Welcome to the new LLResearch.org! Joyful would not come close to describing how we at L/L Research feel to present our new website to you. It has been a long journey, to say the least, and thanks to the efforts of Daniel Shields, the new site wildly exceeds what we hoped to achieve for a more reader-centric experience.
¶The Unveiling
Let us now introduce to you some of the objectives that this new incarnation of LLResearch.org fulfills. Our basic goal was to make this treasure trove of spiritual information more accessible, sortable, searchable, and useable for you, to give it more “surface area.” Toward that and other ends we have:
- Made the website mobile-friendly for the first time ever
- Added the Ra Contact transcripts in a new, easily browsable and searchable format
- Designed, built, and added a variety of study resources for the Law of One
- Designed and built a Wiki-Index for study of the Law of One (click on the little book icon on the Ra Contact or Conscious Channeling pages)
- Assembled a centralized public directory of study groups
- Created a hub for community contributions to the Law of One
- Increased transparency about the organization’s people, finances, operations, and history
- Integrated audio and video into the website
- Consolidated a page designed specifically for connecting
- Built a resources section for this interested in studying the art of channeling
- Integrated translations in an exciting new ways that uses their own language, including a page dedicated to each language, and toggle options for any transcript or book that is available in another language
- Wrote our first comprehensive FAQ
- Created a Getting Started section to orient newcomers
- Made each Q&A of the Ra Contact linkable and added read times to all transcripts
- Organized significantly more efficiently the medley of L/L Research’s offerings and services
- Formatted and input the entire library into a database to “future proof” it for changing software
- Among other bells and whistles that you will discover along the way
¶Web Designer
While this involved loads of sweat and inspiration from those of us in Louisville, including in the creation of a lot of new content and services, and contributing to the organizational design of the site, the lion’s share of designing and building the architecture and functionality was provided by one person, Daniel Shields. This gentle soul saw that we had a need and humbly asked if he could help. For two consecutive years of volunteer service and a few recent months of compensated/volunteer service, Daniel toiled away. It wasn’t just elbow grease, though, it was inspiration and innovation. Many of the features and designs here are the fruit of his genius.
To Daniel: mortal words can never thank you enough for this gift to the readership and the organization which will quite literally reach people around our planet, perhaps for generations to come. You have opened new doors to spiritual study and service. You have gifted L/L Research a whole new platform through which to meet its mission. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
If you are impressed with the masterful design of this website and are interested in his services, Daniel has permitted us to link to his portfolio.
A handful of volunteers also offered their time, energy, and skill to thoroughly review a beta version of this website to provide practical feedback and help us to work out the kinks that always come with such launches. To our beta test volunteers: thank you!
¶Future Goals and Horizons
What you see on the website is only where it is at this particular nexus. There are miles (or kilometers, or parsecs, as you prefer) of evolution yet ahead. Among our biggest goals include:
- In the near future, launching a robust search engine that will allow users to search and filter through all material on the website.
- Translating more of the website and implementing foreign-language-friendly features to make it more navigable and useable to foreign-language readers.
- Somehow, perhaps with an army of volunteers, tagging and indexing the entire transcript library in order to build a topical index and to make it more searchable and sortable.
- Creating user accounts that would allow readers to log in and interact with the material in new ways, for instance, marking transcripts as read/unread, adding transcripts to favorites and “to read,” maybe even making transcripts highlightable, who knows!
- Granting permission-restricted access to allow dedicated translators to publish their work directly to the website, along with perhaps giving study groups their own dedicated space to post updates.
- Expanding the hub of community contributions to the study of the Law of One along with including in the Directory more of the growing study groups around the world.
- Transferring the last non-forum pieces from Bring4th.org over to LLResearch.org to render Bring4th a forums-only environment.
¶The Original LLResearch.org
As proud as we are of the new site, it did not appear out of a vacuum. It began in the mid-1990s as a simple reading project for Ian Jaffray. Somewhere in the process of reading the transcripts, he went on to design and build the first incarnation of LLResearch.org from scratch. By scratch we mean first transforming Carla and Jim’s archive of decades of material that came, as he recently described it, in a “plethora of formats—typewritten and handwritten transcripts, old floppy disks, untranscribed cassette tapes, carbon copies and fading faxes—into a common digital form.” From there he designed and built a website to make it accessible on a then-infant internet, all on a volunteer basis.
The internet had come along at just the right time, it seems. Prior to its availability, his, Carla’s, and Jim’s idea had been to distribute the entire archive of the newly-digitized transcripts as a collection of about 10 floppy disks— “an eminently impractical plan as it turned out!”, Ian said. He insists that all of this was made possible only because of the “always unfettered generosity of Carla and Jim and their unbridled enthusiasm for sharing their work.”
To get a small glimpse into the evolution of the website, we’ve screenshotted a few images of the home screen below. Top to bottom: 1997, 2000, and 2021 . (The identical number in the ancient technology of the visit counter featured in the first two images is an artifact of the WayBackMachine.)
To Ian: The website that you first built in the 90s has lasted twenty-five years. We imagine that you didn’t imagine such a long haul for your site. You are one of the unsung heroes in the L/L Research family. The central gift, of course, came by way of Carla, Don, and Jim, but it was your talent and toil that made their work accessible beyond a mail-order catalogue. It was the website that you built that helped the Confederation philosophy, a unique beacon and lighthouse for wanderers, to reach the corner of Siberia as effectively as the tip of Argentina. The organization and the readership have relied upon this trustworthy site for over a generation. For this website and the 17 years of gifted service to L/L Research, including being behind many of Carla’s books, not to mention the good and the bad wit in your emails, we are forever in your debt. Thank you(!), you dear angelic soul.
¶Gratitude & Feedback
This website isn’t just ours—it is yours, too. Some of you may have spent decades navigating the old site, returning to what for you is an oasis for spiritual nourishment, looking for answers to bedeviling life challenges, searching for light in the darkness and for hope in despair, or just basking in the glow and sense of home you feel in the Confederation’s words. You have a relationship with these sources and an intimacy with LLResearch.org. We hope so dearly that this new site may continue to meet your spiritual needs, and then some.
However and wherever we grow, L/L Research’s central-most mission will always be to carry the channeling “experiment” set into motion by Don, then Carla, then Jim through the rapidly changing and tumultuous circumstances brought by the emergence of fourth density, the birth of a new Earth. We will keep the line open with our Confederation brothers and sisters. We will preserve and safeguard the integrity and purity of this resource. We will make it freely available to every interested spiritual seeker the world over.
Thank you to those of you who have lent your support to L/L Research in whatever outer or inner form. Thank you to those who have hung on with us through the long years it took to get this website launched.
If you have any points of feedback (or bugs to report), we’re all ears! Please feel free to drop us a line at the contact address.
With love/light,
L/L Research