About the World Wide Study Bible
The Editor
An anonymous volunteer WWSB Editor has in the
last couple of years contributed most of the links that have been
added. He's contributed most of the 50,000 links
currently in the database, perhaps making him the de-facto editor of the WWSB.
Thanks, WWSB Editor!
Version 4
After the move of the CCEL to Calvin College and the switch to
an Apache web server, MySQL database, and php3 scripting language,
the CCEL has been ported and is functioning, but there are very few
new capabilities. (Summer of '99.)
About Version 3
The World Wide Study Bible has of necessity been revised again. This
revision was pretty much going on 7/17/97. The reason for the
revision is that the database server on which it used to run has been
retired, and the college is going to a different database system.
Thus the WWSB was revised to use an Informix Online database and
LiveWire programs to access it. All of the book and chapter pages
are generated by LiveWire programs. These pages are then copied to
disk by a web mirror program. Thus, the whole set of some 1500 pages
is rebuilt when new references are added to the database.
Some day I hope to add on-line additions to the database, but that
doesn't work at the moment.
About Version 2
The World Wide Study Bible underwent major revision around 1/1/96. The
original vision of links added by thousands of users had a weak link
-- me. It was necessary for one person to verify and add all
submissions, and I couldn't keep up, given the other demands on my
time.
Now the WWSB is built on top of an Informix database. Links are added
by importing a file of links into the database, and the whole WWSB
(currently 1457 html files and about 12000 references) is rebuilt by
running a single script. Therefore it is possible to add a large
number of links much more efficiently. Thanks to Jon Farr for his
help in this project. If you would like to add links, see the
Add Item page for more information.
Original 'About'
The World Wide Study Bible was conceived as a means of organizing all
of the Bible-related resources on the World Wide Web according to
scripture reference. Because of the nature of the World Wide Web and
the large number of potential contributors, it is possible to index an
enormous number and wide variety of resources -- commentaries,
meditations, sermons, pictures, word studies, musical settings,
historical or archeologic notes -- anything that is relevant.
This is a world wide effort; it will flourish only with user
contribution. Please consider finding a public domain commentary
and typing in the notes for a section of scripture. Scan an
image. Type in a sermon. Enter a midi file for one of the numbers
in Handel's Messiah. Then put it on your HTTP server and send
me a URL or upload it to ftp://www.ccel.org/incoming for
storage on my server.
Just make sure that the element you contribute is
public domain or freely redistributable. In order to determine that
something is in the public domain, the most commonly applicable
rule of thumb is that anything published in the US before 1923 is
in the public domain. In many other countries, an item becomes public
domain when the author has been dead for 50 years.
Note that the contributions may not be reviewed or selected for
theology or quality; a diversity of theological viewpoints will
likely be represented. Nevertheless I reserve the right to decide
which links I will include.
