LordofHosts.com --> Website Updates...

The Earth is the Lord's,
and the fulness thereof;

www.Christ.com

Website Updates

We pray that the Lord will strengthen us, and teach us how to better witness to Him. And because of that, our website is growing. As we grow, and add new features, we will be listing them here. The events are listed by date when the modification was complete.

God bless you,
Job.

Date: February 23, 2007
News: Updates (last 4 months)

We have made a number of mods in the last few months that are summarized below:

Fixed several broken links on our contents page (lohcontents.shtml). This fix is a precursor to re-activating the weekly verse and word study (2/24/07)
Fixed a huge number of broken links in the wordstudy section (http://www.christ.com/ws/wordstudytopiclist.html). The links were modified and changed from khouse.org to blueletterbible.org. Most of the broken links were in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, in the Greek and Hebrew section. (2/21/07)
Did a redesign of the front page. We added a short summary of recent praise messages to the front page of Christ.com. We have had the prayer summary on the front page for years, so the praise summary was added next to the prayer summary. Also added the "Bible Out of Context" to the front page. (2/14/07)
Modified the bulletin board system (forums). The old system allowed users to have a different "reply to" address than the registered address. Other mods included the elimination of the users email address when responding to other users. This ensures privacy and security of email addresses for forum users. (2/7/07)
Changed the entrance to our prayer room. www.HolyofHolies.com has been the entrance for many years, but only had a simple graphic with the word "Jesus" as the sole content for the entrance page. This allows users to get a quick view of the prayer and praise page without going to the huge Christ.com front page.(2/2/07)
Changed the "From" address for prayer room messages from "Lordofhosts.com" to "Holyofholies.com". Also modified these messages to avoid problems with overly aggressive spam filters. (1/28/07)
Created a new login page for our Bornagain.com email service (yourname@Bornagain.com). In the past, www.Bornagain.com pointed to www.Christ.com. Now www.Bornagain.com is its own site. (1/27/07)
Created a prayer installation page that allows users to install the prayer and praise summary on their own sites, prayer-installation.html. (1/24/07)

Date: October 30, 2006
News: Updates (last 6 years)

It has been six years since the last update! How time flies... we have been so busy fixing things that we forgot to list our fixes. Many of the additions and modifications took months to create/fix, so we just listed the date of release (best guess). Fixing broken links is itself a full time job, so we are just listing major fixes in this section. Here is what we have been up to for the last six years:

Added an option to delete cookies to the audio link section (audiolinkspersonalsetup.html). This was needed to allow users to fully edit their personal audio links profile. 10/30/06
Removed the inspirational art section. This was too hard to track copyright issues of contributors, 10/30/06.
Closed the chat room. It was far too time consuming to monitor, making it unsafe, circa 10/29/06.
Changed the "From" address for contacting us from "Lordofhosts.com" to "Christ.com". This is used in the form loh-mail-contact.html. Also modified these messages to avoid problems with overly aggressive spam filters. (10/27/06)
Major rework of the Books section of the website (loh-books.html). In the past the book links were simple text-only links. The new section includes graphics images of the books.
Added a large number of new devotionals to the list of "well known" devotionals, circa 10/12/06
Created a Bible Verse of the Day for cell phones, votd.mobi. 10/10/06
Massive expansion and reformatting of the news sections, and elimination of the old news sections, circa Sept-Oct 2006
Fix links in Audio Links section. This was a major task, since links to other websites frequently change. Circa 9/18/06
Added a dropdown menu in Javascript to the site. This required a major rework of the entire site, and improved navigation... imlemented sometime in Sept. 2006.
Added a random verse to several pages called "Bible out of Context" in Sept. 2006
Added random book ads from Amazon.com to several pages in Sept. 2006
Last few fixes put on ChurchNews.com, circa 6/8/06
Converted prayer summary on front page from IFRAME's to Cascading Style Sheets on 2/12/05. Old IFRAME method had problems with some browsers.
Added an extract of the most recent prayers (about 12 prayers) to the front page on 12/30/04.
Total rewrite of the prayer and praise report section. First prayer on new system was 9/29/04. The old system listed real email addresses, which allowed spammers to mine our prayer list for email addresses. New system hides the real email address, eliminating spam and adding security.
Removed Jesus.net random file generator in last quarter of 2004. The coordination with Christianity Today database was simply too time consuming. Began a massive effort to create a new Jesus.net with a database totally under the control of Christ.com. The new system expected to go online last quarter of 2006.
Installed an abortion counter on the contents page, circa May 2003.

Date: June 11, 2000
News: ChurchNews.com Back Online!

After several months of rework, we put www.ChurchNews.com back online today... we praise the Lord for giving us opportunity to help bring the Lord's people together in fellowship! The entire site was moved to a new server in Pittsburgh. The new search engine allows searching for Christian events by category, date, location, and keywords. Praise God!

Date: June 11, 2000
News: Website News Textbox Added to Contents Page

The main contents page (www.LordofHosts.com/lohcontents.shtml) was modified to include a small textbox for news about the website.

Date: April 2000
News: Web Server Crash...

One of our web servers crashed --- the server was used for our prayer board. All prayers, going back to the first prayers posted, were stored on this server. We want to praise the Lord for helping us restore almost all of the data from the hard drive crash... and thank you Lord for teaching us to do better data backups in the future...

Date: Feb. 15 - Apr. 15 2000
News: Move Bornagain.com E-Mail to Another Server

The free E-mail through Bornagain.com was moved from one e-mail service provider to another. We gave a two month notice that the conversion would take place on April 15. This was a major task, and forced the delay of several other tasks.

Date: May 9, 1999
News: Bible Verse of the Day Started

A daily Bible Verse of the Day has been started, which allows other Christian websites to install it on their own sites. The new daily verse is a short 1-5 verse segment of scripture. The old verse of the day is longer (5-30 verses), includes several study tools, and ran on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This older verse section has been renamed "Today's Bible Study", and will continue. We pray that the new daily verse will be a daily blessing to other Christian websites, and to those visiting their sites!

Date: May 9, 1999
News: Jesus Ring Closed

This was a difficult decision. The ring took almost one full day per week to manage and review. Most of the sites did not read the ring documentation and instructions, making it necessary to spend considerable time with each new ring candidate. It was also difficult reviewing sites for doctrine and other content. Some sites that were turned down for admission threw temper tantrums... This created a significant diversion from our primary task of spreading the Gospel, and presenting sound Biblical doctrine in a mature fashion. I will try to find a better way to freely promote well done Christian websites that need increased traffic. I apologize for the inconvenience that the Jesus Ring caused to those that applied. The Jesus Ring was probably the ONLY Christian ring on the net that did not carry advertising, and ran on an independent server. The ring was an experiment, since we ran it on the Christ.com server, instead of Webring.org server (webring.org runs ads on the ring service that are totally unacceptable for a Christian web ring). We may start another ring at a later time, focused on major sites that focus on apologetics and exegesis (a highly specialized ring, as opposed to the generic format of the Jesus Ring).

Date: May 9, 1999
News: Free-for-all Link Section Closed

The Free-for-all link section has been closed. We are going to focus on the Job's links section (reviewed by the webservant Job, and published as a selected set of high quality links). We will still allow link submissions, but the links will not be automatically published. The submission serves as a link suggestion only. This was part of a major rework at the Lordofhosts.com site, to focus our efforts, and eliminate time consuming tasks that are better done elsewhere (there are lots of Free-for-all link lists on the net).

Date: May 9, 1999
News: Mailing Lists Closed

The four mailing lists, KJV, Devotional, Cults, and Info, have been closed. After the changes at XC.org (switching to Lyris from Majordomo), they never really got back into service. This was part of a major rework at the Lordofhosts.com site, to focus our efforts, and eliminate time consuming tasks that are better done elsewhere (there are lots of lists on the net).

Date: April 1999
News: Free E-mail @Bornagain.com

We are now offering free e-mail at Bornagain.com. This is a great way to freely tell the world about your faith everytime you send a message. Thank you Lord!

Date: Mar. 30, 1999
News: Added "Popular Daily Devotionals" Section to Site

A collection of popular devotionals, like Spurgeon, Our Daily Bread, and Guideposts has been added to the site. We pray this will help in lifting your spirit, and be a daily blessing!

Date: Mar. 28, 1999
News: Added "This Week in Greek" to Site

We have added a new section on Biblical Greek to the site. The new section will feature Greek word studies, grammar, a list of recommended texts, and other information to help those interested in deeper studies of God's Word. This is intended to be a very basic introduction to Greek, and should help those using our Interlinear Greek section.

Date: Mar. 27, 1999
News: E-Mail and Password Access Added to Message Board

To help keep the BBS Message Board a clean, wholesome, family friendly section of the site, we now require users to register their E-Mail address before posting messages to the board. The board can still be read without an E-Mail and Password, but E-Mail registration is required to post messages. Users do not have to post their E-Mail, so they can still appear anonymous to other readers of the board, but their E-Mail address must be on record with the Lord of Hosts website. This should help keep it clean, and I pray it will not be too much of a burden to those wanting to use the board.

Date: Mar. 20, 1999
News: Added "Bakers Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology" to Word of the Day Section

A link to the Goshen version of "Bakers Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology" has been added to the framed version of the Word of the Day. The framed version now has links to the Blue Letter Bible for Vines, Naves, and Torreys, and to Goshen for Bakers.

Date: Mar, 1999
News: Added Links to the World Wide Study Bible for the Daily Verse

Links to the World Wide Study Bible (Wheaton College) were added to the daily verse. The following new sections were added:

WWSB Chapter Link
Wesley Notes
Geneva Notes
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary

Date: Feb, 1999
News: Interlinear Greek/Hebrew Added to Daily Verse

The Daily Verse now has an interlinear Greek/Hebrew link to the Goshen site. To see the Greek/Hebrew scripture, the user must download fonts from the Goshen website, or have other compatible fonts already on their PC.

Date: Jan 12, 1999
News: World Population Count

The population count was moved to the Christ.com server, as an exec cgi script. The counter appears at the bottom of the contents page and says:

   World Population Estimate:
   5974222484
   And every one of them needs Jesus!!!

A great truth! I pray that the Lord will soon touch every one of those with His Spirit.

Date: Dec. 31, 1998
News: Audio Surfboard Put Online

MAJOR rework of our audio links section (took hundreds of hours). Reviewed most of the major online audio links and wrote descriptions for each link. Added ability to customize the audio link section for each user based on cookies.

For those of you that are interested, the personalization feature of the audio browser is NOT year 2038 compliant! This means, the cookies used to customize your browsers list of favorite sites will not work after 2038. This is the way the year 2000 problem (Y2K) started! The year 2038 problem is famous among computer programmers, and is a bug in the unix operating system. The date on a unix box is stored as the number of milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970, 00:00:00. For unix boxes use a 32 bit word, the number of milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970 will exceed the 32 bit word length in the year 2038...

Date: Dec. 24, 1998
News: Link to AudioBible.com for Verse of the Day

The daily verse is now automatically linked to the Audio Bible, Alexander Scourby's narration of the KJV. I have had the Scourby tapes for years, and have found them to be a true blessing - I think you will also be blessed by his readings!

Date: Nov., 1998
News: Jesus Ring Moved to Christ.com Server

The webring service used for the Jesus ring (www. webring.org) has been using pornographic advertising, and other advertising that is not consistent with our Christian message. I protested this on the webring mailing list, and only got hate mail in return (that's ok, I get lots of hate mail anyway). Because of this, I decided to reverse engineer the webring service, and have the webring software run on our own server at Christ.com (many hours of labor)!

Date: Aug. 3, 1998
News: Jesus Ring Goes Online

A new webring named the Jesus Ring is now online. A webring is a collection of web sites with similar themes (like Christianity) all linked together with a ring banner. The banner has a "next site" button to help the visitor move from one site to the next in the ring. The theme of the Jesus Ring (of course) is classic Christianity, and contains sites that are well founded in essential Christian doctrine.

Date: Jul, 1998
News: Added Section Promoting Christian ISP's

Began promoting Christian Internet Service Providers to encourage web users to support these companies. Pornographic material on the internet is a serious problem for parents, and Christian ISP's have built in filtering to block this garbage.

Date: March 2, 1997
News: Move Table of Contents to Christ.com

To improve performance, the Table of Contents for the Lord of Hosts website has been moved from www.Lordofhosts.com/lohcontents.shtml to www.Christ.com/lohcontents.shtml.

This was a major move, involving almost every file in the entire website. It is our prayer that this will help us better serve the Lord's people.

Date: December 31, 1997
News: Real Audio Links Webpage

The Real Audio links page is a list of links to audio ministries around the net. Short descriptions of the audio ministries are provided, listing host names, run times, and text description. The links are listed in the top frame, which allows the bottom frame to be used for the audio ministry website of interest. We pray that hearing the Word of God over the internet will be a blessing to you!

Date: December 19, 1997
News: Charles Spurgeon Devotionals

The Charles Spurgeon daily devotionals have been added to the devotional section. The devotionals have both a morning and evening section, and are updated daily via Wheaton College. May God bless you through these devotionals!

Date: December 15, 1997
News: Matthew Henry Unabridged Commentary, Blue Letter Bible

The unabridged Matthew Henry commentary has been added to the daily verse section! Also, a link to the vast collection of information from the Blue Letter Bible (www.khouse.org) has been added to the daily verse section. This information from the commentary and the Blue Letter Bible is keyed to the verse of the day.

Date: December 8, 1997
News: E-Mail Discussion lists

Added E-Mail discussion lists to the site. Began this service with four new lists:

Cults
Apologetics
KJV
Info

The lists will be moderated, closed, and private, to minimize junk mail (spam) that is common to these types of lists.

Date: November 23, 1997
News: Java Based Chat Room

Added the new Java-based chat room from Parachat. Not all users will be able to use a Java chat room, so the old room will stay online. Also, many users (God bless you CJ), like the format of the old room better, since the type is larger, and it allows you to post lengthy messages to the room.

Date: November 21, 1997
News: Job's Links

A massive update to the Christian link section was brought online, called "Job's Links". The new link section focuses on large sites (no surprises or hidden gems here), with summary descriptions of all sites in the link section. Since our site gets several users that are new to the internet, this section is a good introduction to the Light on the internet, with sites like Billy Graham's site, Goshen, and Gospelcom, listed as good starting points for newcomers to the net. The lesser known sites, and those submitted by our readers with personal webpages, will continue to exist, and has many of the "hidden gems" on the net. We pray that this will bless you.

Date: November 2, 1997
News: Quotes from the Cults

Began a new section, "quotes from the cults", featuring quotations from cult literature documenting the "Spirit of Error". The first section opened was on mormonism, with key heretical statements from infamous false prophets like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The series will expand to include sayings from false prophets in the areas of astrology (Jean Dixon), Jehovah's Witnesses, and others.

Date: November 2, 1997
News: Lord of Hosts Bookstore

Began a book section, in association with www.Amazon.com, offering books on subjects of interest to the Christian community. The first book section focused on mormonism as a Christian cult. Following sections will focus on other cults, as well as mainstream Christian literature (like Bibles).

Date: October 8, 1997
News: Daily Devotional from Eternity Online: John Edmiston (editor)

We are pleased to add the new daily devotionals from Eternity Online magazine, www.eternitymag.com. The editor of Eternity online is John Edmiston. Be sure to visit John's wonderful site and support his ministry! The site features a wide variety of blessed writings on topics of interest to the body. In addition to the web-based articles and regular features, there are free E-Mail newsletter subscriptions, on exegesis, God-Talk, cults, and the daily devotional (which John is letting us list here).

Date: September 4, 1997
News: Inspirational Art

The "Inspirational Art" Section was added to our webpage, to display artwork from our readers that glorifies God. God bless those that use the gifts God has given them for His glory!

Date: September 20, 1997
News: Disney Boycott added to BBS

The Disney boycott has been added as a topic to the bulletin board section of the site... Whew... That should bring up some really lively debate on the topic.

Date: September 19, 1997
News: Prayers added to chat room opening

The chat room logon screen now prints the first 100 lines of the prayer section at www.HolyofHolies.com. This should increase visibility of the prayer room. Some of our best prayer warriors come into the chat room daily!

Date: September 2, 1997
News: New Bible Versions for the Verse of the Day

The verse of the day, which previously was KJV, now includes the NASB, NIV, RSV, Darby, and YLT versions.

Date: July 27, 1997
News: Devotional/Commentary Series added

A devotional/commentary series has been added. This section is for writing that glorifies God, and is updated on a regular basis. We are starting the series with columns written by "Johnny Angel". We pray that it will be a blessing to you on a daily basis!

Date: July 24, 1997
News: Chat Room Requires Unique User Name

The chat room has been modified, to require users to have a unique user name to log in. This will omit the confusion when two or more users log into chat with the same handle, like two "john" users.

Date: July 19, 1997
News: Word-a-day and Todays Proverb added to contents page

Word-a-day begins today, and todays word is Jesus! Each day we select a different word out of the Bible, God's Word, and give definitions from Easton's and Hitchcock's Bible Dictionaries. For the first week, every day, the word of the day is Jesus. What better way to start, or Word to start with, than the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ! We pray that this will be a blessing to you on a daily basis. We will begin listing different words on the Lord's day, 7/20/97.

Thank you, Job

P.S. after the first week, (when the Word was "Jesus" all week), we were faced with the task of selecting our first "Word-a-day" selection, for that day, Sunday July 20. After prayer, the Lord led us to selecting Jesus as our first Word.

Our selections for July 20, 1997, were:

Daily Word: Jesus

Daily Proverb: Proverbs 30:4
Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? what is his name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell?

Daily Verse: John 3:1-14
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Date: July 19, 1997
News: Begin the Website Update Page

Since our website is under constant change and growth, we are adding this much needed section - to help keep our visitors informed about changes.

Date: July 4, 1997
News: One Year Anniversary

Praise Jesus! We made it through our first year. We pray that this service has been a blessing to all who visit! One year ago, we had our Psalm 24 opening screen, and that was it! In the last year, we have added the following:

Prayer requests and praise reports page
A chat room (with more improvement on the way, like real time chat)
Links to other Christian websites
Statement of faith
www.ChurchNews.com - Our Christian events news service (released this week)
BBS Style bulletin board
E-Mail and webpage forwarding services under Christian internet names, like Christ.com, Blessed.com, YAHWEH.net, and several others
DNS services, and high speed data lines to expand our services
Our main voice phone line, (206) 525-YHWH (just love the new number!)
A room full of computers, CSU/DSU, Router, and lots of other "techie stuff"
www.Jesus.net (Our personal favorite, a site that randomly points to other Christian websites, using our Lord's name)
A history, mission statement, and FAQ's page
Verse of the day
Inspiration E-Mail

So, it has been a busy year!! We have lots more on the way, so thank you for your patience, and prayers! It has been a lot of hard work, but doing good works for the Lord Jesus is a blessing!

Thank you for all the E-Mail, your words of support mean a lot. And as for the hate mail, we are praying for you!

May the Lord bless you in the coming year,
Staff of the Lordofhosts.com

Date: Jan. 4, 1997
News: New Years Eve Flooding:

Whew... Let me repeat that: Whew... As you may have heard by now, Seattle has had snow and flooding problems through the holidays. Since our focus (the Lord) has always been on getting the Word out, we decided early on to use multiple service providers to help "stay online". Floods happen, storms blow down power lines, computers crash... If our mission is to get the Word out, then we need to plan on this. And in the computer business, that means having backups. Although we were flooded, our services are primarily offered through multiple, large service providers. Consequently, we suffered no downtime or loss of data, in spite of our center of operations (our home) flooding. We will continue to build on this distributed service backbone. (If you are a service provider, and would like to help, please contact us, we are always trying to improve our network connectivity).

The home base for our website development is our home. We develop and organize activities from our house, sitting beside Thornton Creek in north Seattle. Sort of poetic, and conducive to designing worship tools for the Lord. It's like the Lord lets me sit in my home overlooking the stream, and watch His ideas float downstream. While "fishing" for ideas, He occasionally lets us pull one out of the stream, and use it for His will. The Lord of Hosts website was one of those ideas - originally a BBS vision that became an internet service for the Lord and His people (after my procrastination).

It began snowing the day after Christmas, Dec. 26, 1996. A couple of days later, it was over two feet deep. Seattle is known for its hills - one inch of snow and the city comes to a standstill. The snow began melting around Dec. 29, and by New Years Eve, the city was flooding. Now living on a creek is not a good place to be during floods, even if it does look like the Garden of Eden. And so the waters came.

By 9:00 PM, the stream, normally 2-3 feet deep and 8 feet wide, was over 10 feet deep and 100 feet wide, and coming into one of our computer rooms (ground floor). For the next couple of hours, we carried things from the first floor to the second - hoping that would be high enough! The Lord never said it was going to be easy.

Although we suffered considerable loss of personal property, the Lord was watching over us. And of course, our suffering was nothing compared to the suffering the Lord went through for us.

May the Lord be with you,
Marc and Dee
Jan. 4, 1997

God bless you!

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