Year: 2010

Behind the scenes, our team has invested months of work and hundreds of hours of testing to make YouVersion even better for you! This major update includes two major changes and one significant addition.

Major Performance Enhancements

We painstakingly went through every line of code to make YouVersion.com faster and more reliable than it’s ever been. Over the next several weeks, YouVersion.com will continue to get faster for all of our users. We’ll be rolling out similar performance enhancements to all of YouVersion’s mobile Bible apps soon.

What it means for you:
A faster experience on the YouVersion.com website, and upcoming improvements to all of our mobile apps. Reading and navigating through the Bible in the palm of your hand will be snappier than ever!

Significantly Improved Search

Searching the Bible for topics, specific Bible references, and keywords or phrases just got a lot easier, more intelligent, and faster with:

• – the ability to use search formulas to hone your searches (e.g. “he first loved us” or Jesus AND Peter)
• – smart search suggestions to help you find exactly what you’re looking for (e.g. Did you mean “only begotten son”?)
• – a Bible translation picker to quickly perform the same search in different Bible translations
• – plenty of back-end architecture that will make your search results appear super fast

Of course, improved search also works when searching YouVersion contributions, users, and tags.

What it means for you:
Easier, faster and more natural searches. We’ve played with the new search setup internally and we really think you’ll like the changes!

Introduction of 3rd Party Connections

We’re incredibly excited to be rolling out this new feature—so excited, in fact, that Terry and Jon couldn’t wait to give you a sneak preview last week! We’re starting with Facebook and Twitter, but we have plans for more integration with 3rd party services in the future.

What it means for you:
Connect your YouVersion account to your Facebook or Twitter account once and share the Bible, your reading plans, or other thoughts with your friends, quickly and seamlessly. And, because these “Connections” are tied to your YouVersion account, we’ll be able to roll out updates to the YouVersion mobile apps that take full advantage of each integration.

Our team has been working hard on these changes and we think you’ll love the end result. And, since it’s easy to share the things you love with your friends, take the chance to tell someone about YouVersion today! Tweet it, post it to Facebook, blog about it, or show someone how to read the Bible for free on their mobile phone by helping them download a YouVersion mobile app at http://youversion.com/download.

For specific details regarding the changes made in this update, see the YouVersion release notes.

Connect with us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/youversion.
Join the conversation on Facebook at http://facebook.com/youversion.
Get help with YouVersion at http://youversion.com/support.

Thanks to the generous folks at Tyndale House Publishers, you’ll have 30 more days to download the New Living Translation for offline use in YouVersion. It’s available for iPhone and iPod Touch users, and now, iPad users too—perfect timing! This means you can enjoy the NLT anytime, anywhere, regardless of your connection or coverage.

Enjoy it while it lasts. May 5 is the last day you’ll be able to download the offline version of NLT.

[For iPad users, make sure you have version 1.0.1 to access to the NLT offline.]

Apple’s revolutionary new device is almost here and we’re ready with a brand new YouVersion Bible app designed specifically for the iPad’s big, beautiful screen. We’ve had the chance to play with it in the simulator (since no one has an actual iPad) and we think you’re going to love the Bible reading experience.

With the tight deadline and the fact that we’ve never actually tested the app on a real device, we decided to focus on the Bible reading experience with the first release, but more features and further refinement are already under development and we plan to release new versions quickly over the next few weeks. Some of the features slated for versions 1.1 and 1.2 are syncing with your YouVersion Reading Plans, more social sharing, and YouVersion Live.

Why wait? Get a sneak peek of the new YouVersion iPad app.

Many of you have been enjoying the New Living Translation as an offline version of the Bible on your phone. As we mentioned in January, the offline download has been available for a limited time, and that time is almost up!

If you haven’t already downloaded the NLT to your iPhone or iPod Touch as an offline Bible version, you’ll have until April 5 to do so. (Read the original post for instructions on how to download an offline Bible version.)

We appreciate the generosity of Tyndale House Publishers in allowing us to make the NLT available offline for this time period and we look forward to future partnerships with the Foundation to continue to make the Bible readily accessible for people all over the world.

The YouVersion team has been working hard on some great things that will be announced soon. In the mean time, we wanted to continue rolling out little goodies for you to enjoy and the YouVersion WordPress Plugin is one of them. We’re awaiting approval in the WordPress Plugin Directory, but until then you can download the plugin directly here.

Our newest WP plugin is simple and echoes the core function of the first YouVersion plugin. With the new plugin you’ll be able to quickly and easily link to Bible verses from your WordPress blog posts or pages using a simple tag structure. Here’s a quick example:

What you type in the WordPress text editor: “The Bible says in [youversion]Acts 1:8[/youversion] that we will be His witnesses.”

What your website visitors see on the published post/page: “The Bible says in Acts 1:8 that we will be His witnesses.”

The new plugin also gives you the ability to set a default Bible version that you’d like to link to as well as the ability to link to spans of verses within the same chapter, like Acts 1:8-11.

We hope you enjoy the new YouVersion WordPress plugin and we can’t wait to tell you all about all the amazing things we’ve been working on for the past few weeks.