Paul Baloche
Desperation Band
Brian Doerksen
Don Moen
Desiring God
The Practice of the Presence of God 
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Bible Gateway Search Google Gadget
Main Website
Trey Meier at the TWKM blog has written a great gadget/widget to add the ability to directly search bible verses from Bible Gateway from either iGoogle or you own website or blog.
It works by presenting you with a search box where you tap in the verse you want to read, and the widget then automatically opens us Bible Gateway with the verse that you have requested. You can choose from a multitude of translations (including NIV, ESV, KJV, and many more) and the widget has alos been translated into French and Spanish. You can see an example of the Bible Gateway Search Google Gadget at the bottom of this post…
For those not aware, iGoogle is the personalized home page that you can get with google. It is a great base for a home page and includes widgets for various things from emails to the weather. You can add it to iGoogle by clicking on the “+ Google” button that is on the widget at the end of this review.
If you are adding it to your own website there a lots of options for adjusting the colors, size and some of the text of the widget to ensure it looks professional. The version below is just the default version, which is similar in style to the iGoogle version also.
Tags: bible, bible study, bible-gateway, christian, free, resources, website
Related posts on this site:Asbo Jesus is a great website for Christian cartoons/clip art that is free to use as long as you link back to the website. I have reviewed Asbo Jesus in more detail in the past, but have now added it to the popular ‘Definitive guide to free Christian clip art’.
There are new pictures/cartoons each week, the one below was recently published and I thought it was superb…
Tags: christian, clip art, clip-art, free, general, resources, website Related posts on this site:
With Christmas almost upon us you may be scouring the net trying to find the perfect Christmas themed graphics, clip art, or images for your website. But where do you go to find good quality Christmas related clip art when so many of the images are cheesy or badly designed?
The recent ‘Definitive guide to free Christian clip art’ post from this blog is a good starting point. However a lot of these may not have great Christmas clip art (or any at all) depending on their focus.
The websites shown below are the best places on the internet I could find for Christmas clip art. Stock Exchange and Flickr tend to be more aimed at the social aspect of Christmas whereas the other websites are more likely to have nativity images. This is not a definitive rule though and there is some cross over so you may want to browse through all of the websites!
- Stock Exchange:
With around 1,000 photos just related to Christmas you are likely to find what something you like here. The quality is also very high as all pictures are vetted before they are added to Stock Exchange. - Flickr:
There are 42,000 images tagged with Christmas, but the quality is not high as on Stock Exchange. Check out Skellie’s post to learn how to find the best pictures on Flickr. - ChristArt:
This is a great site, although there are only 22 Christmas images. They are good quality though and include the first image on this post. - Pick and Print Gallery:
This website has some good hand drawn clip art. Scroll down the sidebar to find the various Christmas sections. - Gospel Gifs:
There is a whole page of Christmas clip art on this website which makes it easy to browse. I particularly like the star and manger clip art which comes in a variety of colours.
Hopefully these websites will help you find the perfect clip art for Christmas! Do you know of any other websites that have good Christmas clip art?
The Christmas tree image was produced by tanakawho and hosted on Flickr
Tags: blogs, christ-art, christian, Christmas, clip art, clipart, free, resources, website Related posts on this site:
For anyone who hosts a blog on WordPress, Butler Blog have updated their useful bible verse plugin called Verse-O-Matic.
The basic premise of Verse-O-Matic is that it allows you to display a random verse in your blog or website. You have to add the verses you want rather than them being provided already, with just four examples included in the download.
Ease of use
Verse-O-Matic is very easy to install by simply uploading the relevant folder into your plugin folder and activating it. You can then put the code on your blog to display the code. There are good instructions on the Verse-O-Matic page as well to help should you need it. There is a also a sidebar widget included if you mange your sidebars with this method.
The set-up page within your WordPress is well laid out and intuitive to use.
What does it look like?
It is a very simple design and just displays the text. You can have a look at it on Butler Blog. Of course, you can easily use CSS to change the way the verse is displayed. You can decide to just have the verse, or to link to various other translations via Bible Gateway.
Other features and usage
Verse-O-Matic displays a single random scripture verse from the list that you manage on the WordPress ‘manage’ page. You can choose from showing a random verse each time a page is loaded, a randomly selected verse-of-the-day, a specifically chosen verse each day, or a single static verse that won’t change until you change it.
Each verse can also be linked to anything you want. You could choose a specific verse in a specific translation, a set of verses, or even an online tract or blog post.
Summary
This is a fantastic WordPress plugin if you want to show random verse on your blog.
Ratings:
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Strengths
- Flexible
- Easy to use
Weaknesses
- You have to add in all th verses you want to show, it would be great if there was a version available with lots of verses already included, or way to import them from somewhere.
Links
Website:
http://butlerblog.com/verse-o-matic/
Tags: blogs, plugin, resources, verse, verse-o-matic, website, wordpress Related posts on this site:
Using pictures on your blog or website will make a more striking impact to your readers and make your posts instantly appealing. With so many blogs out there, it is vital to make sure that yours stands out. Using good quality images is the perfect way to compliment your well crafted posts.
Whether you are after photos, cartoon images or clip art you should be able to find what you are after in the websites shown below. Many of these images are also suitable for use in other material (e.g. Sunday school lessons etc.). To use the free images some websites may require you to create an account, whilst others may request that you give credit to them when you use the images. Some people take umbrage at this, but personally I am more than happy to give credit where it is due. Therefore, before you use any of the images just make sure you follow their ‘rules’ and don’t infringe any copyrights. However, all the websites are 100% legal and also have free plenty of free content.
Are there any websites that I’ve missed? If so please leave a comment and let everyone know your favourite site…
The recommended sites are split into four sections, and you can click on the thumbnails to see a larger image.
Always check the copyright requirements for the websites, they are all free but may require you to link back to them or give credit.
1. The best free Christian images websites
Here are the best websites that are focused on providing Christian images:
ChristArt.com
This site has a superb collection of clip art images and has new content added each week. The images are sorted by artist, or you can search for key words. There are also some pretty good favicons.
Christian ClipArts.net 
This site is packed with great cartoon images, all of which are easy to search through. These would be particularly suitable if your website is aimed at children or youth.
Free Christian Images
This website has a variety of high quality clip art images. It is especially strong for clip art based on words from the scriptures. Unfortunately the site is not now updated regularly.
Asbo Jesus
There are some superb cartoons here which are free to use, with the content growing every week.
Morning Star
Whilst not all the pictures are great at Morning Star there are definitely some worth checking out. There is a particularly good collection of crosses and ixoye (the Christian fish image).
Upon this Rock
Upon this rock has a large amount of picture verses and also a good collection of ixoye (the Christian fish image).
John Bell’s Christian Art Gallery
John Bell’s website has a fantastic collection of scripture images (basically a picture with a verse from the bible on it).
2. The best free general images websites
Just because a website is not Christian doesn’t mean it won’t have images that you can use on a Christian website. Firstly people will post Christian images on these sites, and secondly you may want a picture that is not exclusively Christian (e.g. you may be doing a post about love).
Stock.xchng
This is often my first port of call for high quality copyright-free images. Simply type in a keyword and get the related pictures! Because there is a quality control it means you aren’t left sifting through lots of rubbish pictures.
Flickr
This website is well designed and very popular. Before using it check out the superb Flickr post on SkellieWag’s blog that shows what you can and can’t use and how to find the best pictures amongst the millions of bad ones. The image shown is by Mr Kris.
every stock photo
This is a great site that searches the internet for the best free stock photos. A large proportion are from stock.xchng but there are others too. Just be careful you follow the copyright rules!
FamFamFam’s icons
FamFamFam has produced some superb blog-related icons that you will see on many blogs. I have use them on both of my blogs. Their popularity does not detract from allowing you to create a unique blog. I use them on this blog on the summary pages in the ‘features’ boxes, check it out by clicking here…
Business Blogwire also did a good post on the 10 awesome places to get free images for your blog. I found the other sites on this list more difficult to find high quality pictures on though, so try the other ones mentioned above first!
3. Other free Christian images websites
If you can’t find what you are after in the websites above then you may get more joy from these websites. These tend to have less content or a slightly lower quality than the best websites I have already covered - but I still feel they deserve a mention…
- Free Christian Clipart: A great site with simple cartoon images.
- Pick and print Gallery: Lots of traditional and classic clip art
- Bible Picture Gallery: Good descriptions with the 200 images
- Gospel Gifs: Some good clip art (both sparkly/flashy & many traditional)
- In His Image: Slightly cheesy but some good wallpapers
- Gold Clip art: Some good (gold!) crosses
- ChristFree: Simple black and white images
- Anaja.com: Screensavers and themes
- Angel Verse: Scriptures with images for children
- Wallpaper for Christ: This website has… wallpaper!
- Watton.org: Some good clip art (mainly black and white)
- BibleVerseArt: Images with bible verse on them - good quality.
- Tammy’s Graphics: More verse art
- Rosebyte & Sparky: small clip art
I’m sure I’ve missed some out, what are the websites that you use?
Tags: christ-art, christian, clip art, clipart, free, God, Jesus, resources, website Related posts on this site:Why not check out the popular Definitive guide to Christian clip art by clicking here…
Christians Unite has absolutely loads of Christian clip art available. You could spend all day trawling through the images. Thankfully everything is well grouped so it is not difficult to find what you may be after. As you can see below, the images tend to be very traditional in nature. Whether you like this website will probably rest on that fact alone…
Clip art
As I’ve already mentioned there is plenty of clip-art to look at, and then tend to be very traditional. There is a mixture of black and white and colour pictures. Most tend to be in the style of the first two picture below, but there are also a few cartoon images.
Here are a few examples (click on them to see the larger images):
Wallpaper
The wallpaper images follow the normal route for Christian wallpapers by having bible verses with an images. They cover a wide range of scenes though from animals and scenery to more traditional Christian themes. Here are a few examples (click on them to see the larger images):
Presentation and usage
The clip-art images are filed into relevant sections to help you find what you are after. When necessary there are also subsections, so for instance if you search for pictures of Jesus you don’t just get the 452 Jesus images (yes that is 452!), but additional choices such as “calming the storm” or “Walking on water”.
Summary
This website cannot be faulted for the volume of images available. My personal preference would be for more modern images, but if you like more traditional pictures you really can’t go wrong here.
Ratings:
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Strengths
- High quality clip-art
- Absolutley loads of images!
Weaknesses
- Slightly too traditional for my preference
Links
Website: http://clipart.christiansunite.com/
Tags: christian, christians-unite, clip art, clip-art, free, resources, wallpaper, website Related posts on this site:
Blogrush is continuing to claim to make big improvements to their service, which should make it even more appealing to Christian blogs. These changes were mooted a couple of weeks ago but most have not come to fruition yet. One of the key updates they have just made is to improve the quality of the blogs and remove all the spam blogs. Unfortunately for me they have deemed this blog as spam and de-activated my account! Nice! I am just assuming it is my content that got me excluded, as they provide a list of seven possible reasons why the blog may have been de-activated but don’t actually tell you why. Regardless, in the spirit of Christian grace it is still possible that Blogrush may be of use to your site so here are the main changes promised:
- Improved statistics
The initial and current statistics available are both minimal and also relatively inaccurate. All that will change with the new dashboard. One of the key changes to Blogrush is the ability to track which of your posts are being clicked on the most. This will be vital in allowing you to see what titles people tend to look at, allowing you to drive more traffic to you site by using more popular titles. There is also a few graphs to help you easily see what is happening, as well as the ability to create custom reports. - Higher positioning on blogs
Blogrush are going to make sure their widget is placed higher on peoples blog. You may not want it higher on your own, but this will create a level playing field and help to really increase the number of people clicking through to your blog. - More categories
The Christian category is now up and running on Blogrush! This will ease a lot of fears over what content is being shown on your blog. - Bonus credits
There will be bonus credits given to blogs. These will be weighted towards the smaller blogs to help them get more benefit from using Blogrush. So if you felt you Blogrush wouldn’t work for you before, now it might! - Tighter controls on Blogrush blogs
All blogs are being checked to root out the spam blogs or ones with inappropriate content. Once again, this will help reduce fears about the type of blog posts that may be shown on your site by Blogrush. It seems to me if this blog was deemed inappropriate then quite a lot of others must have been too.
Blogrush had accounted for approximately 2% of my traffic. If you consider this costs nothing, and is quite literally no effort once you are set up, then Blogrush is an appealing opportunity. However you do need to have appealing headers for your posts. If you use wordpress then the MaxBlogPress website has a superb plug-in that lets you choose which posts to include, and allows you to give a different and shorter title to the post.
I will now live my life without Blogrush, I doubt it will kill me!
Tags: blogrush, christian, free, resources, website Related posts on this site:Chris Roberts has come up with a great way to add ESV bible verses onto your Wordpress powered website. It is very flexible and gives you several ways of displaying verses. The key benefit is that you do not need to write out the bible verse, just the reference, so it should save you time. Here are the different ways you can use the plug-in to display verses:
- Tooltip
This is a useful option, as it shows just the bible reference but if you click on it it brings up a pop-up box with the verse. - Inline
This adds the bible reference with the verse and displays it inline in your post. - Blockquote
This adds the bible reference with the verse and displays it as a blockquote for added emphasis. - Link
This is a useful one as it displays the bible reference as it is, but makes it into a link to the ESV website. - Ignore!
This will simply ignore your default setting and leave any bible references as text.
You can set one of these as a default way to display all verses, and this can be overridden on a case by case basis by following the instructions on the plug-in page.
Tags: bible, blog, blogs, christian, ESV, free, resources, verse, website, wordpress Related posts on this site:Why not check out the popular Definitive guide to Christian clip art by clicking here…
ChristrianCliparts.Net is a fantastic little website. There are just over 100 clip art pictures and also five videos currently (all of which are in a cartoon format). The fact that they are in the same format is good if you are looking for a similar style or look for whatever medium you are using them for. This also helped by the fact the images are produced to a very high quality and are also very distinctive and different from most of the other Christian clip-art available on the internet.
Clip art
All of the images are in the same style, and all cover key parts of the new testament (e.g. The Empty Tomb, I am the way, Peter disowned Jesus). You can see the style of images below (click on them to get the full sized image).
Videos
There are five videos including “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?” and “The Power of Prayer”.
The videos are cartoons, and like the clip art they are very well produced. They take a little time to load depending on your internet set-up but once they have loaded they are very smooth.
Other content
There is also a little memory game and quiz about the apostles. It is a fun and slickly presented quiz and probably aimed at kids around age of ten.
Presentation and usage
It is easy to browse the site, and quick too apart from loading the videos. There is also a keyword search which is handy if you are after a specific character or story.
Summary
The only thing that would improve this website would be more images and clip-art. However the images that are here are of a superb quality. The images would be particularly suited to any kind of youth work.
Ratings:
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Strengths
- Superb quality clip-art
- All of the images are in a similar style
Weaknesses
- It would be great if there were a few more images
Links
Website: http://christiancliparts.net/
Tags: children, christiancliparts, clip art, clip-art, free, resources, video, website, youth Related posts on this site:Your votes(1):
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Why not check out the popular Definitive guide to Christian clip art by clicking here…
Upon this Rock has some good free clip art and graphics, and is well worth checking out. There are quite a few rotating images too so if that is what you are after then have a look at their site.
Main content
- Graphics/Clip art
- PowerPoint backgrounds
Graphics/Clip art
The wealth of the content on the site is through their scripture images, basically a picture with a verse from the bible on it. You can get an idea of the images from the small selection below:
(please note: the image quality has been reduced here. Click for a larger image)
PowerPoint backgrounds
There is also a variety of PowerPoint Backgrounds that can be used for a variety of presentations should you want to put a Christian spin on your bland looking slides!
Presentation
You have to scroll through all of the images to find what you may be after, with no specific navigation available.
Summary
You have to root around as the images are not sorted into groups, however there are some great clip art graphics available.
Strengths
- Good quality clip-art
Weaknesses
- Difficult to navigate
Links
Website: http://www.uponthisrock.com/
Tags: christian, clip art, clip-art, free, resources, uponthisrock, website Related posts on this site:
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