A custom Bible Reading Plan is a great way to engage your congregation daily and to foster community with your custom schedule of readings.
Supplementary content or guided notes cannot be added to any reading plan but can be added elsewhere in the app.
Creating Your Plan
Organize your reading plan passages into a spreadsheet, like the example spreadsheet below.
Formatting
Below is an example of what your spreadsheet should look like. Simply organize the passages in columns. The columns represent individual passage installments and the rows represent the days of the reading plan.
If a daily reading includes a whole chapter, you will not need to list the verses (for example, listing "Genesis 1" will display the entire text of Genesis 1.)
You will always need to include chapters with your readings. Even if a book only contains 1 chapter, you will still need to list the chapter (for example "Philemon 1").
If a daily reading consists of more that 249 verses from the same book, that reading will need to be separated into additional calls in your spreadsheet. (For example, if you want your reading for a day to be Gen. 1-15, it would be formatted as Gen. 1-5 | Gen. 6-10 | Gen. 11-15)
You can format some of your excerpts to be more specific than just the chapter. For example, "Mark 1:1-18" would work.
If you have non-consecutive chapters from the same book on the same day, they need to be added as separate passages (for example, 'Mt. 1-2' is ok, but not 'Mt. 1, 20'. You must separate to 'Mt. 1' and 'Mt. 20').
If your reading plan includes some days without any readings, add some text in the Passage 1 column that says "No reading today," "Catch up day," or something else along those lines. This will appear in the reading plan for your users. Please note there is a 70-character limit for text in your reading plan.
You can either use the full names of the books of the Bible or use the abbreviations in the cheat sheet below.
The plan will reset after 365 days, so ensure your plan is no longer than 1 year.
Submit Your Plan
Submit a ticket and attach your spreadsheet. We will turn it into an XML file for you and send it back.
To ensure a timely addition or update of your Bible reading plan, please request spreadsheet conversion at least a few days before the launch of the plan.
Host Your XML File
Upload the XML file we send you to your server or hosting space (don't forget to make the XML file public).
SnapPages
Upload it to the Storage section of your SnapPages site, even if not using SnapPages as your website builder you can upload and store files here for public use.
Dropbox
If you do choose to use DropBox to host your XML file, you will need to change the "0" at the end of your sharing link to a "1" to make sure it is compatible with your mobile app.
AWS
Create or use an existing S3 bucket and upload the XML file into it, be sure the bucket or file is set to be public.
Set Your Custom Reading Plan URL
Once hosted and you have your publicly accessible URL, in your Bible tab, select Custom Bible Reading Plan from the dropdown menu and add your URL to the Custom Plan field.
Edit your Plan and XML
Once we send the file back to you there may come a time when you need to make changes, feel free to update the XML file directly instead of putting together a new spreadsheet and waiting on us to convert it!
XML uses tags in a particular order and with particular spaces or line breaks. Make sure you follow these instructions exactly.
Make sure not to change the <plan> or <title> tags as they are needed to properly display the Reading Plan.
Add these exact tags for each day of the reading:
<reading>
<day></day>
<passage></passage>
</reading>
Fill in the day. 1-365 based on the day of the year. Month is not used. For example, December 1st 2016 is day 335
Fill in the passage. If a day needs to have more than one passage, just add a new passage on the line below the first passage using the passage tags.
If you have a day that doesn't have a reading, put 'No Reading Today' in the passage tag to alert readers that there will be no reading that day.
Example of a day with 1 passage:
<reading>
<day>1</day>
<passage>Matthew 1</passage>
</reading>
Example of a day with 2 passages:
<reading>
<day>1</day>
<passage>Genesis 1:1-24</passage>
<passage>Matthew 1:1-2:14</passage>
</reading>
Make sure you use the full name of the book or the proper abbreviation (see the abbreviation cheat sheet below) and that there are no extra spaces before or after the entry.
Updating your Custom Bible Reading Plan
Open up your copy of the XML reading plan that is saved to your computer. You can open this with your favorite text editor, such as Sublime Text (download here) or TextEdit.
Scroll to the bottom of the XML document and add your new content above the closing </plan> tag.
Save the document and re-upload it to your host (e.g. SnapPages, Dropbox, AWS, your own hosting) to overwrite the previous document.
The best way to name the document is with no spaces and just letters, numbers, dashes ( - ) or underscores ( _ ). Example: daily_devotion.xml or DailyDevotion.xml
And that’s all there is to it! Once you overwrite the old XML doc, the plan will be updated in the app.
Books of the Bible Abbreviation Cheat Sheet
Gen. | Neh. | Obad. | 1 Cor. | 2 Pet. |
Ex. | Est. | Jon. | 2 Cor. | 1 Jn. |
Lev. | Job | Mic. | Gal. | 2 Jn. |
Num. | Ps. | Nah. | Eph. | 3 Jn. |
Deut. | Prov. | Hab. | Phil. | Jude. |
Josh. | Ecc. | Zeph. | Col. | Rev. |
Judg. | Song | Hag. | 1 Th. |
|
Ruth | Is. | Zech. | 2 Th. |
|
1 Sam. | Jer. | Mal. | 1 Tim. |
|
2 Sam. | Lam. | Mt. | 2 Tim. |
|
1 Ki. | Ezek. | Mk. | Tit. |
|
2 Ki. | Dan. | Lk. | Philem. |
|
1 Chr. | Hos. | Jn. | Heb. |
|
2 Chr. | Joel | Acts | Jas. |
|
Ezra | Amos | Rom. | 1 Pet. |
|