Sermon Connect
a resource in Church Tools | Media | Sermons | Tech
Sermon Connect is an online feature packed application that allows you to publish audio, video (with unlimited storage) and blogs. You can also use it for email list and membership management.
It’s not the cheapest out there, but you get a lot of features for your money!
Added 22nd August 2008 | No Comments Yet | Permalink | Trackback
DIY Podcasting on Wordpress
a resource in How-tos | Sermons | Tech
We use wordpress to run my Church’s site including the sermon podcast, and being the geek that I am (!) I set it up myself.
I could have used a plugin such as PodPress or Sermon Browser, but I decided to do my own thing! So I thought I’d share how I did it. It’s a bit geeky, but rather nice!
It uses a few Wordpress plugins, some javascript and some custom Wordpress templates!
First of all I use a category called ‘Sermons’ and every sermon is a new post within that Category. I then use Category Templates to change the way that the Sermons cat looks, so I can have an audio player, etc. of the posts just for that cat.
If you’ve not come across Category Templates before, they can be very useful. You can custom design and name template files so category/archive indexes and single posts within that category are then used by WP automatically.
For category/archive indexes the template files are named like category-X.php (X being the ID of the category).
For single posts within a category it’s single-cat-X.php . (You need the ‘Post Templates by Category‘ plugin to get it to work for single posts.)
So that way I can have the category index and single posts for sermons looking just how I want them!
The main plugin used is called ‘Get Custom Field Values‘ and it allows you to put information in Wordpress ‘Custom Fields‘ into posts/category archives.
When adding a new sermon, I use a ‘custom field’ called ‘enclosure’ and enter the url of where I’ve uploaded the MP3 file.
So in my template files (both custom category index and single) I use the custom field twice and have:
<ul>
<li class=”player”><a class=”media” href=”<?php echo c2c_get_custom(’enclosure’); ?>”>Listen to the Sermon</a></li>
<li class=”download”><a href=”<?php echo c2c_get_custom(’enclosure’); ?>”>Download the Sermon (mp3)</a></li>
</ul>
So it looks like it’s just going to put display the link to the sermon MP3 file twice, but it doesn’t! Because the top one displays an online player.
For the online player I’ve used the excellent jQuery Media Plugin to do all the player embedding and coding for me. It’s having the class of ‘media’ on the link which kicks the media player into action! (jQuery, is a javascript library that can make doing nifty things with javascript much simpler!)
If you want to display the date archives in a list in the sidebar, but only want to show them for a certain category (which makes sense in this case), the ‘Archives for a category‘ plugin is excellent.
I can then take the feed for just the sermons cat (in my case it’s http://www.minehead-baptist.com/category/sermons/feed) and run that through the wonderful FeedBurner to burn the podcast feed. It them becomes the feed for the sermons & podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MBCSermons
On my site you’ll notice that the date archives in the sidebar and ‘How to listen’ sections are toggled/faded up and down by clicking on the relevant link. This is also done using jQuery. As I’m already loading the jQuery library to make the media player work, I can also use it to do the toggles!
The html for the toggles and links is:
<p><a href=”#divtotoggle” class=”toggle”>Link to Click</a></p>
<div id=”divtotoggle” class=”toggle”>
<p>The additional information to show goes in here</p>
</div>
And the javascript (best placed in a seperate .js file linked in the <head> section) is:
$(document).ready(function(){
// hide all reveals
$(’div.toggle, li.toggle’).hide();// toggle reveals
$(’a.toggle’).toggle(function(){
var toggle = $(this).parent().next(’div.toggle, li.toggle’);
toggle.fadeIn();
}, function(){
$(this).parent().next().fadeOut();
});});
This looks for links with the class of ‘toggle’ and toggles the next <div> or <li> it finds that also has a class of toggle.
I hope that’s not too confusing!
I know it sounds complex, but it isn’t really and I can add a new podcast post in about a minute!
If you’ve got any questions, please let a comment!
Added 17th July 2008 | No Comments Yet | Permalink | Trackback
Sermon Browser
a resource in Sermons | Site Builders | Tech
Sermon Browser is a plugin for the popular blog/cms software Wordpress.
This great little plugin allows the easy addition of sermons (audio, video and text) and podcasting to your wordpress installation.
For the audio, you can either upload mp3 files via the plugin or you can link to a file/embed on another server/hosting such as Amazon S3 or Odeo.
For video you can link to a video on site such as YouTube or Google Video.
You can add the times of services and speakers, etc. to make the adding of sermons very simple. There are also customisable templates for how the sermons are displayed on the site.
http://www.4-14.org.uk/sermon-browser
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)WingClips
a resource in Church Tools | Creative | Media | Sermons
WingClips is a site that allows you to download and use clips from major features films, without the need to have a public broadcasting license. The site has already made an agreement with the studios and distributors, so you don’t have to!
You have to sign up to use the site, and you can download small resolution quicktime files (320×240) for free. However, if you’d like larger resolution files (640×480) in quicktime and/or wmv and access to sermon outlines for many of the clips, you have to pay a ‘premium’ subscription (monthly or annually).
Added 9th July 2008 | No Comments Yet | Permalink | Trackback
Sermon Player
a resource in Church Tools | Sermons | Tech
The sermon Player from the Sermon Network is a really easy and simple way of putting your sermons on your Church website and podcasting them.
The free account has lots of great features. And if you upgrade to a ‘premium’ account you can even run live video through the player!
http://sermon.net/theplayer.php
Added 7th July 2008 | No Comments Yet | Permalink | Trackback
Sermondrop
a resource in Church Tools | Sermons | Tech
Sermondrop is a easy way of getting your sermons online.
The service provides a quick way of uploading and displaying the sermons on your existing Church site using the sermondrop widget. You can also easily podcast your sermons.
There are a number of packages with different features and hosting options.
If you’re not sure how to get you sermons into a digital format, you can even post them to Sermondrop on cassette or CD and they’ll do the work for you!
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)Added 7th July 2008 | No Comments Yet | Permalink | Trackback
podpress
a resource in Media | Sermons | Tech | Useful Stuff
Podpress is a wordpress plugin for podcasting with wordpress. It’s pretty easy to use and is free!
It’s the plugin of choice for many podcasters who use wordpress.
http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress