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 0.37.3 (beta) (96 KiB, 168 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: 6% [?]
@Steve: Watch our for the plurals! You should be entering [sermons] not [sermon].
@Everyone else: I’ve only recently returned from another conference, and am off to a summer camp on Friday. I’ll do my best to respond to the other comments before I go.
I’ve successfuly installed your awesome plugin, but have a few issues I was hoping had an easy fix. One, which I go to the “Sermons” page within my dashboard, my sermons don’t show in what I assume should be a listing of the sermons I have uploaded.
Second, when I’m using the Audio Player, I’ve noticed that when I click play, I am unable to navigate away from the current page until the MP3 finished buffering - is this normal or a bug with 1Pixel?
You suggest using Odeo for audio hosting, but I can’t find anywhere on their site that lets me host MP3s.
Am I missing something?
@Simon: I think you’re running PHP in safe mode. (Or perhaps your host has enabled the open_base_dir setting). I’m slightly confused by the presence of the “:” in the filename of the error. Could you check with your host what restrictions you have, then contact me again via email (use the contact link at the top of the page) if you still have problems.
@Blake: It looks to me as though you’ve deleted [files_loop][file][/files_loop] from the search results template.
@Glenn: The error message with the KJV is my fault, not yours! There’s a bug I’ll fix in the next version. If you want to change it yourself, you’ll have to edit frontend.php and change line 150. It currently says $books = sb_bible_books();. You need to change it to $books = sb_get_value(’bible_books’);. Sorry!
When adding new filetypes to filetypes.php, it’s important to set the content-type correctly. For video .mp4 files, use “video/mpeg”. It’s then up to the browser to decide what to do with that file. Different people’s browsers will behave differently - some might try to download the file, others might play it in Quicktime, for example. If you want to force the download (regardless of the individual browser settings) use “application/octet-stream” as the content-type.
@William Helms: Yes, it’s a good idea to not count ‘plays’ when an admin is logged in. I’ll look to add that to the next version.
@Roz: Yes, sorry, something broke on the Files page. I’m trying to fix it for the next release. I have no problem using audioplayer on your site on Firefox 3 (Windows).
@PBurch: There’s a minor bug in sermon browser that means sermons don’t display in that list if none of them have bible texts attached. Is that causing the problem? I’ve not seen the problem with 1Pixel that you mention. Could you turn the player back on for me to look at, or perhaps ask on their forum for help?
@Andrew: Unfortunately an upgrade to Odeo’s website has left new users unable to upload audio, as this blog posts explains. If you can’t wait until they fix it, try DivShare instead.
Hi Mark,
Thank you so much for your help - I made the changes to the frontend.php and now I have KJV working. Its brilliant.
As for the downloading of .mp4 files. I’ve cheated - I’ve been adding them as a URL - this allows the files to be downloaded everytime while keeping the content type video/mpeg. The down side to this is that URL’s don’t appear in the front page listing of sermons - When I browse into a particular sermon I get all the options - to download files, listen to MP3 and to read the bible txt.
Is there a simple way to allow URL entries to appear in the front page listings?
Thanks once again for your help - it is really appreciated.
Regards
Glenn
Mark, I’ve added a test sermon that includes a Bible verse, but to no avail. I am also not using the series options, could this be part of it?
I have turned the player back on. I upgraded to whatever beta they had available to see if that would fix it, but it didn’t. I don’t think it’s on your end (I don’t see how it could be). I was more asking if you had seen it. Now, if you have a fast connection, it may not take five minutes to buffer 40 MB.
Thanks for your help and swift response.
@PBurch: Yes the lack of a series could cause the same problem in the current version (I’ve already fixed the bug for the not-yet-released next version). I’m not sure about the buffering problem. I’ve not noticed it before, but it does affect my test site, too. It’s possible my stats feature is causing the problem, though I doubt it. But it may be worth you adding an audio file to a normal wordpress post, and seeing if the problem occurs there too. That way you can tell whether it is a sermon browser, or audioplayer issue.
Thanks. I’ve signed up for a divshare account but cannot now see how to link to the full mp3 path so I can put it in your plug-in?
Mark,
I have added an MP3 to a test page, and don’t seem to experience the same problem. Is there a way to turn off the stats feature for now? I’m more interested in the lesson management than I am in the stats.
Thanks.
@Andrew: You can either use their embed code, or the direct URL. You need to click on “Sharing Options” as this image shows.
@PBurch: I’ll see what I can do. I will be away for eight days from tomorrow, so am unlikely to find a solution within two weeks. It’s possible that using the URL rather than the local file might work in the meantime, though that depends on your server setup.