As part of moving from one Web site to another, our link structure changed massively.  With our previous provider, links were not SEO-friendly.  In fact, the previous provider didn’t allow us any control over meta data at all.  This means that all our pages pretty much looked the same to search engines.

Well, I didn’t want to loose the little what we had built with search engines and other publicity pieces that linked to old pages.  I also didn’t want users to be welcomed to the site with 404s, so I needed to get all of the old site redirected to the new one.

The first step that was necessary for this task was to search which URL’s Google had indexed.  So, I searched site:www.fbcbelton.org.  This showed me 92 pages that Google had spidered.

The problem with our old URLs is that they only included an ID in a query string (ie: www.fbcbelton.org/sites/document.asp?did=1610), a very unfriendly method for people and search engines.  This also creates issues in redirection because an .htaccess redirect can’t redirect document.asp?did=1610 to another location unless the new location understands the query string.  For instance, if I wanted that 1610 to go to http://www.fbcbelton.org/meet-our-staff/, there’s not a simple way to do it with an .htaccess redirect (it is possible with mod_rewrite).

However, I’m accomplishing the redirect in two steps, first redirecting to a Perl script that correlates the old ID to the new page and redirects to the new page.  So, I edited .htaccess with these three rules:

Redirect 301 /sites/calendar.asp http://www.fbcbelton.org/calendar/
Redirect 301 /sites/division.asp http://www.fbcbelton.org/cgi-bin/redirector.cgi
Redirect 301 /sites/document.asp http://www.fbcbelton.org/cgi-bin/redirector.cgi


The first rule says, I don’t care which calendar page you were going to, you’re just getting the current month from now on.  (Sad, I know, but I am working on a calendar solution.)  The second and third take the majority of the URLs and redirect them to a very simple Perl script that devours the query string and runs another 301 redirect to the actual page.  The script is very rude, but the old IDs are hard-coded in as are the new URLs.  (I’m hoping David will comment here and tell me an easier way to do all this, but I’m thinking there may not be one, at least short of using mod_rewrite)

Then I took the short URLs that our old provider gave to us and redirected them as well.  So, before when you entered http://www.fbcbelton.org/memberconnect, their server would send you to /sites/document.asp?did=8291.  Now, the short URL goes to the new location with one line:

Redirect 301 /memberconnect      http://www.fbcbelton.org/member-connect-faq/

When using .htaccess redirects to redirect a page to a new location, always use 301.  301 means that the page is moving permanently.  It is generally accepted that using that type of redirect is the best way to preserve your search engine rankings.

Compassion is organizing a day of prayer and fasting for the global food crisis on June 25th. That’s Wednesday.

It breaks my heart to hear about the current global food crisis and how it affects children and their families. Rice, beans, corn and other food staples have become dramatically more costly in recent months, creating extreme hardship and suffering. This need cannot be overstated. For families earning just $2 per day or less, there is just no margin. The impact is truly devastating.

There’s a lot I don’t understand about the world. I don’t understand why I have everything I need and then some. I don’t understand why the world that had so little food before has even less now. I don’t understand why I have to run on the treadmill to burn off extra calories when the rest of the world is literally dying for those calories. Especially though, I don’t understand how we can sit back and do nothing. This thing is real. It affects real people with real families and real lives.

C’mon now - Take action: pray, then give.
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Over the past several years, I have fallen more in love with Compassion International.  Yesterday I wrote about being a poor sponsor the last couple of months, and today I received an unrelated phone call from the GMC.  One of my kids has moved and is no longer in a Compassion-assisted area of Honduras.

I’ve got to admit that I’m sad that I can no longer correspond with Elfre.  It has been a real joy to watch him grow up.  I have sponsored him for about 5 years, and I would have loved to see him graduate high school, go to college, and be a catalyst for change Central America.

This one phone call from Mary at Compassion made me fall more in love with Compassion for several reasons:

1. The news was important enough to generate a phone call.  They could have e-mailed or written me about this, but Compassion went the extra step to deliver the news with a human touch.
2. The call was recorded - I love it when Christian ministries care enough about their purpose to spot check the process.
3. Mary gave me an overview of the child’s involvement with Compassion, including the fact that “during his time in the project, Elfre made a profession of faith in Jesus.”  How many organizations care prioritize that?
4. This was not a sales call.  Mary called to give me the news about Elfre, not to get me to sponsor another child.

This is one more interaction with Compassion that shows me that they are committed to integrity and are honestly Christ-centered.

So, as one of the world’s richest people, what’s holding you back from releasing a child from poverty?

Tonight I ate at my local, Belton Jack in the Box. I realize that many of my readers aren’t serviced by this fine dining establishment, so for you, I’d describe it as a trendier McDonald’s. For fast food, they seem to have better quality food and slightly higher prices.

Jack makes this Chicken Club Salad that I have come to love. Honestly, it tastes better than any other salad in my small town. It’s really good. I typically eat it without the dressing, resulting in a tasty meal with only 320 calories. That’s good practice for us Biggest Loser peeps.

However, as good as the food is at my local Jack in the Box - the service never meets the same mark of excellence. Before I go bashing their service, let me say that if you go through the drive-through, it’s fast. That’s their focus. I go to the dining room and wait an average of 2 minutes to be acknowledged. On many situations, I’ve ordered the salad and they’ll tell me that they are out of it. That actually typically means that they forgot to prepare any that morning.

Today, I ordered the salad and paid for it without any notice of anything being wrong with it. When it arrived, it was missing two things - cherry tomatoes and bacon ranch dressing. Now, you’re going to think I’m silly for writing all of this because I don’t eat either of those things on my salad. I pick the tomatoes off and forgo the dressing. But, curious as I am, I asked the lady who appeared to be in charge about their absence and she said, “Oh, we’re out of those.” No apology, no offer of substitution, just “we’re out of those.”

I wonder if we in the church do that? We sell the greatest product the world has ever or will ever know. We make a lot of promises to our people and our church menus look impressive. So, I have a lot of questions. Do we greet people immediately upon their arrival or do we make them wait to be served? Is our focus on all people that enter our church, or do we gravitate toward a certain group (drive-through)? Do we deliver the product as pictured or do we make it look better on the menu than it actually is? Do we play silly church tricks (like advertising a free pizza buffet with no mention of a forced 30-minute evangelical speaker in order to receive it)?

I know that in my ministry years, I’ve been guilty of some of these things. I get busy doing, and I forget that I’m in the business of serving.

“…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28, NIV)

Spiceworks is releasing 3.0 soon, and they’ve put out this funny video as part of a series they say “explores what the world might be like if it was ruled by IT professionals…”