There are lots of ways to search for things in God versus religion (GVR). Most of them are also on the Side-Bar on nearly every page. But here, you get some additional help and instructions.
Standard search
After much grief, the tech wizard (the one in the pic) was able to come up with a better search option to replace what we used to have.
If you want an exact phrase, put in in quotes. With the latest update to search capabilities. the beginning and ending quotes are both required.
Otherwise, it will search for any of the words. Highest priority is given to finding your search word(s) in the title. Second is in the content.
Each post that satisfies the search criteria will be listed on the search results page. Relevance between the search terms and the contents of the article determine the order of presentation.
Note: If there’s only one post that fits your search criteria, it will be opened without displaying the search results. I realize that’s a bit annoying if it’s not what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, that’s the way it was written by the vendor. It very seldom happens, but if it does, just click the <back> button in your browser. That will take you back to the search page.
All words that satisfied the search criteria are highlighted. That way you can tell if you need to adjust your search to better locate what you’re looking for.
Standard Search options
Advanced search options
The advanced search page has two additional ways to find things.
The Bible passage search locates all posts containing the specified Bible Passage. Almost. Some of the older ones that were written before I implemented this feature don’t yet have the required settings to make it work. As an alternative, you can do a general search, with search option #1, and search for the passage title. In all cases, the passage titles are from the 1984 NIV.
The Book of the Bible search is similar to the passage search, except that it searches for every posts that contains any passage within the target book.
I assume the passage search is the most useful one. However, it wasn’t that much additional work to implement the book search at the same time, so it’s there if you want it.
Home Page features
There are also some features that are available on every page, including the Home Page.
Menu
If you hover over (or click) the <down arrow> next to the word “menu” at the top right, it will open up an expanded menu that includes:
- Some of the series of posts written about a single topic. These are generally best if read in order.
- Major categories. These are groups of posts that tend to get viewed more often and without regard to the time of year.
- Other categories. Also groups of posts, but they are generally more specific in terms of interest.
The menu does not include everything. The goal is to make things that are most requested available with just a couple clicks.
Categories
This towards the bottom of the side-bar on the right side of the page. It has a complete list of all categories, along with the number of posts in each one. Many are indented under other categories to show the hierarchy of the included topics.
Over the course of nearly 15 years of writing, I have tended to let the number of categories get out of control. It needs work. I need more time.
Archives
Finally, there’s the Archive list. It has a listing of everything contained in the site, organized by year and month within the year. The newest stuff is at the top. You’ll see that it only goes back ten years. That’s when I moved from one web format to another, and so much had to change that I just redid everything and started with fresh dates.
In any case, it’s all there. Not surprisingly, you’ll find the older posts to be shorter, less insightful (at least I feel like that), and even formatted quite differently. Once again, it (only) takes time to update them. But we get the time we get – and no more.
Thanks!
chris