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+ Bay Vista Baptist Church has served the spiritual needs of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast for decades. They + emphasize serving their community as well; they were a hub for + FEMA during Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery + efforts, and they are a relay point for each year’s + Operation Christmas Child + campaign. As of late 2013, the authors of their current website were no longer around, and no one could get to + the site to update it. We proposed setting up a site based on WordPress, where multiple people could have the + ability to maintain the site, reducing the risk of that happening again. We also mentioned that such a site could + also serve a sermon podcast feed, increasing the reach of their ministry. +
++ We manually downloaded all the publically-accessible parts of their old site, and used that content to create a + WordPress-based site, updating a few outdated items along the way. We also established a podcast feed for their + sermons. A few months after initially setting up the site, we updated the theme to be more mobile-friendly. +
++ In the nearly three years since we had set up the site, we were the only ones updating it. We had recently + migrated some older blogs to use a static site generator and were impressed with the performance gains. We + converted their site, to include writing a custom template to support the podcast feed; it is now generated + along with the rest of the site. +
++ We open sourced the site's source code, and set up + Azure Pipelines to automatically build and deploy the site on demand, as well as the regular podcast episode + release time. +
++ Bit Badger Solutions hosts this site; we also host the church e-mail accounts, and publish sermons to their + podcast feed weekly. +
++ Cassy Fiano (now Cassy Chesser) began blogging back in 2007 on Blogger. She worked hard to network with other + bloggers, and wrote prolifically. As she approached the end of her first year of blogging, she was about to + outgrow Blogger. She asked in a blog post if anyone had experience with Movable Type, the platform used by + another blog to which she contributed. I replied that I did not, but that I had experience with WordPress. +
++ We assisted her with finding a theme, and customized that theme to contain the same sidebar elements as her + current Blogger theme. We modified her old Blogger template to send people to her new blog (using redirection) + after displaying a note that the blog had moved. +
++ In July 2012, we began hosting the site, as well as continuing support for theme updates. This joined her + military wife blog Hard Corps Wife, which we had begun hosting in mid-2011. +
+Cassy formally decommissioned this site in early 2014.
++ Dr. Melissa Clouthier saw our work with Cassy’s site, and asked us to help her move off Blogger as + well. Melissa blogs from the political right, but also covers health issues and social media. She had been + blogging for a several years, and wanted to bring her old content with her to her new site. +
++ We created a custom theme based on another site, and developed graphics to complement that theme. We also + imported the content from her Blogger site into the WordPress site, and created a featured content template for + the front page. +
++ Melissa decommissioned her site; we took final snapshots of the information there, then assisted with shutting + it down. +
++ (NOTE: The thumbnail of the site represents a new skin on the original theme; while the theme is the + same, Bit Badger Solutions did not create the graphics.) +
++ Emerald Mountain Christian School is a private Christian school founded over 50 years ago. They use the Principle + Approach®, which emphasizes research, reasoning, relating, and recording to help students synthesize the + information they learn, rather than just requiring rote memorization. More information about the school’s + rich history can be found on their site. +
++ They had a website with very basic information and very little styling. We developed a theme (the one in the + thumbnail), based in large part on the design of their printed materials, and they approved the design. + Initially, the site only contained the content from their previous site. We then put their school calendar of + events up on the site, where parents could find the dates for upcoming events. Finally, we put all the material + from their Parent Information Packet online, which helped prospective families learn more about the school + before visiting it. +
++ The underlying engine of the basic website was switched from PHP to an ASP MVC web application, and the + back-end database was switched from MySQL to a PostgreSQL database. +
++ We passed off the content and hosting of the site to a new maintainer. They have since redesigned it; it is + accessible via the URL above, and at EMCSpatriots.org. +
++ Futility Closet exists as a place to give people a break from the dullness of work, by providing puzzles, + anecdotes, and more. It began on a shared host, but was growing too large and popular for that platform. +
++ We determined what the traffic requirements and size of the blog were, then made some recommendations. Greg + Ross, the site author, decided on one of our recommendations. He had backups of the existing database, so we + were able to set up a server and restore the data onto that new server. We configured WordPress and locked down + the server, and this blog was moved quickly. +
++ Bit Badger Solutions still hosts Futility Closet, ensuring that the underlying server receives performance and + security upgrades, monitoring site performance, and maintaining regular backups. +
++ Capitalizing on the growth from her Cassy Fiano blog, Cassy (now Chesser) began a separate blog in which she + could chronicle her experience as a military spouse. +
+We customized the header and sidebar of the theme, and set up the hardcorpswife.com domain.
++ In 2013, Cassy shifted priorities and closed this site down. She can still be found at other places around the + web. +
++ At its founding, Liberty Pundits was a joint venture by 3 established bloggers (Melissa Clouthier, Bill Dupray, + and Clyde Middleton) that, in their words, was aimed at becoming the new home for conservatives on the Internet. + With the three of them all being prolific bloggers in their own right, and the help of many contributors, Liberty + Pundits was a bustling hub of information. +
++ Bill and Clyde had been part of Patriot Room, an already-recognized powerhouse, and their desire was for + Liberty Pundits to contain the content that they had contributed to Patriot Room. The technical lead on that + blog had moved on, so we did some divining of what was there. Once we deduced the current setup, we obtained + the data from that site, determined how it would need to be manipulated to become part of a WordPress blog, + then accomplished the data migration. Initially, this was deployed on the same shared hosting account where + LibertyPundits.com, their podcast distribution site, already resided. The site’s traffic quickly + overwhelmed that solution. They then were moved by their host to a + VPS, which performed moderately better, but still had quite a few + issues, mostly related to the site’s traffic volume. We recommended a new server configuration, including + migrating from a fully-featured web server to a more lightweight web server, along with caching, and configured + that server. This configuration eliminated the bottlenecks, and enabled them to have several 100,000+ hit days + with no appreciable slowdowns. +
++ Bit Badger Solutions maintained the server, keeping it current with performance and security upgrades. We also + provided support to the primary 3 bloggers, when they had questions about WordPress or how the site was + performing. The site closed in August of 2011, as the primary authors moved on to other endeavors. +
++ Years ago, Daniel was responsible for keeping up with prayer requests for his Sunday School class. To help him + keep up with requests, automatically drop requests that were old, and track long-term requests, he wrote a custom + app made up of a few pages. Over time, he added security mechanisms and other options, arriving at the site that + exists today. It is provided free for the asking to any church, Sunday School class, or small group that desires + a tool to help them establish a continuous list of prayer requests. +
+Created the original site.
++ We rewrote this application using a more modern (at the time) framework (ASP MVC 3), building the security + additions from the ground up, and posturing it for an interface with + Virtual + Prayer Room. +
+In April 2012, version 4 was released with support for Spanish - our first multi-lingual application!
+Version 7 brought full mobile accessibility, along with an upgrade to a modern, ultra-fast web framework.
+PrayerTracker became an open source project.
+Host and maintain this application.
++ Many churches have prayer rooms – rooms set aside for people to come in to pray. Hoffmantown Church in + Albuquerque, New Mexico was one of these churches. However, they had seen the use of this physical prayer room + dwindling over the years. People had become less willing to drive to the church, especially at night, and + security became an issue as well; either prayer warriors had to know how to disable the security system, or the + church would have to remain unlocked. +
++ Having seen our work with the Not So Extreme Makeover: Community + Edition, the church contacted us to see if something similar could be developed to help their prayer + ministry. The resulting application that was developed extended the prayer room to wherever the prayer warrior + can get an Internet connection! Prayer warriors could enlist right from the site, and had to be approved. + Requests and updates were tracked by date/time, and warriors could record when they’ve prayed for a request + from the site, or from clicking a link in the daily e-mail they received with requests from their interest areas. + As many prayer needs are confidential, security and confidentiality were very important. Virtual Prayer Room + ensured these by providing varying security levels for prayer warriors and the ability to mark each request as + confidential. +
++ In 2016, Hoffmantown Church elected to begin using another package for their prayer requests. While a few other + churches had expressed interest in it, none ultimately decided to use it; so, in 2017, Virtual Prayer Room was + officially decommissioned. +
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