 2018, in the range between 2000 and 4000 clicks per day.
Video Work
Over the past months, I have uploaded some videos to YouTube, and am pleased to report that they are being watched. The most recent videos have each been watched between 60 and 70 times over two months. That's nowhere near "viral", but it does show the work to be useful. At present the simplybible channel has 175 subscribers.
Thank You
Many users of simplybible.com give thanks and praise to God for the teaching we provide. In an emailed letter of thanks for the website, one person said, “I give God praise [and thanks] to you and your team for putting it together.”
Well, you are the "team" and many people appreciate your help.
Thank you for keeping on helping me in the Lord’s work. Thank you for your prayers also, and your interest and confidence in my work on the website. We reach and teach thousands of people, around 3000 visitors daily around the world. By sharing with me in this work, you make it possible for you and me to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation".
Love and best wishes in Jesus.