One Can Only Do So Much…

If I were addressing my business internet marketing students, I would warn them not to make great swelling promises online that they are unable to keep! My hopes of launching a final version of our new e-book on this first day of April have been dashed. My schedule is ridiculous, yes. My workload too much, yes. But…I had still hoped to finish before the stroke of midnight tonight.

We are very close, so stay-tuned. I hope to set aside my Saturday to put on finishing touches, then I can upload and publish the needed files for perhaps a three or four-day-late launch. All the opening days of April are covered in the preview release, so you can start reading now, but we will be excited to send out the full version when we can. We appreciate your kind patience.

Publishing First Devotional E-Book Soon

In a previous Aside I alluded to several new projects Abounding Media would be launching in coming months. I want to give you a brief introduction to one in particular: A Moment of Focus – Christ, Doctrine, Christian Living. This devotional e-book is a compilation of blog posts written over the past five years on my personal blog. Each entry focuses on a short passage of scripture and contains one paragraph of application-focused text. These lessons are intended to be a simple, focused addition to your daily Bible reading.

Today, I want to pre-release this version of the first guide, which covers April through June 2010. Only the first six pages or month of April are featured here, without inside front or back covers, which are still in development. I am releasing a partial version to get your feedback and introduce you to the project. Let me know if you come across any problems with this first draft so I can make revisions or improvements before full-release.

Still…Restoring After a Major Blunder

I wrote this unfortunate post last evening on my personal lifestream. I am still working to get one full site restored, dozens of images updated and multiple database alterations re-done. One thing I forgot to mention is that I was using an unfamiliar tool to navigate site files. In addition, I had been working most of the day with no breaks and was just eager to wrap things up. These ingredients make up a recipe for disaster. Another lesson learned, I suppose.

Let me start by saying: always backup your website files and databases. Always. If I had not taken my own advice, you would not be reading this now.

This evening I was attempting to delete a test installation of Textpattern from my server when I somehow got overzealous, lazy or both and apparently deleted my entire public_html directory. That means all of my site files on four websites (including this one) were completely and totally deleted.

I typically run a full backup once or twice every month and had one on my calendar for this coming Monday. I wound up using my latest copy from November 11th. So…it could have been worse.

Suffice it to say I am going to be working overtime to restore data added over the last 39 days to all four sites. That being said, I am thankful for the backups and very happy I do not have to start from scratch. These sites represent (literally) years of diligent labor.

Let this be a lesson to us all – backup, backup, backup!

If you observe some irregularities on this site or one of our others, I hope you will forgive the inconvenience. I will likely be working on getting things “back to normal” for a couple of weeks. If there is a major problem, please let me know.

Still Working on a Full Launch

It’s plain to see the site isn’t fully populated and functioning as yet. We’ve been too busy working on other sites to even think about putting the finishing touches on here. I suppose it’s just as well, as we are not quite ready to begin Abounding Media client projects anyway.

We’re on WordPress theme re-work number three now, as the other options just weren’t suiting our needs adequately. We were searching for just that right look to make people feel at home and at ease with their visit. We think these colors, and the more common layout probably accomplish that better than the last iteration. Let us know what you think about that, by the way.

Thanks to CodeScheme for the original code on the theme, which is (and will be) altered on an ongoing basis. Their link remains in the lower left corner, which is good protocol for anyone working with WordPress or other Open Source projects. If it were us, I know we would appreciate the recognition, meager as it may be.

We appreciate their help especially because we are not in the business of building things from the-ground-up unless it’s called for in the given situation. It was not in this case, or many others we hope to help – yes, when we get launched.

Thanks again for the support if you’ve been one of the many expressing eager interest in the future of this project. Hopefully things will all be taking off very soon!

Abounding Media: Almost Ready for Launch

We are thankful for the interest and inquiries we have already received from potential clients and other friends. It has been our intention to have a fully operational website in place before we started taking on other projects. Guess that means we’d better get to work!

The new logo and theme have been updated, and only a few minor tweaks are needed now. We’d also like to create a detailed Services page and About Us section. At that point we can launch some of our planned advertising, start handing out business cards and a lot of the other official stuff.

If you wound up here thanks to one of our social media accounts, thanks for dropping by. Please keep checking with us in the future for more on internet media and how it can be used to successfully proclaim the message of the gospel.