About this Website

Pardon us for a moment while we blab about how cool we think our website is.

Back in 1998 when we founded the company, we knew very little about the technologies that enable e-commerce on the Web. We contracted another company to create an e-commerce site for us and as such projects usually go, they got about 80% there and said they were done. In order to just get our site up and running we had to learn a little bit about Active Server Pages, HTML, SQL Server, and payment processing. We finished their job, which turned out to be a good thing since it forced us to learn how our site worked.

Over the years, we've expanded onto multiple platforms and multiplied our product range many times over. The days of being able to concisely list all of our products on a single order form were gone a long time ago, yet our lengthy order form persisted. The pressures of running a company and continuing to develop Bible software for a large number of different platforms took precedence over upgrading the website.

Five Years in the Making

Back in 2004 we hired a person who specialized in Web technologies and tasked him with re-engineering our site. We wanted a "catalog" and a "shopping cart" instead of an "order form". We wanted it to be easier to roll out a Bible reader for a new platform and have its catalog already populated with our full range of Bibles and books. We wanted marketing people to be able to create catalog pages without knowing (much) HTML. And we wanted to consume fewer processor cycles serving pages so our site would be scalable and perform better.

We did an incremental update to the site that gave it a more contemporary look and handy pull-down menus. But the order-form-based e-commerce system remained in place with the idea that we'd tackle that next.

Android: The Unlikely Motivation

When the Android OS had a surprisingly good Christmas in 2009 we knew we were going to have to start thinking about Bible software for that platform. Work began in late summer 2010. As the program came together we started thinking about what it was going to take to duct-tape another platform onto the old website and it was not encouraging. In November, Craig (Laridian President) made the mistake of saying, "I think if I just had a week during which I could focus on the new website, I could have it completed and it would make releasing the Android version of PocketBible^® a lot easier." Jeff (co-founder and VP Development) and Michelle (Marketing Director) looked at each other then at Craig and said, "Really? You should do that!"

Having "permission" to focus on the website was very motivating. Eight weeks later this site emerged. And that's why we don't pre-announce our ship dates: Thirty years in the software business and our estimates are still off by a factor of eight. :-)

Technologies

We use Active Server Pages (ASP) for server-side scripting, JavaScript for client-side scripting, a little Ajax in a couple spots, and a common CSS stylesheet for the entire site. jQuery is used to simplify some of the JavaScript and powers some nifty plug-ins. The database is SQL Server.

Our shopping cart is home-grown and interfaces directly to our credit card processor (Authorize.net).

All of our CSS, ASP, HTML, and JavaScript is written using TextWrangler on a Mac — no clever Web development environments. File management is provided by SourceGear Vault.

Beans and Leaves

Much of the work on the site was performed at Java Creek Cafe or Coffeesmiths, fueled by free WiFi and their Red Cedar and Fox Hollow blends, respectively.

When we're not in the mood for coffee, tea from The Republic of Tea fills our cups. We're especially fans of rooibos tea, aka "redbush tea" or "red tea", a naturally non-caffeinated herbal tea from South Africa.