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11:41 pm
21 January, 2010
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Hi guys,
I'm wanting to know how to use SB to facilitate browsing of our church's:
- Sermons (already working well)
- Business Meetings
- Conferences
- Anything else we might dream up.
All the above on our one website.
I'd want separate web pages for each of these.
The issues I can see are:
1. I think all the "sermon" records are currently stored together in the database, and are treated as "sermons", so how could I separate them so that only real sermons appear on the "Sermons" page, only conferences appear on the "Conferences" page, etc?
2. The "Conferences" page should not have references to sermons, preachers, etc.
I'll be storing the different types of media in different folders, but this doesn't pose a problem to me because we already use the "Enter a URL" option under the "Attachments" heading on the "Edit Sermon" page, which allows us to store media in any folders we like.
Is there an easy way to do the above, or to workaround SB's limitations in this area, or am I going to have to do some serious hacking?
We are using WP 3.0.1, SB 0.43.5 and Audio Player 2.0b6, on Linux.
Thanks.
tel7
4:08 pm
14 October, 2008
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I was just wondering the same thing this morning. I record classes that I don't want mixed in with the sermons page and vice versa. How can we use this in multiple, non-related, instances? Thanks
Daniel
5:21 pm
18 June, 2009
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Part of this can be done pretty easily with shortcodes.
The way I would do this would be to have each type of event be a different "service" in Sermon Browser. So you'd have a separate service for "Weekend Service," "Conference," "Business Meeting," etc.
Then you could have a separate WordPress page for each type of service using shortcodes. It is important to note that you still need a WordPress page that can act as the main Sermon Browser page with all the "sermons" on it, but this page can be kind of "hidden."
So you'd have a WordPress page that would feature every type of "sermon" on it, and it would have the shortcode . This page would function as the main Sermon Browser frontend page. However, you don't need to put this page in your navigation menu, if you don't want to.
Then you'd have other pages with these shortcodes on it:
for Weekend Service
for Conferences
for Business Meetings
and so on. Then these pages would be put in your navigation menu for your users to find. I tried this quickly on a development site, and it looks like it works pretty well.
For the second part of the problem, removing references to the terminology "sermons" and "preachers": This is trickier, but not too bad. It's much easier if you can decide on terminology that you like that will fit every situation. If you need different terminology for different "services", that will require severe hacking.
But generic terminology might be "events" instead of "sermons", "speaker" instead of "preacher", "presented" instead of "preached", etc.
Some of these changes can be made in the Sermon Browser templates area. For others, it will require changing the plugin PHP code. Start in the sb-includes/dictionary.php file, which contains all of the definitions for the Sermon Browser template codes. Important note: After you make a change to dictionary.php, you need to go into the Sermon Browser template editor and click the "Save" button to load the new template tag definitions.
You can find more about some of the edits required in this topic:
http://www.4-14.org.uk/forum/s…..eries-text
Let us know how it turns out.
7:43 pm
14 October, 2008
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Yep, there's a little bit of terminology, but for what we need right now, the short code works great. Thanks!
10:15 pm
21 January, 2010
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Thanks heaps Ben!
Awesome answer! Good thinking. Nice workaround. Just what I'm after. No wonder you've got Guru status.
Haven't tried it yet. Not sure when we will.
I see your comment: 'It is important to note that you still need a WordPress page that can act as the main Sermon Browser page with all the "sermons" on it, but this page can be kind of "hidden." '.
a) Is this a page without a short code? b) What forces us to have such a page? c) How would you suggest we hide it? [Sorry, I'm not much of a WP/SB user, just a hacker.]
If I do decide to hack the code so I can have custom terminology for each area, I assume I'd still only need to touch dictionary.php and the template, right? (I see your "Important note" which I discovered the hard way when contributing to the thread you linked to. Good reminder!) Any ideas what kind of test I could do to see which kind of "sermons" the user is viewing at the time? Could I check the short code or type of service somehow?
Thanks again.
10:54 pm
18 June, 2009
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Tel7,
Thanks for the kind words. :)
To answer your questions:
a) The "main Sermon Browser page" I'm talking about is a WordPress page containing the shortcode (without any "service" qualifiers in it). I haven't seen your website, but you must already have a page like this.
b) The reason that you need this is that Sermon Browser references it in its internal links. Here is an example from my church's page.
Our church's main Sermon Browser page is at:
/podcast/
If you visit the page and look at the link for the most recent sermon, titled "The Power of the Testimony", you'll see that it links to:
/podcast/?sermon_id=91
Now let's say, hypothetically, that I want a page that just shows our weekend services. This new WordPress page will contain the shortcode . I'll put this page at:
/weekend_sermons/
Then, if I go to that page, it will show only the entries that are part a "Weekend Service" and not any other type of service. Our most recent service will be there, and the link will still go to:
/podcast/?sermon_id=91
just as it did on the main Sermon Browser page. So the link to the sermon page is the same whether I see it on the page containing every sermon or the page containing only the weekend services.
I hope that was a clear explanation. If I wasn't clear enough, let me know, and I'll try again. :)
c) To hide the page containing , just don't link to it. Again, I haven't seen your site, but I'm assuming that you have some sort of navigational menu that currently has a link to your sermons page. You would remove the link to this page, and instead have a link to the page containing . With WordPress 3, this could be pretty easy to do (depending on theme support for custom menus).
Sermon Browser will still link to the main (hidden) page with its own links, but the links will be for individual sermon pages or filtered search results (like the series links).
d) I'm not sure what edits would be required to have custom terminology for each area. You might be able to do it all in dictionary.php, writing code that would return different results for the template tags based on what the service is. But I'm just guessing, as I haven't tried it.
11:13 pm
21 January, 2010
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Thanks Ben! Another thorough & excellent response! I hope I'm paying you enough for this level of service.
I'm not sure if you spotted the edits I made to the last paragraph of my last post, while you were typing yours, but I think you've pointed me in the right direction anyway.
Much appreciated.
7:26 am
21 January, 2010
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Hi again Ben, etc.
I've tested the shortcode thing, and it seems to partially work. We created a "Meetings" (i.e. business meetings) page, and put "" as the shortcode, and here are some outstanding problems:
Even the "Meetings" page says "Sermons(6)" at the top. Is this one of the fields you were suggesting we generalise terminology for (e.g. to "Events"), Ben?
Clicking the "Next page >>" link from our new "Meetings" page takes me to the list of ALL sermons. Are you having this problem, dgoepfrich? Any ideas how to avoid this, anyone? Serious hacking, perhaps?
Regarding your answer c) above:
Is there any reason why I shouldn't just change the current shortcode on the original sermons page from "" to ""? It seems to work, until I click "Next page" (to see the next 5 sermons), then it fails due to a redirection infinite loop.
Anyway, for our new real "Sermons" page, I'd like to have it list sermons from these kinds of services: "Sunday Morning" (id=1) and "Sunday Evening" (id=2), and show them mingled together, in date order, as they have been until now. Any ideas how to achieve this? I've tried shortcodes like:
"
and
""
and
""
but no joy. When I tried:
"
"
It came up with 2 separate lists with a gap between them (but I'd like one mixed list). And again, when I click "Next page", it brings up the list of all sermons. Any ideas?
BTW, I see your sermons are uploaded as stereo mp3s Ben. Why do you use stereo? I assume they are basically recordings from a single mic, so converting to mono should not lose much, but should need only half the file size and traffic.
Thanks heaps!
3:59 pm
18 June, 2009
Offline
Even the "Meetings" page says "Sermons(6)" at the top. Is this one of the fields you were suggesting we generalise terminology for (e.g. to "Events"), Ben?
Yes. :)
Clicking the "Next page >>" link from our new "Meetings" page takes me to the list of ALL sermons. Are you having this problem, dgoepfrich? Any ideas how to avoid this, anyone? Serious hacking, perhaps?
Perhaps you've found a bug. I don't use this myself, so I've never run across it.
Regarding your answer c) above:
Is there any reason why I shouldn't just change the current shortcode on the original sermons page from "" to ""? It seems to work, until I click "Next page" (to see the next 5 sermons), then it fails due to a redirection infinite loop.
My answer b) above explains why you still need a page somewhere that contains "". I think you ran into one of the problems that occurs when you don't have that.
Anyway, for our new real "Sermons" page, I'd like to have it list sermons from these kinds of services: "Sunday Morning" (id=1) and "Sunday Evening" (id=2), and show them mingled together, in date order, as they have been until now. Any ideas how to achieve this?
I don't think there is a way to do this currently. It would be nice; I guess this is a feature request. If you come up with a patch for this, let us know.
BTW, I see your sermons are uploaded as stereo mp3s Ben. Why do you use stereo? I assume they are basically recordings from a single mic, so converting to mono should not lose much, but should need only half the file size and traffic.
I originally thought the same as you, but it turns out that for mp3 files, the filesize for a mono mp3 is not half the size of a stereo mp3. In fact, for most recordings, they'll be practically the same size. It has to do with the way mp3's are compressed. If the 2 stereo channels are the same (or even mostly the same), the mp3 doesn't bother duplicating information. It's called joint stereo. I tried encoding it both ways, and came up with the same filesize either way, so I decided to make it stereo.
4:17 pm
18 June, 2009
Offline
Tel7,
I thought of a different strategy that might work better for you. Instead of using shortcodes, you can use filtering to show the sermons that you want.
But first, could you post a link to your site? I can't do any testing on your site or give you site-specific examples until I know where it is.
Here is what I'm thinking: So you keep your page that has "" on it, just like before. But don't create other pages with specific services on them. Instead, create your links to use filtering.
For example:
You'll have a link to your business meetings, that will end in:
/?service=8
I still don't think you can have multiple services mixed together, but you could have a link for Sunday morning like this:
/?service=1
and a link for Sunday evening like this:
/?service=2
I think this would fix the problem you are having with the "next page" link.
5:50 pm
14 October, 2008
Offline
Tel7 said:
Clicking the "Next page >>" link from our new "Meetings" page takes me to the list of ALL sermons. Are you having this problem, dgoepfrich? Any ideas how to avoid this, anyone? Serious hacking, perhaps?
I haven't seen this (yet anyway), because I have only one on my new shortcode page. I guess I'll find out in a few weeks. It seems to be working so far for our basic needs.
1:44 am
21 January, 2010
Offline
Hi Ben,
Thanks heaps for another prompt answer, of the excellent quality I'm starting to love and expect. Here's another not-so-prompt response.
Thanks for the tip re joint stereo. I'm learning.
Our test site is: http://www.avalonbaptist.org.nz/wp, but the meetings are in a secure area.
We tried your suggestion of using "/?service=8" (at the end of a Custom Link for our Meetings Menu), and that worked, and the "Next page >>" link was sorted, as per your prediction. Thanks! dgoepfrich, I suggest you add 5? dummy meetings, and if "Next page >>" then takes you to the list of ALL sermons, then switch to this "/?service=x" option.
This leaves us with just 2 current outstanding issues, I think:
1. Having a single date-ordered list of morning & evening services for our main sermons page. Perhaps not a show-stopper. (This doesn't seem to solve it: "/?service=1&service=2" – it just shows service 2 sermons).
2. Being able to put descriptions on each media item for our meetings (e.g. "Agenda" for a document, "Financial Report" for a spreadsheet, etc), either as tooltips, or probably just normal text.
I don't know how to get around those, so failing a solution (or easy hack), it's been suggested that we don't use SB for Meetings, but just put the material on a page, using Audio Player for audio, and putting descriptions next to each media item. We could either just put these all directly on a page, or have a page with separate posts for each meeting.
Another option suggested to me (that I'm not keen on) was to have a separate install of WP and SB (say in the meetings folder), so that its items are stored separately. We could then either use shortcodes or "/?service=x". I guess it's a relatively easy option, but still doesn't solve issue #2. Administrators would have to login to a separate dashboard for admin of events like Meetings, etc, which would be stored in a separate database.
Further suggestions are welcome, otherwise feel free to take the rest of the week off – you deserve it!
Thanks again!
4:20 pm
14 October, 2008
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I know this is an old thread, but I'm just now getting back to it. I hope that's OK.
Using the link code "/?service=1" works only up to a point. It certainly shows only those service messages in the list, but if you click into a message, the "Previous Message" and "Next Message" links go through the whole database.
Additionally, all messages are still included in the iTunes podcast, not just a particular service.
Any more thoughts on keeping them completely separate? Thanks
Daniel
11:13 pm
1 November, 2010
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I've also set up multiple pages and am having the "next message, previous message showing ALL sermons" problem.
If anyone has solved this problem I'd love to know the solution!
Thanks,
Deb
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