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Ramblings...
By Kenneth D. Christensen
February 3, 2001
 I am
sure that you can understand that my mind is very preoccupied with the condition
of my Preacher, Dr. Jack Hyles. This week I was very honored to be asked
to use our web site as the place on the Internet where official updates on Bro.
Hyles would be posted. With those things said, I will proceed to tell you of
some special leading by God that has happened concerning our web site, and also
some facts about the site.
I am not a great Christian, don't even claim to be a good one, but I believe
that God definitely led me to make a major change concerning the web site.
The evening of January 20, 2001, I was looking up various web hosting services
on the web, because I was considering moving the site to a new host. The web
hosting service I was using (web hosts are companies that
have web server computers and sell space to web sites. These servers are
connected to the Internet. For instance, when you visit Baptist-City.com,
you are accessing our site on a computer that is located in California) was
fine, but we were coming real close to exceeding the bandwidth that they
allowed. Bandwidth is the amount of bytes that are transferred. For instance, if
you listened to, or downloaded a Real Audio sermon from our site, and the size
of the file was 2 megabytes, that means you used 2 megabytes of bandwidth. Every
page you look at uses bandwidth. If a page is 2K, 2K of bandwidth from our
allowance is used. At the old host, we were allowed 5 gigabytes of bandwidth per
month. If usage exceeded that, we would have to pay a large premium. Since our
site was getting a little better known, we were approaching the limit, and the
month was only half over!
I did not plan to sign up for a new host that night. I had even
contacted another hosting service with some questions that would not be answered
until Monday and this was Saturday. I was just about to get off the
computer when I found a web hosting service that would give us 25 gigabytes of
bandwidth per month for only $2.00 per month more than we were currently paying.
If we used more than 25, the premium would only be half as much as at the other
host! I signed up that night. I told my wife that I thought God must have led me
to find that company. Little did I know then!
It took about a week to get all the kinks worked out with moving the site to
the new host. Hopefully this was transparent to the visitors to the site.
One week after we were fully operational at the new host, Bro. Hyles had the
heart attack, and we were asked to post the official updates.
Now some facts about the site. Prior to Bro. Hyles' heart attack, the site
averaged about 250 unique visitors per day. Since we have been posting the
updates, we are getting over 4,000 unique visitors per day! Requests to be
notified of changes and additions to the web site have tripled and the
membership in our Delphi forum has more than doubled. All of this in only
two days! It appears that we will exceed our 25 gigabyte bandwidth this month,
but we consider it an honor to provide this service. We have been averaging over
one gigabyte of bandwidth per day since beginning to post the updates. You now
begin to understand my belief that God led us, at exactly the right time, to
move the site!
We deeply appreciate the many of you that have taken the time to send us
messages of how you found our site, appreciation for providing the site,
etc. Please do not be offended if we do not personally respond to your
message. We are receiving literally hundreds of messages per day, and I do
have a day job!
By the way, that other hosting service never did get back to me with answers
to my questions.
Keep praying for Preacher!
Ken's Soap Box
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