On November 9, 2006, we added the following to beta.lds.org:
Redesigned Gospel Library
- We have provided improved navigation and organization of content.
- To help you find different format options (audio, video, PDF full layout, printer-friendly format, etc.), we have included a format bar directly above the content area of each page. For example, on the Table of Contents page for each magazine, you’ll see a “View as .pdf” option that allows you to see the full layout of the magazine. Over the next several weeks, we will be adding more PDF files, including files of individual articles in magazines.
Improved Search
- You can now search for content in the whole Gospel Library or in just parts of the Gospel Library (scriptures, magazines, lesson manuals, or general conference). The search feature also allows you to search “all Church content,” which will search all Church Web sites.
- Once you see the results of your search, you then have the option to filter those results to see only those from the scriptures, magazines, or lesson manuals. You can also narrow your results by a specific book of scripture, by a particular Church magazine, or by a category of lesson manuals.
- You can also use advanced search features that allow you to specify the dates, such as “magazines from 2004 to the present,” or the author (either by name or by position, such as “Presidents of the Church” or “All General Authorities”).
- Over the next several weeks, we will refine the search results so that searches for terms such as “meetinghouse locator,” “humanitarian services,” or “distribution center” will find the specific Web pages on Church sites.
- Search also has a “Did you mean?” feature to suggest misspelled search terms.
As always, we welcome your feedback as we continue to test and improve this beta release.
Note to LDS Webmasters: We will keep the old Gospel Library running for some time. If you have links on your Web sites to content in the Gospel Library, we will provide instructions on how to change those links to the new library. See recent information on the status of the old Gospel Library.
It looks great and even works in Camino! The search feature is much improved.
I was wondering what was keeping you quiet these last few weeks Larry. Looks much more user friendly. The navigation is one of my favorite improvements.
I noticed the library pages source looks much cleaner than the past span littered pages of the old library. Any plans to bring back the ‘topics’ usually listed at the bottom of the talks?
What plans do the Church have for the PDA section and ebook conversion?
Thanks
J
These updates are excellent. Great job to your team!
We still have to load all the MP3, PDF, and PDA files into the database, then they’ll show up in the format bar. We’ll also have pages that list all the audio, video, PDA, etc. that are available.
The topics that were listed at the bottom of each article have been injested into the files as keyword metadata, which influences the search results.
Wahoo!!!!!!!!!!!!
My prayers have been answered! 🙂
I’m hesitant to link to anything on the beta site, since when it’s launched, it’ll no longer be at beta.lds.org… will you have redirects for all links pointing to the beta site?
Those URLs (for the articles I’ve looked up) are looooong! I’ve always wondered about the URLs for the church site.. the old site had pages named something like 0,20232,7058-1,00.html while the new URLs on the beta site have crazy long get variables.
Larry, is this top secret, or can you give a little insight as to why it’s done this way. Just curious is all. Thanks.
Before the end of the year, we expect to replace lds.org with what you now see on the beta, and then beta.lds.org will disappear and any links you have to it will break. We don’t plan to build redirects from the beta site.
Yes, the URLs are long. These are the URLs that the content management system creates automatically. Ugly. Not user friendly and not search engine friendly. We’ve developed a strategy to turn the long URLs into user-friendly ones, and that will appear in our next release.
In the past you could gradually increase the number “7058-1,00.html” ie. 7059, 7060, etc. and find articles like First Presidency messages before they were officially posted on lds.org.
A few months ago I checked out the PDF that was posted about future plans and dates. How good are these predictions, say for other language material? Navigation in other languages?
J
I need to review and update that PDF. Sorry I haven’t been keeping it up. Navigation in other languages is 2-3 months out.
Are there any plans to utilize the chapel/temple addresses database with a program like Google Earth? Any chance that we can see a KML for each country or continent? I realize it is harder for countries that do not list roads. I’ve begun something like this for Taiwan. Maybe a project like this would require more member assistance. What do you think?
J
The new search engine is good, but it would be great if it could provide its results in OpenSearch format. I’ve written about the OpenSearch format and how it could be used for religion content in a couple of my blogs. In brief, if you provided the search results as an RSS feed, then it would enable other search applications like A9.com to gain access to the search data, increasing the usefulness of the new gospel library search.
Dear ldswebguy,
I like the new gospel library features but I still have a problem that perhaps you can answer for me. When I go to ldsces.org and try and download the PDF versions of the institute manuals in non-browser PDF format, there is nothing that downloads by some first page with nothing else. I once had a church IT guy on the phone about it and he said he would check out why it was not working and call me back. He never did.
The gospel library has all the Sunday School, Priesthood and Relief Society manuals available as stand-alone PDF downloads. They also have gospel principles and the duties and blessing of the priesthood manuals. Are we ever going to get the institute and seminary manuals added to the same library? And if not, can you at least get them to fix the ldsces.org website so you can download stand-alone PDF versions of these manuals.
Thanks.
Brother Michael
Orlando, FL
RE:the slideout animation on the menus
Is there a way to turn that off? Whenever I get a new PC image the first thing I do is turn off the menu animation. I find it distracting and annoying.
Also, it may only be me, but a triangle in front of text like there is in the menus suggests that it is a “twisty” that you can click to open the outline
(probably because I was a Radio Userland and ActiveRenderer user for a long time: http://www.activerenderer.com/ )
On the bright side, I do really like the CSS styles, and how they automatically format the page differently for printing.
Response to Michael’s comment about PDF files:
We are recreating all the PDF files across Church sites to be ideally suited for download and offline use. The PDF files in the Gospel Library were first. We will be adding the CES manuals to the Gospel Library optimized for download. They will also replace the files on ldsces.org.
The PDF files on ldsces.org were built originally for online viewing and searching. However, our strategy now is to optimize the HTML for online viewing and make the PDFs optimized for download and offline use (although they can also be viewed and used online).
Thank you for you feedback, and know that we are working on your recommendation.
I just noticed the csv option in membership. Now I’m debating on how to keep the information on my phone.
Thanks for responding. I look forward to being able to download the manuals.
Can’t find PDF (full layout) files?
We currently only have PDF files for the full publications (full magazine, lesson manual, etc.). For example, on the Table of Contents page for each magazine, you’ll see a “View as .pdf” option that allows you to see the full layout of the magazine. On individual articles in the magazine, you won’t see that option. Over the next several weeks, we will be adding more PDF files, including files of individual articles in magazines.
Great updates. It’s nice to see so much development being done to make it easier to access church references. Great work!
An idea for the old ‘Gospel Topics’ footers someone mentioned earlier.
They could be brought back, and be used as a searching element, making the A to Z Index more comprehensive and useful.
This is actually now called ‘tagging’ on the net. For example it is becoming more common in blog software. Some if not most blog software allows you to assign a ‘tag’ indicating the subject of a blog entry. Sometimes you will see more than one tag at the end of a blog entry because multiple subjects are found in the entry.
You would not call these ‘tags’ on lds.org, you would call them as before, gospel topics, and an enhancement would make them clickable and by clicking on them it would take you to the A to Z Index entry and be able to access via that page the list of all the other articles with the same subject.
Because of how the A to Z index is currently laid out (and that is now better than before too), the more comprehensive listing could be made available as an additional option, rather than be ‘on top’.
I like the lessons menu item — It was much easier finding the priesthood lesson because of it. I also like how the left Navigation bar can be opened or collapsed. I like the padding between the text and the edge of the browser window. It is also nice how when you click on a scripture reference that it opens in a pop-up window.
Can you tell me when CES manuals will be available for off-line use?
CES manuals are available now in PDF format for offline use at http://www.ldsces.org.
Over the next few months, we’ll merge them into the new Gospel Library.
At http://www.ldsces.org, the Institute Manuals are veiw only. I am not able to save the whole pdf to my hard drive for off-line use. I can only save a page at a time. Is there a fix in for this?
We still have a lot of old PDF files of CES items and other items with “StartHere” filenames. We are systematically fixing these to make them fully downloadable. I don’t have a date yet when they’ll all be fixed.
When the new LDS.org with the redesigned Gospel Library is released I assume there will be a new URL for individual and then there will eventually be a third URL.
What will happen when you switch to the new site, will the old URL’s exist in addition to the new ones, will they be redirected or will the old URL’s simply come up as ‘page not found’?
The new site will still be at LDS.org. No new URL.
We have identified a few dozen key pages in the old LDS.org and will set up redirects to send users to the new LDS.org equivalent pages. If the links are to content in the old Gospel Library, they’ll still work for about 6 months until we finally turn off the old library.
Recently re-imaged my computer and lost my favorites. Among those was the old gospel library. If anyone could get me the link to the old gospel library previously used on lds.org I’d be appreciative.