Sermon Manager 1.5 RC2 Now Available!

Posted by on Aug 10, 2012 in Sermon Manager | 52 Comments

After several rounds of testing the beta version, we’re now ready for a release candidate! The goal is to be able to publish this version to the WordPress repository next week.

What’s New?

  • Podcasting Support – Just go to Sermons → Settings to setup your feed.
  • Enhanced image support for Preachers, Sermon Series, and Sermon Topics. docs
  • New theme functions – making it easier for you to customize your theme. docs
  • New taxonomy – Book of the Bible – this makes it easy to add sorting by book of the Bible.
  • Improved CSS & shortcode display.
  • New shortcode: [sermon-images]docs - demo
  • New shortcode: [list-sermons]demo
  • Improve page navigation styles with shortcode
  • Improve admin interface & added a “Sermon Notes” field
  • Fixed the views count for sermons
  • Properly enqueueing all JavaScript and CSS
  • Updated and corrected the translation files

If you have any problems with this version, please let me know in the comments!

Download RC2

RC2 – added shortcode to list all series, speakers, topics, or Bible books.

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52 Comments

  1. Wes Childers
    August 12, 2012

    I’m working on a custom template file and wondered if you could give a code example of how I could return a list of sermon series.

  2. Wes Childers
    August 13, 2012

    Actually… I was looking to print a list of sermon series titles with links to those archive pages. I think this probably requires using get_terms as described here: http://www.wpforchurch.com/knowledgebase/images-for-preachers-sermon-series-and-topics/ but I haven’t been able to get it working yet.

    • Jack
      August 13, 2012

      I see. That would be nice to have as a shortcode, so I added it. You can replace the /includes/shortcodes.php file with this: http://pastebin.com/cXRgRs1B

      There’s a new shortcode [list-sermons] that will produce an unordered list of all series, topics, preachers, or Bible books. You can also use this function in your php files:
      wpfc_list_sermons_shortcode()

      • Wes Childers
        August 13, 2012

        Thanks! Works great.

      • Jack
        August 13, 2012

        Glad to hear it!

  3. Arne
    August 15, 2012

    Hi Jack,

    I cannot add any sermons or notes via the upload button nor can I add any of the taxonomies to a sermon. Do you have an idea how to solve that?

    • Jack
      August 15, 2012

      Do you have an old version of Church Pack installed? http://www.wpforchurch.com/knowledgebase/church-pack-pro-changelog/

      • Arne
        August 15, 2012

        The version I used was downloaded on August 3rd. I deactivated the plugin but that did not solve the problem.

      • Arne
        August 16, 2012

        Jack,

        I am sorry, it’s not your fault :). I was using elegant builder that gave the trouble!

        Thanks so much for your work!

        Arne

  4. Chris Poteet
    August 15, 2012

    Do you know for sure when you might be publishing this as a final? My church’s site is about to go live, but I’d rather wait until you go 1.5 final.

    • Jack
      August 15, 2012

      Probably Friday, maybe Saturday at the latest.

      • Chris Poteet
        August 15, 2012

        Jack – Thanks. Where can I donate something? I don’t need a support subscription, but I’d like to at least say thank you.

      • Jack
        August 16, 2012

        Thanks, just loaded to the Kindle app on my iPad :-)

      • Jack
        August 15, 2012

        That’s greatly appreciated :-)
        You can pick me up anything from my Amazon wishlist if you like: http://amzn.com/w/3SIBPX4KAO2L5

      • Chris Poteet
        August 16, 2012

        I sent you one of the MacArthur books. Let me know if you don’t get it. Thanks again.

  5. Wes Childers
    August 16, 2012

    Archive page seems to be sorted by wordpress entry date by default. Is there a way to modify it to sort by sermon date instead?

    • Jack
      August 17, 2012

      Was this happening to you before or just with the latest version?

  6. Wes Childers
    August 17, 2012

    After updating to RC2 it works fine when the shortcode but I’m using a custom view based off of the sample “archive-wpfc_sermon.php” in the views folder. That code seems to display in post date order.

  7. Wes Childers
    August 17, 2012

    Perfect. Thanks so much!

  8. arne
    August 21, 2012

    Is it possible to attach a sermon and notes as an attachment to a sermon? The best thing for me would be to have a line of buttons with a download link to the sermon, the notes and a button linking to the itunes feed. Did I miss that functionality somehow?

  9. Chris
    August 26, 2012

    Jack hopefully the last time you will hear from me. I uploaded a sermon and tagged it as Sunday AM, and later in the day I uploaded another sermon and tagged that as Sunday PM. However, I noticed that it lists the morning service after the evening despite not publishing in that order. It then shows it incorrectly everywhere including the podcast. You can see it here http://www.auburndalebaptist.com/. Any idea?

    • Jack
      August 30, 2012

      Sorry, I missed this comment. You’ll have to adjust the published date/time. Sermons are ordered first by the sermon date & secondarily by the published time.

      • Chris
        August 30, 2012

        There has to be a bug. I have two sermons set to Aug 26 one at 12:00 and the other at 18:00, and the one at 12 shows before the 18. The sermon listing page in the admin interface lists them correctly, but they are not listed correctly in the widget, sermon archive page, or podcast.

  10. Wes Childers
    August 28, 2012

    Is an editable list of service types still planned for a future release? Currently it appears to be a hard-coded list of 6 options.

    • Jack
      August 30, 2012

      It is still planned. I had a little harder time implementing it for the 1.5 release, but I should have it soon.

  11. Jason Calleiro
    August 28, 2012

    We are currently using our own hosted video files and were looking into videojs or mediaelementjs, but it seems that sermon manager can only except embed codes from 3rd party services?

    • Jack
      August 30, 2012

      Have you tried putting the link to your video file in the sermon audio field?

  12. Ryan
    September 5, 2012

    Hi Jack. Setting up a new website for our church and had some trouble with the plugin. For some reason it is duplicating the sermon on each page. Can you help. Thanks! You can see an example here http://boernechurch.org/sermons/inviewofgodsmercy/

    • Jack
      September 5, 2012

      Try disabling the woo share bar. It’s causing the problem.

  13. SirChadw1ck
    September 7, 2012

    Thanks for your work. I am new all of this, so please be patient! I need some help!
    Is there a better option for uploading audio files? I am only able to upload 10 MB for some reason. There is no way I can compress every sermon audio much less video to that file size. How are others compressing/uploading files?

    Thanks.

  14. Joel
    September 10, 2012

    Hi,
    Your plugin is great, thank for your job.

    We are having problem with the feed for iTunes, the feed is empty:
    http://www.larochette.ch/feed/podcast
    and we have 3 sermons entries: http://www.larochette.ch/messages/
    I don’t know what can I do to fix it.
    Any idea ?
    Thanks for your help.
    Jo

    • Jack
      September 10, 2012

      You can try going to Settings → Permalinks and resaving your permalinks.

      • Joel
        September 10, 2012

        Thanks for you fast answer, I appreciate.
        Unfortunately, nothing better.
        Should I do something with .htaccess?

  15. Robert
    September 10, 2012

    I just downloaded Sermon Manager to try out on our church web site. When I tried to activate it, I got the following message. Any advice as there seems to be a conflict with my theme?

    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare entry_views_load() (previously declared in /wp-content/themes/antioch/lib/functions/entry-views.php:49) in /wp-content/plugins/sermon-manager-for-wordpress/includes/entry-views.php on line 70

    • Jack
      September 18, 2012

      This was fixed in the last update.

  16. Kevin Rutledge
    September 20, 2012

    I have been using sermon manger for a little while now and have 4 sermons posted. However, when I try to add a fifth, the featured image is no longer using the thumbnail but the full image and I am not sure why this is happening all of a sudden. Your help would be appreciated.

    Thanks,
    Kevin

  17. Jeremy
    October 15, 2012

    I’m trying to get my feed set up in iTunes. When I run feed validator it says: “line 18, column 2: href must be a full URL: [help]“. I’m assuming this is related to the cover image. I have the proper address in the cover feed blank though. In feed validator it shows “” in line 18. Is this a problem with something I’ve done or is it some sort of bug?

  18. Abdoul
    October 18, 2012

    Hi,

    I would like to know if you have the french translation for this Plugin and How do I change the settings to show the french Bible instead of english.

    • Luc
      October 19, 2012

      Hi,
      Like Abdoul, I would love to get a french translation for this plugin. If help is needed, I could help in the translation.

      • Arne
        October 19, 2012

        Hi Luc and Abdoul you can translate the plugin with the open source software poedit and the language file provided by the plugin. A lot of the text strings work but not all of them. I have not been able to get the date of the sermons translated for example. I hope that helps.

        Arne

  19. Abdoul
    October 20, 2012

    I could do that and let you know how it went. What about the bible text?

    • Arne
      October 20, 2012

      Regarding the bible verses you could try this plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/link-to-bible/ if it works for you. Sermon manager does – as far as I know – not offer French translations because the service it uses (I think it was bib.ly) only offers English bibles.

  20. Timothy
    October 30, 2012

    Hi Jack,

    I am currently trying to create a sermon archive for my church new website. I wanted to do something similar to John Piper’s Desiring God Sermon Archive…

    A nice and simple page that categorize and allows filtering. So users are able to search either by sermon topics, books in bible, year, month and preacher.

    Please advise if this current version is able to support and what shortcodes or configuration do I need to do to achieve something similar to that.

    Much appreciation in advance!

  21. msadam
    November 5, 2012

    Hi Jack
    I have a problem where the sermon and the player are repeated.
    obviously it is unusable as it is if you can help it would be appreciated
    narrabeenbaptist.org.au/sermons
    and click the sermon
    i am using studio press
    The Lifestyle theme
    Genesis frame