Blog about the Blog beta
Mon
11
May
2009
Jimdo Spotlight 6:8 Ministries
Isn't it great how you can just (Jim)do your thing with your own personal website?
We here at Jimdo think it is incredibly interesting to see what motivates our users and what missions stand behind their various sites.
This time I’d like to connect you with a person who literally has a powerful mission.
Let’s shine the Jimdo spotlight on Spencer Boulter and his site 68ministries.org
To Spencer putting others first is more than just a flowery phrase.
At one point he made the life-changing decision to found 6:8 Ministries, a mission that provides a home, food, education and most importantly love to poor children in Guatemala and Costa Rica.
In both countries Spencer and his staff establish different projects exactly where help is needed most, for example by building a Children's Feeding Center or forming relationships with local orphanages.
The key idea behind 6:8 Ministries is to offer anyone an opportunity to become involved in the experience of giving back to society.
You can either sponsor a child through online donations, or - which I think is really cool - travel to 6:8 Ministries and help directly on the spot.
So, if you're looking for a seriously different way to spend your summer break and expand your horizon, this is your opportunity, folks!
Another pivot of personal involvement that matters is giving interest free micro-loans to local businesses.
"One way we encourage others to help us meet the physical needs is by investing in the local people and the local economy by creating local businesses. We are always looking for new ways to connect
sponsors from (not exclusively) the United States with local, prospective business owners." Spencer writes.
I'd like to mention that 6:8 Ministries is a religious organization; nonetheless their important cause is beyond faith, so anyone is more than welcome.
Don't miss to check out their site - deal? :)
But first, get a personal impression on Spencer and his mission:
Interview with the founder of 6:8 Ministries Spencer Boulter
Can you describe 6:8 Ministries in three sentences?
6:8 Ministries exist to provide affordable life-changing mission experiences. We want to allow interested individuals to use their skills, talents, gifts and passions to bring hope to the hopeless, food to the hungry, and to love the unlovable.
Who came up with the original idea for 6:8 Ministries and motivated you to start the organization?
I'm the founder and now the executive director. The idea was to provide affordable mission opportunities for those who are looking to make a difference.
What do you personally do at 6:8 Ministries?
I oversee the daily operations in Costa Rica and Guatemala.
How many children do 6:8 Ministries support with the donations and what do you use the money for?
We currently provide educational sponsorships for over 100 children. The money is used to provide the necessary items for children to succeed in school (uniforms, books, registration, etc...).
We believe that education is a key element to these children escaping the grips of poverty.
"Our focus is more about providing our participants the opportunity to keep giving and helping after their experience ends."
Why should someone support 6:8 Ministries instead of the many other charitable organizations that exist? What do I "get" out of sponsoring a child?
None really. We are not trying to develop a big child sponsorship program. Our focus is more about providing our participants the opportunity to keep giving and helping after their experience ends.
You live in Costa Rica; we don't have many users there yet.
I live in Alajuelita, Costa Rica with my wife and four children.
How did you find out about Jimdo?
We were having web-site woes.We had a site professionally built using Dreamweaver. It looked great but wasn't very user friendly. It was hard to make changes and updates for a non-tech guy like me. We then tried to use GoDaddy, and Blue Voda, but they were very limited and complicated. Finally, I noticed a friend of mine (Brock Johnson - Deepstream Guatemala) had a great looking web site. I knew he wasn't a tech guy either so I asked him about his web-site. He then told me about how great Jimdo is...and he was right!
How has Jimdo enabled you to further 6:8 Ministries' mission?
It's been great! I love what the web-site allows me to do. We had a goDaddy site and bule voda...but neither were very user friendly and were often more trouble than they were worth.
Can you think of anything that would be a good addition to the existing Jimdo features?
No, but I'll let you know if I do.
We sure hope so! Same goes for anyone else, too! Let us know what you'd like us to improve: support@jimdo.com
If you were granted one wish for society, what would it be?
For all to know Christ as I do, and that all hunger and poverty would end.
Best wishes to Spencer and his entire team!
We hope you will have lots of success with what you do and would like to say:
Thank you very much for this interview!
- Lisa
Fri
16
Jan
2009
Photo Contest: And the winner is...
The waiting is finally over, and after a month of voting, the Jimdo community has chosen the winner of the big Jimdo Photo contest!
You sent in over 8,000 photos, and this one is #1: the little ladybug! And now he's going to be a big star at Jimdo.
Sandy Truong (Belgium)Ladybugs are known for bringing luck, and this one definitely brought lots of good luck for Sandy Truong! 36% of Jimdo users voted for this picture, catapulting it to 1st place! Sandy will receive a Nikon D60 SLR, two years of JimdoPro for free, a Gorillapod from Joby, and a Jimdo t-shirt!
Jimdo user myphotoworld (France)This photo generated a wave of excitement... 23% of Jimdo voters chose this photo, putting it at 2nd place!
Jimdo user myphotoworld wins a copy of the Extreme Foto
& Grafik Designer 2 software from Magix, one year of JimdoPro, a Jimdo t-shirt, and a GorillaPod!
Jimdo user superfossi (Germany)The Jimdo user community voted for this street art scene up to 3rd place! The photo is definitely just as colorful and diverse as the Jimdo community!
The third place prize (Magix photo software package to make great photographs even better, and a Jimdo t-shirt) goes
to Jimdo user Superfossi!
Congratulations to the three winners!
If you submitted a photo and didn't make it to the top 3, there's good news for you too! We're going to raffle off the remaining prizes (photo software from Magix, GorillaPods from Joby,
and Jimdo t-shirts) among all of the participants.
The winners will hear from us by email.
30 photos made it into the final round for the public voting. That's already a huge accomplishment, since we received over 8000 images from you. We'll be adding the "top 30" into the Jimdo photo
gallery soon, and then Jimdo users all over the world will be able to use them in their headers. We're looking forward to seeing these beautiful new headers
gracing the tops of your Jimdo pages!
Another big thank you from all of us at Jimdo to all the participants who submitted such fantastic photos and shared such great stories about your pictures.
Tue
08
Jul
2008
Blog Update and: Closed Beta ends, Open Beta begins!
A big Blog Beta Update is done! There are some changes concerning the teaser and the RSS feed, furthermore you can create categories > but we'll come closer to the details in a second..
First, we have to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH to all the busy Beta testers! Your incredible feedback, your suggestions and all your support helped us a lot - and is still helping us a lot to improve! Thanks! :)
Closed ends - open begins...
...and we would like to welcome all of you! Everyone who would like to test the blog, is invited to join the Beta! From now on, you'll not be asked to enter an invitation code - just go ahead and set up your Blog! Indeed, we'll stay Beta - that means, errors still may occur and other updates will be made, but everyone who fancies to have a blog should try it! We happily welcome every new Jimdo blogger!
And here are the technical details:
1. Teaser image and teaser concept changed
Blog Beta ElementWe got especially loads of comments and feedback concerning the teaser - thanks again! Many of you were of the opinion that the whole "teaser-thing" was way to complicated - and we think you're right! For this reason, we rethought the concept and changed it completely. And that's what came out:
Easily: there's no teaser anymore! :) The only fixed element of each blog article is the heading. After the heading, you can integrate any of the elements. The idea behind the teaser (a neat overview of all blog articles > you'll find a great example here: www.hsv-fs.de, the Jimdo-Page of a German soccer club) stays the same - you can define it in the blog settings through "length of teaser":
Length of teaser > how many elements should be displayed after the heading?
The figure you enter here, defines how many elements of the blog article's content are displayed as a teaser. Those who want to keep the originally considered appearance of the teaser (small image and introduction text), just choose "Text with photo" for the first element and the 1 for teaser length. But of course, any other element can be integrated after the heading... Just try it out - and we'll work on some good tutorials that will show you all features of the blog element step by step.
All existing teaser texts and images will be transformed into a "Text with photo"-element autmatically, so don't worry: no content will be lost!
Here's an overview of the changes for already existing blog articles:
- The option "Show teaser image" is no longer valid. All teaser images are visible now (because they have been transformed to a "Text with photo" element).
- You can change the size of your teaser image! (The quadratic shape of the image might be lost by changing the size)
- In the overview of the "Blog beta" element: from now on, the first element after the heading is displayed automatically in the teaser view.
2. Categories
Finally, here they are: Categories! Now you can sort your blog articles according to different topics.
Enter your categories here. If you would like to enter several categories for one article, it's important to separate the single categories by a space.
Already got some categories? They are displayed here - just choose one or more or add new categories.
And so the articles are sorted and categorized. The readers of your blog see the articles below the heading of the blog article:
3. RSS feed
We also overworked the RSS-feed: From now on, the complete blog article is shown in the RSS-feed. You'll always find your feed under /rss/blog in your Jimdo Page. It's also possible to generate a feed according to categories - just add the name of the category to the feed address:
- jimdo.com/rss/blog
- Category Blog beta: www.jimdo.com/rss/blog/blog-beta
Those who are not really sure what exactly an RSS feed is can visit Wikipedia :)
We would be pleased if you let us know what you think of the update :)
Have fun blogging!
All the best,
Your Jimdo Team
Wed
07
May
2008
Blog Beta successfully started
Wow, we're absolutely overwhelmed! So many of you signed up for the Blog Beta and are now busy building up their blogs. Your feedback is just awsome, thank you so much! We almost can't keep up with answering your mails and comments.. :)
We continue to work on the blog features and already finished the technology for the categories. Now, we're working on the surface so that you'll be able to use it...
Furthermore, we added the following features to our list:
- Post new blog articles to Technorati
- Add widgets of blog articles to del.icio.us, mr. wong, webnews etc.
- Teaser image: changing the size
We'll keep you in the loop - thank you so much for your support!
Spring and Fridel,
Jimdo Team
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