Project Report
| Dec 21, 2016
Berzin Archives Report: October through December 2016
By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Author and Executive Director of Berzin Archives
![Team meeting with Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche II]()
Team meeting with Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche II
During the last three months, we have made further progress in migrating the rest of the Berzin Archives material from where it had been initially moved – the archive section of studybuddhism.com in the old format – to the main sections of the website in the new format. This means moving, reformatting and redirecting approximately 4,000 more articles in 21 languages. We had already completed this process with the 1,660 most popular articles in English, Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Indonesian. To oversee the redirection process in accord with all Google requirements, we have added to our staff a Search Engine Optimization Director, and to help with the migration process, we have added an Executive Assistant. During this period, we have:
- Expanded the information architecture to accommodate the full archive material
- Fit into the expanded structure the additional 600 English articles that need to be moved
- Determined which of the total 1,150 English articles have already been translated into each of our 20 foreign languages and will need to be moved and processed
- In all languages, reformatted verse portions of articles into prose, to show properly on cell phones
- Separated bilingual transcripts into monolingual documents
- Translated in our 15 languages not yet moved: the extensive interface material and newly added descriptions, abstracts and summaries
- Moved into our content management system the first of two batches of the remaining English articles and, for half of them, shortened their titles to meet Google search requirements, reformatted and published them online and, for search engine purposes, redirected the old urls to the new urls.
In addition, we have:
- Prepared an active homepage that enables unique homepages for each language to indicate new material of interest
- Prepared and published 55 new translations of articles in 5 languages
- Finished editing and published online our first animated video, “How to Gain Peace of Mind”
- Prepared and filmed our first 4-part educational course, “Introduction to Buddhism”
- Edited and uploaded on our YouTube Channel 30 interview videos
- Published on the Russian website, savetibet.ru, the new Russian article “Studybuddhism.com: How to Study Buddha’s Teachings Online” and on the Brazilian website, budavirtual.com.br, the new Portuguese article “Mind According to Buddhism”
- Started our monthly online newsletter, with 2200 subscribers
- Reached 3000 subscribers on our Facebook page
- Conducted a search engine optimization audit
- Set up our redirect mechanics in Google Webmaster Tools and fixed over 800,000 url redirect links
- Prepared and implemented the first stage of the switch languages feature
- Fixed a few major backend bugs in our code
- Moved the glossary from its previous server to the main server of the website.
As you can see, we’ve been hard at work. With your help, we will be able to continue our steady progress like this in making the ageless wisdom of Tibet available to all.
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Sep 26, 2016
Berzin Archives Report: June through September 2016
By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Author and Executive Director of Berzin Archives
![Consulting with the Dalai Lama]()
Consulting with the Dalai Lama
In the few months since the new, updated version of our website, studybuddhism.com, has been online, we have already seen signs of success. The average number of articles read by our users and length of time of their sessions have both increased. Usage of the site through mobile devices has increased now to over 50%, with significant growth in third-world countries. Having expanded the information architecture of the site with additional sections, we are currently in the process of migrating the rest of the English material from the archive section to the main section, to be followed by the same procedure for the current five foreign language sections.
In addition, we have:
- prepared a new active homepage in order to keep users’ interest and increase retention
- produced 28 question and answer videos with various Buddhist teachers in order to start our media campaign
- prepared six interviews with these Buddhist teachers in order to attract new audiences
- established connections with external websites in Brazil and Russia in order to increase the website’s search visibility
- began the process of adding our next four language sections: French, Italian, Turkish and Vietnamese
- started to design our first online educational course
- specified further features for development, such as the glossary.
On September 16, during an informal meeting with the Dalai Lama in Strasbourg, France, I informed him of the progress of the project. The Dalai Lama replied that we are making a great contribution and offered further advice concerning future development.
With your continuing support, we will be able to implement his suggestions and thus make the ageless wisdom of Tibet available to all.
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Jun 30, 2016
Expansion of the Berzin Archives Goals
By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Author & Executive Director of Berzin Archives
![Website development team]()
Website development team
With the initial version of our new, updated website, http://studybuddhism.com, now online, we are busy expanding the project even further. This requires sustaining the salaries of our five-member core team, maintaining our office and servers, and commissioning new articles and translations. To produce more multimedia content so we can keep our material up to date and expand our user base, we need to travel for filming interviews with prominent Buddhist teachers. To help meet these growing expenses, we have therefore raised our cumulative fundraising goal here on Global Giving to $300,000.
If you would like to see how we have been spending the donations that we have been receiving from you, as well as from other kind supporters directly via our website and from several foundation grants, please take a look at our detailed budget report for the first half of 2016. As you can see, our total income for the six-months was $340,777 and our expenditures were $276,729. As our projected expenses for the second half of 2016 are $282,480, we hope that you will continue to support our efforts to “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”
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