Note: This article contains many development statistics, most of
which are automatically updated to the latest values when you load
this page.
1. Introduction
Since the launch of the Adi Da Up Close site
17
years ago (in February, 2007), we have greatly expanded this site!
Here are a few metrics we use for measuring that expansion:
We have added
114
new pages per year, on average, and are constantly refining
the pages already on our site. As a result, the site currently
contains
1,940
pages.
The number of visitors to our
site has increased greatly with the increasing breadth and
depth of its contents.
The site has had good to excellent Google search engine listings, from the time of its launch until now.
That has ensured that people interested in Avatar Adi Da and Adidam find this site.
Here is how the site is doing currently (as of October 24, 2024)
for some of the search engine keywords most commonly used by people wanting to find out more about Adi Da and Adidam:
We expect many of the above listings to be even higher the more we complete our mobile-friendly version of the site.
The response to our
site has increased greatly with the increasing breadth and
depth of its contents.
We have had
1,414
comments on our web pages, from
48
countries:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, China, Colombia, East Timor, Eritrea, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Liberia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Zambia.
In addition, our conversations with regional missionaries have led
us to conclude that, for most new devotees of Adi Da, a period
of immersion in the materials on the Adi Da Up Close site
has been a key component of their process of becoming a devotee.
Visitors have been sharing the pages on this
site with their Facebook friends at a rate of about
2,600
shared pages per year:
(click picture for
enlargement)
The number of contributors from whom our
site content is drawn has increased to several
hundred people. It truly is an incarnation of Adi
Da's "everybody-all-at-once"!
Visitors to our site have made extensive use
of our Audio/Video
Library, with over
4,320,000
views/listens of more than
1,100
video and audio clips — a rate of about
288,000
views/listens per year (since
the Library opened in 2009):
(click picture for
enlargement)
2. Developmental Phases
The Adi Da Up Close site has gone through three major phases
of development.
Leela
site. If you were visiting this site in 2007, you would
have mainly found leelas: stories from devotees about Who
Adi Da is and His Work of liberating all beings.
Because the site has been established now for many years as the most comprehensive online repository for Adi
Da's Divine Leela (as seen through the eyes of His devotees),
devotees who have leelas to contribute have submitted them to our site — as a result,
the site has continually grown with new leelas each year, right up to the present.
The 2007 version of the Adi Da Up Close site also included the
first major address to the various controversies and misunderstandings
that have arisen around Adi Da's life and approach to teaching
and growing His devotees. In 2019, Adidam launched a new site,
AdiDaControversies.org
with the same purpose, drawing extensively on the materials from
the Adi Da Up Close site.
Multimedia
resource. In 2009, we added an Audio/Video
Library, which reflects the increasingly multimedia nature
of the Web. While the Adi Da Up Close site contains much more
than the Audio/Video Library, most people's first visit
to the site is likely to be to watch a video — after which
visitors discover more videos, and then more everything (leelas,
Adidam events, articles, etc.). The Adi Da Up Close Audio/Video
Library is now the most comprehensive source of Adidam-related
audios and videos on the Web, currently featuring over
1,100
clips, and always growing. One unique
feature of the Audio/Video Library is that it draws upon
133
different sources for the video and audio clips: from
the YouTube AdiDaVideos channel, the Dawn Horse Press, Da
Plastique, and Adidam Europe; to the Florence Dance Company, the
Mormon Transhumanist Association, the Dutch television station
Ratatouille TV, and the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence.
More recently (since 2014), we have made use of all the good
work the Adidam Translation Guild has been doing (in conjunction with AdiDaVideos) to introduce
10
non-English video channels to our
Audio/Video Library (primarily videos with subtitles), to help
make the site a truly global resource:
Adidam
news resource. From around 2010 on, we expanded the site
to also make it the premier online "news resource" for
Adidam and what's happening in Adidam around the world. While
you can find fragments of what is happening on various other sites
(new DVDs, CDs, and books on the Dawn
Horse Press site; news about Adi Da's Image-Art on the DaPlastique
site; new retreats in Europe at the European
Danda site; new classes at the Laughing
Man Institute site; etc.), we have re-tasked Adi Da Up Close
to be the site where you can go and find out about everything
Adidam, all in one place, and up to date. This is especially
true of the Adi Da Up Close site home
page, which we intend to function something like the front
page of a newspaper, or the home page of a news website.
3.
Database-Driven Content Generation
In parallel with the three developmental phases we have just
described (providing Leelas, multimedia, and news), we have been making extensive use of a state-of-the-art
possibility: using databases to automatically generate (and
rotate) website content. (It also helps us maintain the site
by making it "lower maintenance", where much content
is changed automatically rather than by hand.) Here are some examples:
Today's Feature. Each day, a new item (article,
video, story, etc.) is featured at the top left of the home
page. We think of this a little like changing the "shop
window" every day, to keep the store fresh! The featured
items are drawn from the most shared
items on the site. We were delighted when (on August 10,
2019) the database reached the point of having 365 featured
items — we now could have a different featured item every
day of the year! And of course the featured items database keeps
growing. (It now has
366
items.)
The Latest Video Additions. The six most
recent additions to our video database are automatically displayed
on the home page.
Adidam Sacred History. The events associated
with this calendar day (e.g.,
November 21) in the Sacred History of Adidam are displayed on the home
page, drawn from the Sacred History database. "Today in
Adidam History" also appears on its
own page.
Sacred Calendar for this Month. The Adidam
Celebrations and special days for the current month (e.g.,
November) are drawn from the Sacred History database, and displayed
on the home page and on its own page.
Today's Quote from Adi Da. A quote is drawn at random
from a database of Avatar Adi Da's quotes, and displayed on the
home page. This quote also appears on its
own page.
Responses to the Site. Comments on the
site are stored in a database. One of them is drawn at random
from the database and displayed on the home page. The visitor
can then also step through all the comments, one by one. These
comments are also displayed on a single
page, which is database-generated.
The Audio/Video Library.This
section is completely database-generated.
Divine Utterances.This
section is completely database-generated.
The
2024
Sacred Cycle of Celebrations in Adidam.This
section is completely database-generated, and is updated
every month.
The 200 Most Shared Pages on Our Site.This page is automatically updated
every day, based on the Facebook "shared" counts associated
with each page on the website.
Glossary. Glossary entries are stored in
a database, and then drawn upon wherever needed on the website.
The Glossary section is
completely database-generated.
* * *
We have just painted a "broad brush" picture of the developmental
phases of the Adi Da Up Close site to date. Next, we'll look at
the details in the following two sections: specific developments
in site content; and specific developments in site technology.
4. Specific Developments in Site Content
Since the site's launch in February, 2007, there have been many
additions in site content, including:
•
An Audio/Video
Library that now includes over
1,100
video and audio clips (from
133
contributors) of Adi Da talking or giving Darshan, devotees
telling stories about Adi Da, videos of Adi Da's Image-Art,
videos on Adi Da's Not-Two Is Peace, and much
more.
In addition to our Regional Events page, a Special
Events section for events that may hold a broader-than-regional
interest: workshops, retreats, exhibits of Adi Da's Image-Art,
Celebrations at The Mountain Of Attention, etc.
•
A Celebrations
section, which lists the Adidam Celebrations and their dates
this calendar year, and provides a growing number of presentations
on the various celebrations.
•
A comprehensive Adidam History database, and a "Today
in Adidam History" section (on the home page and on
its own page), generated daily from the database.
A Contributors,
Sources, and Helpers page listing the hundreds of people
whose creations and efforts we have drawn upon in creating and
evolving this site (in addition to our primary Source, Adi Da
Himself). This is truly an "everybody-all-at-once"
site!
•
An ever-growing number of entries in our glossary,
and links to individual glossary entries throughout this site,
wherever specialized terminology is used. To get the most out
of our stories and articles, please make use of these, wherever
you see a double link that looks like this!
5. Specific Developments in Site Technology
Since the site's launch in February, 2007,
there have been many technical improvements and enhancements, including:
The site is entirely iPad-compatible. Everything now "works"
on the iPad, including audios and videos.
Adi Da Up Close regional event pages that are automatically
"in synch" with the Adidam.org event pages. For example,
here
is the Adidam.org page for events in Los Angeles, California.
And here
is the Adi Da Up Close version of the same page (which is generated
in real time from the Adidam.org version).
Adi
Da Up Close is now a secure site!
Every page you look at on the site has a web address beginning
with https: rather than http: — the "s" stands
for secure. You can see the different web address in the address
bar of your browser. Many browsers also display an icon to the
left end of the address bar that signifies "secure page"
— for example, a lock icon.
The addition of many features for effective search of our Audio/Video
Library, including: listing of all clips from a particular year
or poster; listings of clips by various measures of popularity
(this
week, this
month, and all
time — look at the red text on these pages); quick retrieval
of clips of frequently requested types (Adi
Da's Talks; formal
Darshan occasions; etc.); tag cloud access; and the ability
to order results by title, date added, event year, or number of
views/listens.
The addition to our Audio/Video Library of extensive support
of multi-part videos, including: links that make it easy to watch
all the parts in sequence; and a feature that displays subtitles
for the parts, so one can jump to a particular part of interest.
(Click
here for an example of such a multi-part video.)
For those interested in watching these (perhaps you're a Netflix
binge watcher, and you'd like something a little more elevated
to binge-watch than a TV series), we added an
index of multi-part video series on our site.
The extension of our Audio/Video Library's technical capability
to be able to play an increasingly broad range of videos and audios
including: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, SoundCloud, and more.
The most recently posted clips from our Audio/Video Library
now automatically appear on our
home page.
Pictures that enlarge "in place" (instead of having
to go to a different web page).
click picture for enlargement
Videos that play "in place" (instead of having to
go to a different web page).
This video is an excerpt from Second Evening: Track 6 on the DVD, A Tribute to the Life and Work of His Divine Presence, Adi Da Samraj. More than 7 hours long, this Tribute DVD was filmed on the occasion of the first Anniversary of Adi Da's Divine Mahasamadhi, when devotees, family, and friends of Adi Da Samraj gathered at Adi Da Samrajashram, Fiji (Adi Da's principal Hermitage), to acknowledge Adi Da as the Divine in human form, to praise His Greatness, and to express their heart-felt gratitude for the Blessings they have received from Him.
A list of all the tracks on this DVD can be found here. Other excerpts available on this site can be found here.
The ability to "like" our pages (using Facebook s
"like" button, at the bottom of every page), and share pages on
Facebook and a large number of social networks.
A Facebook
Group you can join, which will post Adi Da Up Close site updates
and other goodies. Click on the Facebook icon at the bottom of
any page to get to our Facebook group page.
A Twitter
feed you can follow, which will post Adi Da Up Close site
updates and other goodies. Click on the Twitter icon at the bottom
of any page to get to our Twitter feed.
The extension of our on-site search engine to include audio/video
library clips in the results.
A much improved, multi-level drop-down menu at the top of every
page.
A "coming
events" link that identifies (by event date) and returns
audio/video clips featuring upcoming events.
An MP3 download link associated with the majority of audio clips
in our Audio/Video Library, that enables visitors to download
MP3 files to their computer, transfer MP3 files to their MP3 player,
etc.
and many more important but less obvious technical improvements
and enhancements.
6. Upcoming Site Developments
We have many ideas and plans for continuing to "grow" this site!
Here are just a few planned directions:
A mobile-friendly version of this site.
A subscription service, "Adi Da Up Close Today", that
sends all subscribers a daily mailing that includes such features
as: Today in Adidam History, the daily quote, Today's featured
item, and more.
A "comparative religion" section on Adidam, including its theology.
Every other major religious
tradition has a clearly laid out theology, stating its view on
the nature of God, reality, human potential, etc. This section
will highlight Adidam's unique theology, and will compare and contrast
it with the theologies of the world's great religious traditions.
Expanding our Sacred History section. We've begun this section, but there's so much more that can be added.
Thanks, Chris Tong! May the force always be with you.
Thank you for such marvellous service, dear Chris.
Wow, congratulations on your tenth anniversary, and keep up the excellent service that this site offers. Thank You Very Much!
Thank you Chris and all for a wonderful website that truly serves
Quotations
from and/or photographs of Avatar Adi Da Samraj used by permission of the copyright
owner: 2024
Copyrighted materials used with the permission of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam
Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved.
None of these materials may be disseminated or otherwise
used for any non-personal purpose without the prior agreement of the copyright
owner. ADIDAM is a trademark of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as Trustee for the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.
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2024 Copyrighted materials used with the permission of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. None of these materials may be disseminated or otherwise used for any non-personal purpose without the prior agreement of the copyright owner. ADIDAM is a trademark of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as Trustee for the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.
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