About
The purpose of this blog is to share information about how we can appropriately use the Internet to share the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It includes information about all things Web as well as practical examples of how to use the Web.
Larry Richman is the Director of the Internet Coordination Group for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes referred to as the “Mormons,” the “Mormon Church,” or “Mormonism” ).
My job is to coordinate the content and services of Church Web sites and related applications. I am the product manager of LDS.org and help coordinate and synergize the work of the product managers of all Church Web sites. The Church’s Web properties consist of hundreds of domain names and tens of thousands of Web pages (plus millions of pages of documents in the Gospel Library). Church Web sites are read by over a million unique visitors each month with 5 million visits and 50 million page views per month (not counting the genealogical research site FamilySearch).
Our Internet Coordination group establishes roles, processes, and standards and provides governance for the development and maintenance of Church Web sites and services. I also lead the Church’s Search Engine Optimization Team. I managed a complete redesign and rebuild of LDS.org in 2003-2005, including implementing XML, metadata standards, common taxonomy, a content management system, portal server technology, and new search tools.
Copyright © 2007 Larry L. Richman. Some rights reserved.
[...] As explained in the about page of his blog, Larry Richman has started his own blog at ldsWebguy.com. His blog is not an official Church publication, but it does provide some interesting insight about what goes on behind some of the Church Internet strategies. I’ve read some of his posts, and some of them are ok. [...]
[...] ldsWebguy is a blog I just became aware of today that is kept by Larry Richman, the Director of the Internet Coordination Group for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On his about page, Larry states that My job is to help coordinate the content and services of Church Web sites and related applications. I am also the Product Manager of LDS.org and lead the Search Engine Optimization Team. [...]
May I make a suggestion? The LDS General Conference Scripture Citation Index is the single most powerful tool in the world for learning what LDS leaders have said about the scriptures. I cannot tell you how many amazing things I have found using it to prepare Institute and Sunday School lessons.
So it makes me really sad that no one in the Church seems to know about it. Would it be possible to link to it from lds.org or, better, make it part of lds.org?
Larry,
You might already be working on it, but I would love to see an overhaul of the LDS Library. The current one is cumbersome, slow, buggy, and not very user friendly at all.
You folks did such an amazing job w/ the new scripture site, and the lds catalog site, so my hope is that the next one you’re tackling is the library! Pretty please?
Just wait…. If you like the new scriptures program, you’re going to LOVE the new Gospel Library. We have completely redesigned it. I’ll post a blog about it soon.
Larry,
You are my hero!
::: eagerly waits in anticipation :::
Why doesn’t the LDS Church release Ensign magazines on their site previous to 1970?
Prior to 1970, the Church doesn’t have the electronic rights to all the text and images that appeared in the magazines (http://magazines.lds.org). It took several years to prepare the text and images for the Web for the magazines back to 1970, including contacting all the artists and authors of the articles and securing the needed rights.
The advances are amazing, but I do have one concern. I have hundreds and hundreds of links from my site to lds.org. Will all these links be broken or will they somehow redirect?
The question is asked above:
“I have hundreds and hundreds of links from my site to lds.org. Will all these links be broken or will they somehow redirect? ”
Answer: We have created a strategy where many of the major URLs will redirect to the new URLs. For those that won’t, we’ll give you directions on how to convert them to the new URLs. We’ll publish that information as soon as we finalize a few final aspects of it.
Has anyone ever considered doing a podcast of general conference talks or Music and the Spoken Word? I don’t mean just during conference, but similar to the BYU Devotionals on KBYU TV where a talk form the archives were posted every day. I would imagine that conference talks, CES Firesides, and any other material that was directed to a general audience could be used as material for such a podcast.
The BYU Recent Talks “podcast” has included all General Conference talks for at least the last 2 conferences.
Here’s the podcast feed link — http://byubroadcasting.org/BYU_Devotionals.rss
[...] Many blogs around the Bloggernacle are powered by WordPress. For example, LDS News Watch, LDS Web Guy, LDS CIO, and Ask Gramps (and this blog!) all run on WordPress software. [...]
Hey Larry - Great blog. I’d love to hear you comments on the research done by the Kaiser Foundation on “Media Multitasking Among American Youth” located at http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia121206pkg.cfm and how the church will support these media multitaskers on the internet sites.
Larry,
Consider integrating this new, homegrown XML Web Service into Stake and Ward website calendars. Implementation: Click on a calendar event, select a user-defined Group (YM, YW, Elders, RS, etc) then click Send Out Reminder Calls button. System will automatically call everybody in the Group delivering a customized reminder message (TTS or pre-recorded .wav with telephone). Opt-out available, uses VoIP. Fully scalable, java application.
Saves members hours of calling time with a proven track record of increased participation in church activities. http://www.LDSReminderCalls.com
Your comment email validator rejects valid email addresses in the form “username tag@domain.com“. For example, Gmail provides this email address format so that users can track the origin of email received by appending a description like: gmail_user_name ldswebguy.com@gmail.com.
I recently created a WardMap application that allows a user to create an interactive Ward Map based upon the csv membership file that LDS.org provides to ward websites. The response has been overwhelming. Many have asked if this would eventually be offered as a service on LDS.org and so I’m posting here to solicite some feedback from someone at LDS.org. The website can be found at the following address:
http://wardmap.theballfamily.org/intro.asp
Hope to hear from you,
Kevin
Let me clarify one thing — I’m not looking for any profit or anything…just the sharing of an idea. I’d be more than happy to give my code base to LDS.org.
I am not an LDS but Orthodox. I am using new media to promote our church.
Jacob Lee
Larry,
At least two people have come to my blog with a referral URL indicating they were searching for an audio Navajo Book of Mormon.
I know the church has Navajo cassettes of the BoM for sale at http://www.ldscatalog.com
So if you could suggest to the right people that they transfer it to MP3 and make it available on the audio download page, along with Portuguese and Spanish, that would satisfy at least a few people.
P.S. I realize that it is only “Selections of” that is available both in print and on cassette. But hey, it’s better than nothing.
You’re website is great! I never knew there was so much LDS Internet info out there! Thank you for taking the time to share this with everyone. I plan on using some of it in the future.
I’m writing to tell you about a little project I’m working on with Chris Heimerdinger. He’s the author of the “Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites” books. He also has a new movie out you may be interested in blogging about…
After a solid run throughout the state of Utah, Chris Heimerdinger’s first feature film, Passage to Zarahemla, opens outside of Utah starting this Friday. He will be coming to an area near you very soon.
Chris is available for interview and would love to discuss with you his incredible journey from best-selling novelist to award-winning filmmaker. Many people do not realize Chris was a filmmaker first and received the Sundance Film Institute’s Most Promising Filmmaker award, and others awards as well.
Feel free to contact me at tams8275@yahoo.com to set up an interview with Chris. You can also contact his PR manager Bettyanne Bruin at bruinpr@yahoo.com.
I appreciate your consideration of this e-mail and look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Larry,
You gave a talk at BYU-ID last Oct, that was aired on BYUTV Sunday Mar 30. It was great, is there any way to get a copy or audio of it?
Thanks,
Kent Boren
The talk was printed up in a booklet, which you can get online from Century Publishing or at Deseret Book stores. Audio (and the raw text) are available on BYU-Idaho’s site (select the year 2007, then scroll down to Oct 30).
I just saw part of your devotional talk last Sunday as well. It was really good.
Good luck with your new calling.
Larry,
The Church News article, on pages 8-9 of the March 15th, 2008 edition, about employment was frustrating to read, and was a good example of a need for your Internet Coordination Group.
The article never gave an url to find the web pages/site it talked about.
The URL in the headline, “employment.com” is not a church web site. Apparently, the author or an editor just made up that headline for it’s verbal appeal, not for it’s technical correctness.
The small print at the bottom:
“Source: employment pages on: lds.org/”
was the only clue, but then the employment pages link is buried under the “Home and Family”, and doesn’t seem to have a human-friendly alternate URL.
I tried typing “www.lds.org/employment”, but was taken to a page that is about getting employed _by_ the church.
This Church News article would have been a great opportunity to create and use an easy-to-type URL using a human-friendly sub-directory or sub-domain off of http://www.lds.org.
Even without a human-friendly URL, the author could/should have written out the “click on” instructions.
Additionally, it may make sense to link from there to the employment section of ProvidentLiving.org, and vice versa.
I’ll also send some feedback to the editor of Church News. I just wanted to let you know of this opportunity for coordination too.
I had an idea this morning. What if everytime someone asked the question “where is God” online, they were directed to lds.org? There is something wonderfully symbolic and true about being re-directed in that manner. So I checked the availability for these domains and they all looked available:
whereisgod.com
whereischrist.com
whereisjesus.com
It’s probably a bad idea, probably not consistent with the image the Church is trying to project, but on the off-chance that it is a good idea, here it is.
Jer, if they’re not taken already (since you posted), maybe you could register them, and redirect them to http://www.mormon.org. Or put up a simple page with links to mormon.org and lds.org