theWord Modules

Webmaster Update for Aug 20, 2024

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by

Pastor David Cox
in

I am chronicling my work on theWord twmodule website in this series of posts.

Today I am working on finding and eliminating as well as correcting the file names.

I added a few A author tw modules on AA-AI Authors page to test to see how that is going to work with my work off the site to prepare these modules.

My Plans

As far as immediately, I am planning on being finished to a point, and upload a lot of A author modules in the A pages sometime this week. As I am probably having kidney stones passing this week (and most of last week), that kind of takes precedent as far as my “plans”.

Notes on my Principles of working on the Website

Since I get modules from other theWord sites on the Internet and add them to this site, I do not want duplication. For example,

  • A.B. Simpson Adoption.twm
  • A.B. Simpson Adoption.gbk.twm
  • Simpson Studies on the doctrine of Adoption.twm
  • Simpson Studies on the doctrine of Adoption.gbk.twm

When I sort and post a dozen modules, there is no problem here.  But since I have so many theWord modules, I am separating by Author’s last name. This presents a problem for me. Firstly, these three files would be on the A page, and the author is Simpson. Secondly, on the S author page, there would be two copies of it. Since I am paying for all the expenses of the website out of my grocery money, I am paying for all the hosting and download. Some tw users just download everything, and they might have two copies, a thing they probably don’t want.

So, my principle of working here is to only use this format – AuthorName – (hyphen) Name of work . (period) gbk (General Book) . (period) twm (theWord module).

  • Simpson Studies on the doctrine of Adoption.gbk.twm

In general, I do not use the author’s first name in the filename. An exception is a book by a man named Pope today, and I left his first name because I do not want people to think that it was by a Catholic pope. This is where I want the filename to conform to this rule. Another exception is when there are two different people with the same last name, where I usually always include the first name or an initial. (On modules that people send me, I do not do this unless I open the module and look at it, see who it is, and then change the filename.)

Also note, many modules have some abbreviation in it to indicate the module creator. I myself used “(DCox)” at one time. I have frowned on this as time goes along, because the correct place for a module creator to put his information is in the module properties within the module. Please note that every module should have the module creator as well as their email address in case there are errors, so that he can fix them.

Also note that I used to make my modules encrypted, so nobody can change them. My normal preference is that the modules are closed to new edits (to protect the user from erasing material by accident) and to not encrypt the module, and to compress it. If people want to convert the module to say MySword, an encrypted theWord module cannot be converted. Moreover, while it is nice to encrypt the module so that your creation isn’t changed, creators often do not tooltip the module’s verses, nor do they go the extra step to compress it for publication. Since those two steps are necessary, it is frustrating when such a module that needs tooltipping is encrypted. I got very frustrated because a module I created wasn’t tooltipped, and I encrypted it, and lost the original unencrypted version. As a result of that, I just don’t encrypt stuff anymore.

The vast majority of what I am doing is working with public domain works, so the point is kind of mute, to protect one’s own work. We don’t get paid for what we do for the Lord here on earth, but rather we survive economically as well as we can, and our reward and appreciation is waiting for us in heaven.

Commentary Modules

Note that theWord has a specialized format for commentaries. Using this format (type of module that has *.cmt.twm as its extensions), theWord knows that it is a commentary, and it links the place in the commentary to the book, chapter, and verse in the linked Bible window. But you have to start with a commentary format to do this when you start creating the module. You can make any commentary in a regular book format (*.gbk.twm), and it is readable. maybe it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the commentary format module, but still it works. As a rule of working, I am placing all commentary modules, both cmt and gbk commentaries on my https://www.theword-commentary-modules.com/

Dictionary Modules

What I said above about Commentary modules, I am also applying to dictionaries, whether they are specially in the dictionary format, or just a regular gbk book. https://www.theword-dictionary-modules.com/

About my Health

Over the past dozen years, my health has been going down as I get older. I do not know how much longer I can (1) physically keep up with the maintenance of this website (nor any other of my site, I have 34), (2) develop new modules for theWord, (3) pay for this website to stay on the Internet. I have investigated Archive.org, and twmodules.com is on archive.org, but even though you can browse and see my entire website over time, in none of them will the download links work.

How much is your website visited and downloaded

Between the 34 sites that I have, I regularly hit around 100 GBs downloaded and traffic (viewing pages which are very little kilobytes normally). Some months I hit around 300 GBs traffic and downloading. My Bible module websites are the heaviest among these statistics. Actually, I don’t worry anymore about how many times a particular module or file is downloaded. The problem is that there are envious people (“brethren”) who want to compare this site to their site, and denigrate me if they can. Go ahead. I ignore them and that. But also there are some people who are just malicious, and their evil never stops, it seems. Out of pure evil, in July 2024, a hacker hit our church website in Spanish, got in, and then erased everything and put up their e-commerce website in Mandarin. I got in and erased their stuff and put mine back on it. But only after about 2 full days of work for me. This was the second time that I fixed the website in July. So I basically lost a week’s worth of time and effort because of this.

Also, the hosting company suspends my websites if they use too many resources. This has happened at least 30 times this year. I have to constantly study hacking and how to protect a website. (I am a pastor, not a Web designer). In researching what makes a site get suspended, I find people who hit a certain page, and they have an army of bots, and they point them all at that page. Maybe I put up stuff that is just superb. But come on, these works are public domain works and available in PDf format everywhere on the Internet. I see nothing but a bot when a single page or download link is hit 25,000 or 35,000 times IN A SINGLE DAY! I mean, my site has a visitor rate of like 250,000 for the month, Google AdSense ignores all of that, and who cares? Regularly, I see weeks in which some download peaks 10,000. Most weeks, there is something above 3,000 downloads per day. But when my other downloads (that are just as good, and 100 times more download titles in comparison), they are getting hit only 200 or 300 per day, and some only get 10 downloads in a day. So that kind of stuff is puffy, making me feel good, but why share it with the world on a day by day basis.

Where I do use download counters, I do not change the number of downloads, because I want to look good. One time I was looking for a certain work, and I checked a site, not there. Later I was looking for something else, and they just uploaded it. In like 1 hour after they uploaded it, the counter was already over 500 downloads (something like that). I cannot prove anything, but the number of downloads on a site proves nothing, nor should you be impressed by that. So since a download counter increases the software load of the site, and when I am having problems with the site being suspended, I forego using it.

Updating Modules

I am going to try to update at least some of these modules before I post them on the site. Note that it is extremely important to know not just the date of the module (easy) but the module version. This is inside theWord program, you click move theWord to the module you want to check, and it is in the module properties dialog (alt click on the title bar on the particular module). I am making this reference exterior in the filename now. I will see how it goes. But if you download modules from other sites, nobody does this. This is how you can tell if your module on your hard drive is newer, the same, or older than some module you see for download. Only here in twmodules.com are people thinking about this level of service (yet we get a big 1 donation from among our all 34 websites PER YEAR). Sad the way our world wants everything for free and great quality and service. I serve the Lord, but you benefit. At least put an extra 100 dollars into the offering plate at your church every year for the value I am placing in your hands. Also, pray a prayer for me and this ministry at least once every year.

Version Numbering

In software, the way a work is numbered in versions is that when a major change happens, then the greater or major version number changes, i.e. 1.0 to 2.0. When a minor change happens, then the minor number changes, 1.0 to 1.1. Since other people usually don’t ever fill out the module’s properties before posting, much less compressing it, tooltipping it, and preparing it for publishing, what other people do with module numbers don’t seem to be very important. I will use their version numbers if it comes with a number, but my rule of work is the following.

When I first make a module, it is major version number 1, minor 0. If I make minor changes after the module is published, then the minor number is upped. These minor changes are like fixing some place that has poor grammar. When I open a module and the entire module doesn’t look good, then I reformat the entire module using LibreOffice and macros. That gets a major version number bump up one. When I find any module that has text cut off from the original work, likewise a major version number bump. If I find eSword topics, zeros before 1-9 like chapter numbers 02, 03, 04, etc. then that is a major version bump. Basically if anything that alters the topic titles content, it gets a major version bump. Compressing, closing, preparing for distribution, gets a minor version bump. If I find I need to tooltip it, a major version number bump.

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