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Andy Rau
December 7, 2006

All about the new Bible Gateway logo

Quite a few people have emailed to ask us about our new logo (in the upper left corner of the site). For those of you who are wondering about it, here’s the rundown.

First of all, what is it depicting? Well, it’s intentionally abstract–some people see a communication dish; others see a person raising his hands in worship. We think both ideas fit the mission of the Bible Gateway. We’re trying to make the Bible available in every corner of the world, as part of Christ’s call to spread the Gospel. The new logo is meant to convey the idea of broadcasting the Good News or shouting it from the mountaintops.

Secondly, the new logo is part of an effort by Gospel Communications (the organization behind the Bible Gateway) to improve its branding. GC’s mission is to “get the Word out”–a vision that wasn’t really conveyed by the old logo.

We hope you like the new logo, and that when you see it, you’ll understand a bit more about the ministry focus of the Bible Gateway!

Andy Rau
December 1, 2006

Put a Bible Gateway search widget on your desktop

If you’re a Mac user with the latest version of OS X, you may be familiar with Dashboard widgets–little applications that sit on your computer desktop designed to save you time by fetching information for you. (Learn more about Apple’s Dashboard widgets.)

Some enterprising individuals have put together a Bible Gateway search widget, letting you place a Bible Gateway search box right on your desktop! It’s easy to install and use, and gives you another way to quickly look up Bible passages without needing to visit the Bible Gateway homepage. It also allows you to choose from many of the Bible Gateway’s versions and languages.

You can download the Bible Gateway widget from the Eject Media website. As noted above, you’ll need a Mac and the latest version of OS X to use it. Important note: the Bible Gateway didn’t create and doesn’t support the widget, so use it at your own risk.

Kudos to the folks at Eject Media for putting the Bible Gateway widget together!

Update: the links and information in this post are now old and may no longer be relevant/functional (Eject Media, linked above, is no longer in operation). If you have updated links or information about this, feel free to share it with us by sending an email to support@biblegateway.com.

Andy Rau
November 16, 2006

New Flash Verse of the Day for your website

We’ve just added a new way to put the Verse of the Day on your website! The Flash Verse of the Day is an attractive, easy-to-use way to display the Verse of the Day on your site, and can be added to your site by pasting just a few lines of code.

The code to use is available at the Flash VotD page. There’s also a version for use with MySpace and other sites that don’t support the <object> tag. (We also provide several other ways to add the VotD to your page; the Flash version might be the best option for people whose website environments make the HTML or RSS methods difficult.)

Andy Rau
November 15, 2006

Searching the Bible from your browser address bar

There are a number of good third-party tools and web browser plugins that make it easy to search the Bible Gateway. But if you use the Firefox web browser, there’s a way to do Bible searches right from your browser address bar, without installing any extra software!

Doing so is easy–it involves bookmarking a Bible Gateway search URL and then assigning it a keyword. The PlasticMind blog has the details, but we’ll walk you through the basics here:

  1. First, you must be using the free Firefox web browser. (You might be able to do this in other browsers as well, but we’ll stick to Firefox for this example. This example also assumes you’re using Firefox in Windows, but the process is similar in OS X or Linux.)
  2. Bookmark the following link (right-click on it and choose ‘Bookmark This Link’):

    http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=%s&qs_version=31

    Click ‘OK’.

  3. Go up to the Bookmarks menu (at the top of the browser window) and select ‘Organize Bookmarks’. Find the bookmark you just made; click to select it and press the ‘Properties’ button near the top of the window.
  4. In the window that pops up, type niv into the Keyword field.

    nivsearch1.jpg

    You can leave the other fields as they are. Click ‘OK.’

You’re done! Now if you type niv into your browser address bar followed by a verse or keyword, you can search the Bible Gateway. Try typing niv genesis 1 into your address bar, hit Enter, and see what happens:

Browser search bar

If everything worked, you should see a Bible Gateway page with Genesis 1 displayed! From now on, anytime you need to do a quick search for a Bible passage or keyword, you can do it right from your address bar by typing niv followed by Bible passage or keywords you want to look up–no need to first visit the Bible Gateway homepage and do your search from there. You can try slightly more specific searches like niv genesis 2:1-5 or use abbreviations like niv gen 1.

You can do a lot of customization with the Bible Gateway URL you bookmarked earlier–you could bookmark a different Bible version or a different language, for instance. You could even bookmark several different Bible versions and assign a separate keyword to each (niv, kjv, esv, etc.).

The PlasticMind blog I linked to above has the URLs to bookmark for some other popular Bible versions. And if you’re feeling brave, you can customize the URL yourself by changing the ‘version’ part of the URL using this list of Bible version ID numbers.

Andy Rau
November 8, 2006

Spanish Verse of the Day now available

The Verse of the Day is now available in Spanish! It’s currently available as an RSS feed:

http://www.biblegateway.com/usage/votd/rss/votd.rdf?42

You can use that feed to display the Spanish VotD on your website, or you can read it directly by subscribing to it with your favorite feed reader.

Andy Rau
November 6, 2006

Study the Bible: classic Bible commentaries at the BG

Ever run into a Bible passage that was difficult to understand? You’re not alone–we’re often asked if the Bible Gateway has any study materials to help readers with tough or interesting Bible passages.

As it happens, the Bible Gateway does have several classic Bible commentaries available alongside our library of Bibles. Click here or on the image below for a tutorial showing how to access and use the commentaries!

Commentaries

Andy Rau
October 10, 2006

New Living Translation updated to second edition

New Living TranslationWe’ve updated the New Living Translation to the second edition. Tyndale’s NLT website has a good rundown on the improvements in the second edition; most of the changes involve fine-tuning passages and reworking them to better reflect the language of the original text.

While you’re at the NLT site, you might find their essays about Bible versions and translations worth perusing–especially if you’ve ever looked at the Bible Gateway’s list of Bible versions and wondered “Why are there so many different versions of the Bible?”

Andy Rau
September 22, 2006

Romanian Bible temporarily offline

Just a quick note to say that we’ve taken the Romanian Bible offline for some maintenance. We’ll have it back online as soon as possible, and will let you know here when it’s back.

Andy Rau
August 31, 2006

All about the Verse of the Day

We get a lot of questions about the Verse of the Day feature on the Bible Gateway main page. Today, we’ll look at some common questions (and answers!):

Can I put the verse of the day on my website?
Yes, you can. The easiest way to do so is to plug a small chunk of HTML code into your website. We’ve put together a simple online tool that will generate the HTML code for your site, using the Bible version and language of your choice. Just select from a few options and paste the resulting code into your site!

The basic code should work for most sites, but if you’re familiar with HTML, feel free to play around with the Verse of the Day code to make it match your site better.

Is there a Verse of the Day RSS feed?
Yes, there is–it’s http://www.biblegateway.com/usage/votd/rss/votd.rdf. You can subscribe to that feed with an RSS reader, use it to display the Verse of the Day on a website, or other nifty RSS tricks.

Can I have the Verse of the Day emailed to me each day?
The Bible Gateway currently doesn’t send the Verse of the Day out via email. However, there are a number of free services that do. One such ministry is E-Word Today, which sends out a free daily email with a Scripture passage and links to classic Bible commentaries.

What else can I do with the Verse of the Day?
If you’re an advanced user and want to really play around with the Verse of the Day, we have made the Verse of the Day API available as a free webservice. This provides more options than the basic HTML code, but requires a bit more technical savvy.

Andy Rau
August 25, 2006

New Bible reading plan: through the Bible in 61 days

Interested in reading through the Bible, but intimidated by such a big reading commitment? Our Bible reading plans divide up the Bible into small, easily-digestible daily readings to make it easier for you.

We’ve recently made a new addition to our collection of Bible reading plans–a 61-day chronological reading plan, which walks you through the most important stories of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation over the course of 61 days. Sound interesting? Go check out this and our other reading plans and get started!

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    The Bible Gateway Blog features the latest news, announcements, and reflections from Bible Gateway. We hope what you find here will add to your understanding of and appreciation for the Bible.