Growing Healthy Asian American Churches, 5
We’re making steady progress in our blog-based book discussion of Growing Healthy Asian American Churches 
. This week we delve into Chapter 4, which is titled, Healthy Leaders, Healthy Households: Practices and Values.
For those of you tuning in, but don’t attend an Asian American church or even a church with significant proportions of Asians, you should find this book helpful for non-Asian church contexts as well, since it describes fairly universal characteristics for any healthy church. Note that this book is not a theological exhortation, per se, the way Mark Devers vigorously challenges contemporary churches in Nine Marks of a Healthy Church.
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exploring a new kind of blog
I’m thrilled that I can actually blog and talk about my work. This one time anyways 
I’m a part of American Bible Society, which is turning 190 years old, and blogging is a sproutling compared to its institutional history.
We’re beta-launching a new kind of blog tentatively titled “Share Your Story.” This is a different kind of blog, not just one personal voice like most, or a team of bloggers’ stirring up a dialogue. This blog potentially could be an orchestra of voices from people who’ve been touched by the Bible. This is a part of the American Bible Society’s exploration to provide an online space for sharing stories that emerge from the life-changing message of the Bible.
You’re invited to post your candid feedback on how this can be a valuable contribution to the Kingdom of God. You can blog about it at your own blog, or if you can email in your honest comments to share@forministry.com if you’d like to make your remarks less public but still want to help.
You can also submit a personal short story of how a verse or a passage in the Bible has changed your life. It can be a small change, a la moment of encouragement, comfort, hope, or it can be a big change, a la packing up all your worldly possessions and moving half way around the country for a new lifestyle of following God in the way of Jesus.
more blogging tools evolution: WordPress, TextPattern, Typo
Another cycle of software development is percolating as we speak. I’ve personally made the software transition over the years from Pitas, to Blogger, to MovableType, to b2evolution, to WordPress. Now there are 2 more blogging tools gaining new installs and migration among early adopters: TextPattern and Typo. I haven’t looked into these, and probably will stick with WordPress b/c of its on-going development, or as Presentation Zen’s sound bite: blogging is like sharks. You got to keep on moving. Software does not get built once-and-for-all.
Biggest unanswered question: what is Typo? So I went on a quest in the blogosphere to find out.
vandomburg writes about Typo and the Return of the Jedi; GeekThang chimes in on Typo as well; needmoredesigns talks about the backsides of blogs; Alex talks about being Typo-free; Billytheradponi rates some of these blogging tools.
Growing Healthy Asian American Churches, 4
Last week’s book discussion on Chapter 2 (of Growing Healthy Asian American Churches) didn’t generate as many discussions and comments as the first chapter; the show must go on, so here’s Chapter 3, titled Healthy Leaders, Healthy Households: Challenges and Models.
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shopping for web hosting
Thinking out loud here about web hosting. I’m pretty happy about the web hosting for djchuang.com at TotalChoiceHosting, but their basic service doesn’t offer multiple domain name hosting. So I’m starting to shop around for a new web host, and there are thousands of them out there. It looks like a very crowded playing field, and it’s hard to tell from the comparison websites whether those are just promotional deals or legitimate comparisons with objective ratings. My hunch is that people go with a web host that they first hear of, or get referred to. It’s difficult to make an easy apples-to-apples comparison b/c every web host lists their best features and conveniently hides the features that competitors do better at delivering. But here’s what I’m looking for at a price point of $7 per month with no more than 1-year pre-pay and no setup fee: WordPress hosting (PHP, mySQL), 12 domain names, sufficient web space and bandwidth (the going rate seems to be 10GB disk space and 20GB monthly bandwidth), domain POP email and webmail, FTP access, web-based admin, phpMyAdmin, weblog statistics, responsive tech support, reliable uptime.
I do prefer web hosts that are more transparent about their people and operations, such as having a support forum with open message board, CEO’s who blog, disclosure of data center and office locations.
Here are web hosts that have caught my attention, but don’t quite have all my wished-for ingredients:
- DreamHost.com allows unlimited domains for $7.95/mo 2-year pre-pay, and 1 blogger’s multiple database connectivity issue shouldn’t be a problem for me.
- BlueHost.com allows 6 domains for $6.95/mo 2-year pre-pay, has a blogging CEO, $7.95/mo for 1-year pre-pay.
- Site5.com has a Flashback function that automatically keeps older version of changed files so you can roll back changes, like that Undo button in a word processor, except for a website.
- http://www.globat.com/ allows 6 domains for $4.95/mo 1-year pre-pay, has a blogging CEO, but slower response time.
- StartLogic allows 10 domains for $4.95/mo, but one blogger had database connectivity problems and switched to HostGator — which has almost everything I’m looking for except price and space.
- GeekHosting.com has 10 domains for $5.95/mo with 6 GB space.
- [update] WebHostingBuzz.com has it all - $7/mo 7 GB space, unlimited domains (heard about them from Slacker Manager)
Am I being too demanding? It’s just a numbers game, in some respect, and I think my numbers are do-able.
This article about Overselling hosting is eye-opening; the whole website WHreviews.com has good stuff. Have to read more.. WebhostingTalk.com is an active discussion forum / message board that has more threads than I can read. HostingTech.com allegedly is a website for those in the web hosting industry.
