Ron Graham’s Report
— for Jul-Aug-Sep (3rd Quarter) 2019
This page reports my work on simplybible.com for the information of those who take a special interest in that work.
The website simplybible.com has enjoyed three remarkable months. Among other things, we reached the end of the 2019 upgrade. This year’s upgrade has greatly improved the site visibly and functionally.
Visits to the site continued to rise. For the third quarter of 2019 there were 541,056 visits compared to 303,186 for the same quarter in 2018.
New on simplybible.com
In the 3rd quarter of 2019, I made 9 new Bible study items as additions to the website. They were...
Lessons as Web Pages
What if They'd Said No?
Chart of Bible Books (Bislama))
Why Do You Call Me Lord?
The Part and the Perfect
The Greatest Question Ever
Half hour videos
YouTube ~Wonderful Words (1) Salvation
YouTube ~Wonderful Words (2) Justification
YouTube ~Wonderful Words (3) Sanctification
YouTube ~Wonderful Words (4) Reconciliation
Completion of the Links Project
In addition to those new Bible Study items, during the quarter I came to the end of a year-long major task, namely the 2019 upgrade. This mainly consisted of adding new links at the end of existing pages. (These are links to related pages, together with a brief synopsis of the suggested lesson. We include some cross references, each of which provides a list of relevant lessons to choose from).
During the quarter I added more than 600 of these new links. Now, the 1417 study pages on the website, and many of the index pages, are all furnished with these links at the end of the lesson or index. This long and rather huge task may now be regarded as done.
Site Speed Progress
I have completed the task of inserting a preload instruction into each page on the site. Pages load quicker with this addition. It enhances the work I did last year in moving the javascripts for a page down to its end so they did not delay loading. To minimise the work of inserting the preload, I did the preload edit on each page while the page was open for inserting the links mentioned above. There were 1787 pages into which preloads were inserted.
Website Usage
The figures for page views over the quarter (total of pages opened by visitors) were as follows:
| Month | Pageviews | Visits |
| Jul | 277,311 | 141,974 |
| Aug | 306,860 | 192,868 |
| Sep | 314,580 | 206,214 |
| Quarter | 898,751 | 541,056 |
(Source Awstats).
That is an average for page views of around 299,500 a month or 9900 daily.
For the twelve months to the end of September, the number of page views was 3.1 million. (Source Awstats).
Page views Jul, Aug, Sep (Year Comparison)
Here are the figures (from Awstats) for Page Views comparing the third quarter of each year shown
2015 ❱❱❱ 301,621
2016 ❱❱❱❱ 397,158
2017 ❱❱❱❱ 417,672
2018 ❱❱❱❱❱ 485,591
2019 ❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱❱ 898,751
For the first time ever, pageviews for the month exceeded 300,000. That was in August with 306,860 and again in September with 314,580.
Google says there were 405,000 clicks over the quarter Jul-Aug-Sep.
Requests for PDF documents
In addition to pages viewed (as shown above) there were 4358 downloads of lessons in the PDF format:
| 2019 | DOWNLOADS |
| July | 1416 |
| August | 1584 |
| Sept | 1358 |
| Qtr TOTAL | 4358 |
(Source: Awstats)
Pageviews per Nation
As an indication of the site's outreach, here's a list of the countries in August 2019 in which more than 900 pages were viewed. (There are of course many other countries where less than 900 pages were viewed.)
PAGEVIEWS FOR NMAATIONS IN MONTH OF AUGUST 2019 United States.143,606 Nigeria........21,195 South Africa...13,673 Philippines....12,774 India..........10,014 Australia.......9,441 Great Britain...9,191 Canada..........8,026 Kenya...........7,980 Angola..........7,338 Indonesia.......6,466 France..........4,706 Ghana...........4,032 Singapore.......2,964 Zambia..........2,245 Uganda..........2,171 Malaysia........2,003 New Zealand.....1,956 Jamaica.........1,731 Germany.........1,423 United Arab Em..1,201 Tanzania........1,110 Russian Fed.......945 (Source: Awstats)
Video Work
At the end of September 2019, the YouTube simplybible channel had 41 videos, and 342 subscribers.
During the quarter I made four half-hour videos as part of an intended six videos on “Wonderful Words” in the Bible.
These were produced by editing and converting lessons from the Australian Video Ministry originally recorded on VHS tapes. I am now editing and converting these archived lessons as videos for YouTube.
As an indicator of the value in making these videos, the six Revelation videos uploaded to YouTube last quarter already have had 1381 views in total.
You can inspect the video library at youtube.com/simplybible/videos if you wish.
Since no major upgrade to the website is envisaged in 2020, YouTube video can become a major project instead.
Vanuatu Opportunity
As mentioned in my previous report, a number of people, from various islands of Vanuatu, are in Australia working in the orchards and market gardens. There was a large contingent here in Childers. Some of them are from families we know from our missionary work in Vanuatu two decades ago. Their coming to Childers for some months has opened up a door of opportunity for us. And some will likely come back to Childers later this year or early next year.
On the several Sundays when they were required to work, or no bus was available, we held church services at home in Childers. I conducted the worship in Bislama (including the lesson). We also provided a good solid meal —nambawan kakae. Some of them visited us during the week as well. Those who went back to Vanuatu took with them a number of useful items that we were able to spare.
Thank You
Thank you yet again for continuing to assist me in the Lord’s work. Thank you for your prayers also, and your interest and belief in my work on the website. We reach and teach thousands of people, 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.
Ron Graham
Addendum: Website Upgrades Summary
Having now completed the 2019 upgrade, I thought it appropriate to give you a summary of the main upgrade tasks done over the last three years in upgrading simplybible.com to its current form.
- An SSL certificate was purchased and installed to increase security and assist search engine ranking.
- Several hundred instances of the "document.write" function were eliminated because now considered bad practice and a security risk.
- A full revision of style scripts turned simplybible.com into a mobile phone site, while retaining its tablet and desktop functionality.
- A PDF version of every lesson (more than a thousand) was made available and thousands of downloads have since been made by users.
- Over 1300 lesson files were re-named with long and explanatory names to help optimise file handling and search engine indexing.
- One very large javascript, controlling all pages on the site, was replaced by 100 short and simple control scripts, one for each series of lessons and services.
- Javascripts on around 1500 pages were moved to the end of page content rather than above it. This avoids delay in page loading.
- Later a pre-load metalink was inserted into every page. This allowed for the scripts to load even more efficiently.
- Headings and sub-headings were revised to better comply with and reflect the structure that search engines look for.
- Two internal links, with synopses and cross references, were added to around 1500 pages. These links increase page views.