I have a lot of questions about this so here goes.

1. What real world problem does it solve?
2. Who would use it?
3. How does it fit within the mission of the church? (See Matthew 28:19-20)
4. How will it be financially viable? (Biz model)
5. What defines something as Christian? (to be indexed)
6. What technology powers it?
7. How accurate and useful will the searches be?
8. What would compel me to use it? (I'm looking for an elevator pitch)

I'm sure I'll have more questions.

I like the idea of a christian search engine but when I first went to your site, the first thing I though of was google. It seemed to me the layout is like google and there was not much that seperated that distiction of the two. I am not a designer, but that was the impression I got from the site. Also, Matt brought up some good questions that would be interesting to hear some answers too. Christian search engine... sweetness :-)

1. What real world problem does it solve?
Good Clean Search.
2. Who would use it?
Hopefully those that dont want dirty things to show up.
3. How does it fit within the mission of the church? (See Matthew 28:19-20)
A Family (again clean) alternative
4. How will it be financially viable? (Biz model)
I have not and dont think this is a Viable Business - Who can really compete with Google. I really am not thinking of Monies - It would be nice.
5. What defines something as Christian? (to be indexed)
That is a Good question, and am not sure that I can answer this correctly - I want it to be family friendly....
6. What technology powers it?
PHP/Mysql and those whom submit sites.
7. How accurate and useful will the searches be?
Searches can be pretty accurate, and are waited
8. What would compel me to use it? (I'm looking for an elevator pitch)
The Perfect Elevator Pitch, this will take a while.

My goal really is to have a place that people to come and get information about church life and personal help for Christ. I Want to really put things on my site that will link into a search engine .ie Find a Church. But even more than that too - make your church eco friendly (I think churches get a bad rap in being clean - recycling . . .) An no I think Al Gore is a Fraud!

hmmm I will be to edit in more - kids tired....

Tutelage -

I want to keep it clean - where Yahoo has failed. And no I dont want to look like google. I have some updates that I am working with - change to come in a few weeks.

Thanks

What does 'Good Clean Search.' mean? What defines clean and good in this context? Google has SafeSearch filtering of it's content. By default this is set to moderate but it can be increased.

This may go hand in hand with this but what does having a search that's clean (definition still to come) have to do with Christianity? Couldn't non-Christians benefit from it as well. Or, does this go beyond clean content to target Christian content?

As far as technology goes, you shouldn't build a search engine with PHP/MySQL. It's not very good for it. Using this type of technology and being a search engine wiz will only give you semi decent results. You're better off with something like Apache Solr or the Lucene engine to power the search.

To have a place where "a place that people to come and get information about church life and personal help for Christ." is a good cause. I like that. How does a search engine do that and what type of person does it target? Would a non-Christian use the site? How about someone exploring Christianity? If so, why?

What kind of demographic would want, whey would they comes to your site, and will they find what they are looking for/need?

A lot of people have a problem with a loving God because there's suffering in the world. When I searched your site for this I didn't find anything to talk about the issue. A major reason people leave the church is they are given a better case against Christ than for him. When I tried to search around this I didn't find anything helpful.

This may be due to lack of content. If so, how do you plan to make it useful?

Clean - I meant this as the looks of the page, I don't want a lot of links,pictures, just straight to the point a search engine. No fluff!????

I have been definitely thinking about the content - yes I need to add morem and have been - I think that I really want to change what I have been thinking about in my head what I thought that I wanted. . . If that makes since.

I think I do want to gear it towards for of a salvation search engine - it that makes since -- a personal cry for help search engine??????

I have actually today gone back and looked up the sites that I have on thepater.com and removed a couple because, they were sites that were christian and had christian content (bibles and devotionals) but they also bashed things that Christians do - IE christian music, Bibles and such.

SO I guess I have found more of a direction that I want to take now.

Matt,
I finally figured out what I like most about you. You are what the following talks about:
Prov 27:17 "Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another."
Heb 10:24 "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:"

You always make us think about why and what and our goals in doing things in His name but always in love and tactfully. That my friend is a gift. Thank you.
---
There is still work to be done. I typed in the term wife (getting married later this year) and entries 12-28 are the same result.

I don't like the all-caps links at the top of the page as far as how it looks, but other than that I like the clean feel of the page and think that's part of why Google has done so well.

Get those things Matt addressed, such as is it Christian or just clean and what exactly that means, and I think you have a good start. It's good to pursue our dreams - much better than to sit back and never act.

Peace.

Jim

Thanks for the comments - It had skipped my mind about marriages. I have added around 50 sites now for Marriages and Divorce Proofing your new marriage.

This is a very imported subject to have. I will keep adding more sites to thepater.com.

I am starting to make some small changes to the site now - I just found an error that was adding the css to the middle of the pages (dont know how I did that one.)

I am looking at the "Changing of the Search" to a "Find God" theme.

Have a good day - and remember always "Date" when you are married. Just because you get married does not mean you can stop going on dates!

I'm sorry, but there are things I still don't get.

Let me list some assumptions I see. Please let me know if they are wrong.

• The site is targeted at existing Christians.
• The site is meant to help Christians find material around problems they are having.
• The goal is to provide a clean interface.

Is this right?

I'm curious about the sites that were bashing things Christians do. We, as Christians in western culture, spend a lot of time being of the word and have developed a Christian subculture full of many bad things. This is not good. How were they handling these issues? They are Christian problems.

You've started to add and remove sites based on a criteria. Do you have that documented anywhere? If so you should have it posted so people know what the site selection is based on. Something like this, would, also help keep you consistent.

In the past you've stated that this is PHP driven and that you want to provide relevant results. Can you share any insight into math behind the searching? Are you using Zipf's law? How are you normalizing your data? How is the relevancy score, displayed next to each result, calculated?

Matt you are right:
I also want to make the site if you are not a christian and you are looking for answers about becoming a christian, I have added a new section about Finding Christ: http://www.thepater.com/United-in-Chirst.php

Bashing: I was reviewing sites and I don't remember which site now - but it was bashing Christians that were popular (Musicians, Theologists. . .). I want to help people with questions not create more with the harsh words on these sites. I really want to find the sites again and contact the owner and ask questions... It also had a lot of useful stuff and that is why I first added the site.

I have added: Sites will not be added if there Biblical Teachings and Moral Value do not stand up to the Bible - Yes I need to work on this,

I will dig a little to find out more of the Search functions and such