The Sermon Browser Wordpress Plugin allows churches to simply upload sermons to their Wordpress website, where they can be searched, listened to, and downloaded. It is easy to use with comprehensive help and tutorials. Features include:
- Sermons can be searched by topic, preacher, bible passage or date.
- Full podcasting capabilities, including custom podcasts for individual users.
- Sermons uploaded in mp3 format can be played directly on your website using the 1PixelOut Audio Player.
- An optional sidebar widget displays sermons on all of your posts or pages.
- Embed videos from sites such as YouTube or Google Video.
- Other file types can also be uploaded, including PDF, Powerpoint, Word, text and RTF. Multiple files can be attached to single sermons.
- The full Bible text of the passage being preached on can be included on each sermon page (seven different versions, including ESV).
- Files can be uploaded to your own site through the browser or via FTP. Alternatively you can use other free audio hosting sites such as Odeo.
- Powerful templating function allows complete customisation to complement the look of your site.
- Simple statistics show how often each sermon has been listened to.
- Compatible with Wordpress MU.
- Extensive help and tutorial screencasts.
Download
Sermon Browser 0.37.2 (beta) (95.9 KiB, 13 hits)- Earlier versions and changelog
Installation
- Download the plugin, and unzip it.
- Place the sermonbrowser folder in your wp-content/plugins folder and upload it to your website. Wordpress MU users should put the contents of the folder in the wpmu-plugins folder.
- Activate the plugin from the plugins tab of your Wordpress admin.
- You may have to change the permissions on the upload folder (by default wp-content/uploads/sermons).
- Create a Wordpress page with the text [sermons]. The plugin will display your sermons on this page.
Tutorial Screencasts
These screencasts take your through the processing of setting up the plugin and entering sermons. Each one lasts for approximately 5 minutes each.
- Installation and Overview
- Basic Options
- Preachers, Series and Services
- Entering a new sermon
- Editing a sermon and adding embedded video
Demo
See Sermon Browser in action at Bethel Evangelical Church.
Screenshots
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Frequenly Asked Questions
- I’ve activated the plugin, and entered in a few sermons, but they are not showing up to my website users. Where are they?
- What does the error message “Error: The upload folder is not writeable. You need to CHMOD the folder to 666 or 777.” mean?
- SermonBrowser spends a long time attempting to upload files, but the file is never uploaded. What’s happening?
- Why are my MP3 files are appearing as an icon, rather than as a player, as I’ve seen on other SermonBrowser sites?
- How do I change the Bible version from the ESV?
- When using the 1pixelout audio player, my pastor sounds like a chipmunk! What’s going on?
- How do I get recent sermons to display in my sidebar?
- My host only allows me a certain amount of disk space, and I have so many sermons uploaded, I’ve run out of space! What can I do?
- How do I upload videos to SermonBrowser?
- Can I turn off the “Powered by Sermonbrowser” link?
- What is the difference between the public and private podcast feeds?
- On the sermons page, what is the difference between subscribing to a full podcast, and subscribing to a custom podcast?
- Why doesn’t iTunes recognise the podcast links?
- Can I change the default sort order of the sermons?
- Why do I get a page not found error when I click on my podcast feed?
- Can I change the way sermons are displayed?
- The search form is too big/too small for my layout. How do I make it narrower/wider?
- Why is sometimes the Bible text missing?
- Why does my sermon page say I have exceeded my quota for ESV lookups?
- How can I change the icons that Sermon Browser uses, or add new icons?
Support the plugin
This plugin is provided free of charge, but that doesn’t mean it was without cost. It consists of over 4,200 lines of code, and a conservative estimate is that it took around 300 hours to be developed. If you have any ideas for future development, please leave a comment with your suggestion. If you are a programmer, perhaps you could write an enhancement. If you find the plugin useful to your church’s ministry, and can afford it, please consider a donation to support past and future development. If you are an individual and donate more than $25, or a church who donates more than $100, I will add your name to the list of Sermon Browser supporters, by way of a thank you.
Technical support
One of the reasons I spent a long time producing screencasts and FAQ’s is that like most people, I’m very busy! If you have a problem, I will help if I can, but please help me to help you by reading the FAQ, viewing the screencasts, and using Google a little. If you still can’t find the answer to your problem, leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help. Other pages which may help you:
Popularity: 5% [?]
I’ve just gone live with sermon browser on my church’s site. I use feedburner for the podcast feed, so I simply changed the original feed details to http://www.standrewschurch.org.uk/resources/sermons/?podcast.
However iTunes now throws a wobbly and says that there are no playable episodes. If I look at the feed’s xml, created by sermon-browser, the link to the file says http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StAndrewsChurchSermons/~5/416861950/
I guess iTunes wants a link with the .mp3 file name?
My old feed never use to do this replace the link with a feedburner address, and I’ve not changed anything in feedburner settings, other than the url for the new feed.
Any ideas why this is happening?
Thanks
Mark,
I was wondering if there was a fix for the issue that David was experiencing previously with files being renamed with weird characters and having a .part extension appended to the original filename extension. This happens to all files (tested PDFs extensively though). If I strip off the .part extension, then the file opens properly and is readable.
I can upload and link files properly (and they are downloadable) using the stock Wordpress upload features but the problem seems to be with the Sermon Browser plugin upload functionality.
I have tried all of the suggestions in earlier comments and the only one which seem to work is to link to the URL directly but to get one of my non-technical users to understand that process might prove to be difficult. Then, the PDF link does not appear on the list of Sermons but appears correct in the actual Sermon page (details page).
I am using your latest 0.37.2 version and it seems to work correctly for the most part (other than the inability to “rename” or “delete” because of missing JS functions).
Any ideas or has anybody else come across a solution?
Thanks for the great plugin and your development time devoted to its creation and maintenance. Take care,
Brandon
Hello! Thanks for a great plugin! I had a quick question: I am wanting to display the title of the latest sermon in my sidebar. How would I go about doing that? Is there a template tag I can use, or a function I can call?
if i were to place an flv or swf into the uploads folder, would they be automatically formatted to play - maybe using the wp-flv plugin, or does that functionality not exist yet AND/OR is that functionality something that could exist?
i know the mp3s are automatically formatted through the 1pixelout audio plugin, maybe the wp-flv plugin (or other video plugin) could be integrated in a similar manner?
thanks. if nothing exists already, maybe i’ll download to a dev spot and give it a go.
Casey - http://hpcc.hornby.org.nz/podcasts will take you to our live sermons. There is a customisable widget for the sidebar that you will see we have there.
Roz - Where did you get that widget? Is it included with the plugin? If not, could you post the code for everyone? Thanks.
Casey - if you go into the backend of WordPress, click on Design, then Widgets - it is there. Comes with Sermon Browser I presume.
Yeah, I must be dense or something. I just didn’t realize the widget came with the plugin. Thanks!
@Vicky: You’ll see that iTunes can handle the sermon-browser feed directly without problems, so the problem is with Feedburner. I’m fairly sure that having the feedburner stats activated causes the problem. Turn it off, and those URLs should be back to normal.
@Brandon: Could you run some tests for me? (1) Try and upload an image to a preacher. Does it work? (2) Try and upload a very small file < 100k to a sermon. Does THAT work? (3) Do you have any warnings about php.ini settings? (they’d appear on the Options page, just above the first “save” button”). As a temporary workaround whilst we try and find the problem, you should find that files uploaded via FTP do work correctly. There is also a bug (which I only spotted yesterday!) that prevents URL attachments from showing in the search results. I hope to fix this in the next version. I’m also working on the rename/delete issues.
@Jamon: Nothing exists within sermon-browser for automatically playing FLV files. It would be relatively easy to add compatibility with one (or all!) of the existing FLV plugins, though all the videos would have to match the default width/height set in the FLV plugin. If you want to add the functionality, look in frontend.php at line 632 and you’ll see the code that displays either the link to the MP3 file, or the audioplayer code. That should be very easy to change if you’re at all familiar with PHP. If you make the change, perhaps you could post the code here and I can integrate it in a later version.
Mark,
Thanks for your advice and rapid response. I successfully uploaded an image to the Preachers section. The PDFs I have been uploading (without success) to their accompanying sermons have all been between 60-80 KB in size so that has not been an issue.
I do have some warnings on the “Options” page but I edited my php.ini file accordingly and now phpinfo() reveals that I have upload_max_filesize set to 15 MB, post_max_size set to 15M, and max_input_time set to 600.
I am trying to avoid the FTP route (although I understand it works) as it may overwhelm my client. I am attempting to make it as simple as possible for him to manage his site / uploads.
Any other ideas? I did notice a previous user named David had a similar issue so I contacted him to see how he was able to ultimately resolve the issue but have not received a response.
Thanks again for your time - Brandon R.