There is just a chance I can persuade someone I know to offer hosting under the best of terms. Unless God has reasons for some other deal, this looks better than anything I’ve seen so far. However, the key person is pretty busy right now, so we have to be patient.
First, I believe we should have a static landing page attached to whatever domain name we get. This page will emphasize the most critical message we have: heart-led awareness. On this page we will mention Kiln of the Soul virtual parish and Radix Fidem as our current label for the religion behind the parish. (Have you got a better name for it? I’m open.) The labels aren’t that important, but they will serve to distinguish us in the minds of visitors.
Second, we will keep this blog, but hosted there, with the name “Kiln of the Soul” — I can copy the data files of this entire blog to the new host. Meanwhile, I’ll keep this one open and link back to the other. Instead of full posts, I’ll start featuring teaser bits on this blog.
Third, we will also have a private email service attached to the domain name for our parish activities. Given past experience, I’ll have to keep an eye on usage. I’ve dealt with people masquerading as eager participants trying to use a previous service for spamming (back when I was involved in mainstream churches). The whole idea is that you can expect some measure of privacy for anything pertinent to our fellowship here. I’ll try to implement a sort of contact form on the site for those who would rather not bother with setting up an account. The idea is that the page itself will establish an encrypted link so that you can leave private messages for me or someone else who wants to exercise some level of leadership in the parish.
Finally, I will try to offer an SSH service on the home ghost server. What that means is, for those of you willing to learn how it all works, you can log into the server on a non-graphical terminal interface (a “console” in Unix terminology) with your own account and use the internal mail system. If you run the term “free shell account” through your favorite search engine, you can read up on it and get some idea of what it’s all about. You’ll have an account on this machine and you’ll get access to copies of stuff not easily found out there on the Net.
Here’s the concept: Regular readers already know that I advocate a radical digital freedom of information. My stuff is free; copyright is totally voluntary. It’s part of my religion that, if something is in digital format, you can’t justly restrict access for very long. So while I tend to play by the unjust rules in existence, it’s a matter of tactics, not moral agreement. Provided we can keep the traffic minimal enough to avoid hassles from my ISP, I’ll offer links to files that won’t be indexed anywhere on the Net. No, I don’t do movies and pop entertainment, but I have picked up a few books and some worship songs. This will be restricted to those who have cultivated some kind of fellowship with me here. This is sharing my expertise — God’s gifts to me — with the Body of Christ. You can make special requests. You may also have some interesting things you want to add to this collection. Be aware that we simply must emphasize file formats that are as small as possible.
Again, the purpose is to glorify the Father, not merely to fill our human appetites. I haven’t yet worked out the specifics for this private access, but I’m confident of divine guidance. Once I learn how to offer it, you’ll have to learn how to use it.
Can you elaborate on how access to the books would work? Would you scan them or ..?
This is pretty much all greek to me, as you know I really don’t understand 3/4 of what you’re saying in these posts, but you start mentioning access to books and my ears perk up!
There are books in ebook and PDF format out there already. Sometimes you can find them in places. My current collection might not interest everyone, but I’m hoping folks will share.
“Instead of full posts, I’ll start featuring teaser bits on this blog.”
Because of backups it might be better to have the content available here (or somewhere else, perhaps another WordPress backup blog?) in full form as well. Of course there’s always Archive.org.
Just a thought.
Thanks; it helps to know if it matters to anyone. The main blog will move to our new host and will be under my full control. The older stuff remains here and will be mirrored there. The more serious posts are already backed up as text files on my hard drive and in backup copies, because I compose those posts in a text editor before I post them. The issue is the control over subscriptions. I’ve gotten a lot of complaints lately about WP dropping people from the subscription list, and other folks asking to be subscribed who can’t figure out how to get through the process WP uses. The reason I’ll place previews here is for continuity’s sake and because more people are likely to stumble across this one until the other one starts showing up in search engines and such. I’ve decided to just deal with running WP (Open Source version) on the new blog and do my best to keep it secure and up to date.
Ed, au contraire, clearly you are well read and I would love a peek at your book shelves. Maybe some day you would think of offering a recommended reading list.
I was referring to the electronic formatted books. That’s mostly history and politics, aside from the easy-to-find computer technology stuff. Still, if you are looking for something specific, I can find a surprising array of things. Scanning books I have in paper format might come later, but I’ve lost tons of what I had in the past. I tend to give them away after I read them.