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 0.36 (beta) (95.7 KiB, 19 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% [?]
Thanks Mark. I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend now!
I started to feel guilty about all the unanswered comments, so I’ll do my best to answer all of them. If I miss yours, please just ask again.
@Derek: I’ll release a minor update (0.36) which fixes the bug with non-ESV versions. I’ve also added the Hebrew Names Version for you, but unfortunately at the moment their server sends every verse twice. This happens on their server too, so until they fix it, the HNV might be little use.
Adding a ‘per-passage’ version choice might be possible, but wouldn’t be a priority, I’m afraid. I have a long list of bug-fixes and important features in the queue!
@Tim: The problem with downloading on your site seems to be OK now.
@Roz: HTML validation is a problem. If I fix it, it breaks some browsers and podcast software. I’ve decided instead to go with ‘pretty permalinks’ (i.e. /sermons/series/acts/preacher/spurgeon rather than sermons/?series=4&preacher=17). That will be a major update, so will have to wait until version 0.4 though.
@Vicky: Thanks for helping out some of the folk asking questions here!
@Steve: I’m not happy with the huge buttons for the podcast. They looked great on my site, but not on anyone else’s! I’ll change them, probably in the version after next. If you know any HTML you can edit them in the template.
@Jay Necati: You need to make sure Wordpress has permissions to get to the folder you choose. If it does, SermonBrowser should be able to read it. If you can’t do this, then you can always FTP the sermon, like you suggest, then link to the URL rather than the actual file when you add a sermon.
@Roz: The filter wasn’t working if the sermons page was the front page of the site. It’s fixed in 0.36.
@David North: This is also fixed in 0.36.
@Matt Singley: Thanks for the bug report. I’ll get this fixed in a future version.
OK, version 0.36 is now available. Nothing particularly exciting in this release, just a couple of bug-fixes. Development still continues on fixing some of the outstanding bugs and adding new features.
Here’s the changelog:
Perhaps my final question…perhaps.
Mark, how can I change the date format from “1 October 2008″ to “October 1, 2008″? Thanks in advance.
@Matt Singley: That’s a good spot. Thanks. SermonBrowser should follow the setting in Wordpress. I’ll fix this in 0.37. If you want to do it in the meantime, edit dictionary.php and change the two date lines (there is one in each section). Change
"j F Y"to:
get_option("date_format")If you don’t want to use Wordpress’s setting, you can look up other date formats here. October 1, 2008, for example is
F j, Y.Hey Mark,
Thanks for your good work on this plugin. I’ve been daydreaming about writing one of these for some time — and I’m glad to see this. Is the plugin in SVN anywhere so it’d be easier to work on for collaboration? I’m a C# developer with a smidge of PHP, and I’d like to contribute if I can.
I do have a couple of bugs and thoughts…
1. On the dashboard page for admins, under the “right now” section with blog stats and info, there is a Divide by Zero exception from sermon.php line 2356.
2. On the “uploads” page of the sermons settings, under the “unlinked files” section, the “next” button for navigation doesn’t work. It throws a javascript “Object Expected” error. This is the case in IE7 and Chrome.
3. Not sure if this is the app or my dumb cheap host…but I modified PHP.INI as instructed for max_upload_size, etc., but I still get the warning from Sermon Browser that I should change it.
4. My $.02: it would be much simpler to have a single text box for data entry for Bible references rather than a box for chapter, verse, end verse, etc. In a perfect world in my mind, there would be a single text box with some AJAX magic that auto-completes with book names rather than the drop down, and parses the free-form text, much like the sermonizer plugin.
Thank you again!
Matthew
@Matthew: Thanks for the offer of help, it’s appreciated. I’ll shoot you an email in the morning if that’s OK. But I’ll also respond to your points ‘publically’ here in case others are affected by them.
phpinfo();upload it and view it in your browser to find out whether your php.ini changes have been allowed by your host.Thanks again for your suggestions/bug reports.
Hi Mark
Just a tiny bug - I added a series called Paul’s Journey. However in the filter it adds a backslash before the apostrophe. I guess the character needs escaping or something?
Vicky
@Vicky: Thanks for the spot. It’s an easy fix for the next version.
Thanks for the comments Mark and the fixes. Much better.