Revamping JimmyAkin.Com

Since JimmyAkin.Org is my most active site these days, not much attention has been paid to JimmyAkin.Com of late. For time reasons and for technical reasons that I won’t go into, I haven’t been able to update it for some time. (Think: Years.)

I’ve left the files up there, warts and all, figuring that they’d do more good than harm, but I’m frankly embarrassed by the state of the site and would very much like to get the files moved to a location where I can more easily manage and update them.

But I need help.

I may need a little css help, but what I mainly need is assistance in getting the files transferred from the current JimmyAkin.Com site to the new site.

This will not involve doing real html coding. It will mostly just be copying and pasting text from the current files into a web form.

So I’m asking for volunteers!

If you’d be interested in helping out with the project, please e-mail me or let me know your interest and e-mail address in the combox.

I’m not asking for long-term commitments, just what time people feel they can affort to volunteer. I also don’t think it’ll take that long to get the site converted to the new location once we start.

Hopefully, a number of folks will be interested in helping out and we’ll be able to debut the new, revised, and updatable JimmyAkin.Com very soon!

Thanks much, folks!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

13 thoughts on “Revamping JimmyAkin.Com”

  1. Is this something we can do when we get a moment during the week? How large a block of time would be needed for each work unit? Provided it can really be broken up that way.

  2. I’d visited that site before, not knowing it was yours. (Well, back then, I hadn’t yet heard of you.) What a beautiful testimony to life, love and faith in, “A Triumph and a Tragedy.” God works in mysterious ways.. I am glad Renee had a Jimmy in her life, and vice versa.

  3. Is this something we can do when we get a moment during the week? How large a block of time would be needed for each work unit? Provided it can really be broken up that way.
    This is something that can be done whenever one has a free moment. It took me less than a minute to copy my conversion story–“A Triumph And A Tragedy”–to the new location, so the per-work-unit time will normally be *very* low.
    Incidentally, regarding my conversion story: Thanks, Honora!

  4. Yours was the first Catholic site that I found on the internet! I still link to articles on your site when posting on message boards.
    Unfortunately my knowledge of html is limited. I’ve done a little bit of it at my job, but mostly all I do is the kind of coding that is used on message boards.

  5. Jimmy…think automation first…
    What you need is a content management system (CMS). There’s boatloads of free, open source CMS out there. I’m familiar with a couple of the big ones (Joomla, namely) and am using Joomla right now.
    The advantages of using a CMS are fantastic:
    – never code the page structure in your content
    – loads and loads of plug-ins for extra functionality
    – only use the modules you need…
    – edit and create your content anywhere, from any computer
    – built-in blogging, versioning, produce/review/publish cycles, etc.

  6. Jimmy,
    I hadn’t heard of the other Jimmy Akin site until now. I hope you will update it and continue to have those files available. I would love to peruse more of them, though might I suggest a warning sign on the tearjerkers. Maybe a picture of some Kleenex— a big box! Thanks again.

  7. I’d abandon it and add a couple links to this page for relevant About Me personal info and whatever other articles you want, and then have it redirect here. I guess I thought you had already done the abandoning part since it hasn’t been updated for years while you update this every day (even if just to post saying you aren’t going to post).

  8. Jimmy, do you know about the open source utility wget? I’ve got a little wget-script that could suck down the entire jimmyakin.com (www.cin.org/users/james/) site in a matter of minutes. Then I could tar+zip that for you and send it to you over e-mail, it would be a pretty small file. Perhaps that wouldn’t help you out much, but let me know.
    Also, have you ever looked at Plone as a possibility for a flexible / customizable and free CMS solution? There is a hosting company called High Speed Rails that offers extremely affordable Plone hosting. Also, COREblog can be nicely integrated with Plone.

  9. Holy Schneikes! 1996 called, and they want their website back. Seriously, Jimmy, I remember reading those pages almost TEN years ago, and it hasn’t changed! That old site was pretty instrumental in the intellectual side of my return to the Church, and for that Heaven will be forever grateful to you. Keep up all of the good things that you do!

  10. Jimmy, I e-mailed you once to the address from that site but I don’t think you ever received it. Like Belloc, I found that site while contemplating why I was so dead set against joining my wife in converting to the Catholic Church. My decision to take an honest look and your well written and informative material, not to mention the work of the Holy Spirit, caused the scales to fall from my eyes. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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