Sermon Data Import

  • I am in the process of converting an asp website to wordpress. It’s not live yet but I want to have it all setup first. We have years and years of lines in a table that contains the links and data for the sermon recordings (mp3) and sermon notes (pdf). Can someone help me with the import data file format so I can reformat the html code into a format that sermon manager can import. I think I can read the current data into Excel and then use a macro to format it so it can then be exported into the correct file format. The current format for each sermon entry in our table is like this:

    <tr>
<td>
<a href="https://calvaryvc.org/sermons/player/sermonplayer.asp?URL=https://www.calvaryvc.org/sermons/7-21-19pm.mp3&Scripture=Genesis 42:18-28&Date=7-21-2019&Service=PM&Title=Do This and Live&Speaker=Interim Pastor Bob Hartmann&Notes=NoNotes.pdf" target="sermonplayer" rel="noopener noreferrer">Do This and Live</a>
</td>
<td>Interim Pastor Bob Hartmann</td>
<td>7/21/2019</td>
<td>PM</td>
<td>Genesis 42:18-28</td>
</tr>

    The wordpress sermon page is in the link above to see what it looks like and what data fields are currently being used.

    Thanks in advance.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter Dave Duerksen

    (@davdue)

    Can anyone help me with this?

    Hi, Dave, I’m just getting started with this plugin myself, and I’ll be trying to create an file to import 860 sermons with dozens of preachers, series and other data.

    It looks like you have yours partially built now, so I’m sorry we couldn’t collaborate!

    Thread Starter Dave Duerksen

    (@davdue)

    I haven’t gotten anything really done yet. My testing wasn’t very conclusive. I couldn’t get it to consistently import the data. I guess I will just have to wait until we go live with WordPress and then pay the $99/yr fee for Sermon Manager Pro since I haven’t gotten any response from Sermon Manager. However we could still collaborate. The only thing I have tried was to export some sermons I have added manually to see what data is there and try to create my one file with my data by hand. Once I figured out how to do it my plan was to work on a macro to modify my html data into the correct format.

    I’m posting here in case others run into the problem (or in case the OP is still trying!)

    I went the excel route too. The key here was to create a couple of dummy speakers, series, and sermons on the website. Then go to Import/Export and run an export. You’ll get the data of what you’ve just created as a long XML file.

    From that, I could easily search for my sermons, series, and speakers (use recognisable names!) and fish out the relevant XML segments.

    My technique was then to go through the XML segments, replacing everything with tokens. So the sermon title became %%title%%, series became %%series%%, post id became %%id%%, and so on. I found that there was one <item> tag per speaker, one per series, and two per talk (one for the talk “post” itself, one for the mp3 attachment).

    When I had those segments templated, I pasted them into Excel cells, and created tables where each speaker / series / talk was a row, and a SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(…))) formula gave me the XML fragment with all the tokens replaced. I used VLOOKUP to make sure I could get IDs of speakers and series from the talks. I then strung together all the resulting XML, pasted it back into the original export file, replacing the existing fragments, and imported it. To my utter amazement, it worked first time!

    NB – I also uploaded the sermon mp3s and ensured that the URLs pointed to the right location. I don’t know if that was necessary, or if the import would have fished them from the old location.

    Can send the spreadsheet if would be any help!

    Thread Starter Dave Duerksen

    (@davdue)

    @almcnicoll

    I haven’t had a chance in awhile to try and work on this. In fact I may not import the complete set like I was once wanting to do. I have since found out I can’t just use FTP to copy the files from my old webserver (Microsoft based) to the new new webserver (WP based) because of how my provider has set it up as a managed WP (they keep WP updated). However for a smaller subset of sermons I would like to still work on it. I would really like to see your spreadsheet.

    Thanks,
    @davdue

    Hi Dave,
    Email me on al.mcnicoll [at] wheatleycommunitychurch [dot] org and I’ll send it over ??

    For anyone else struggling with this, a really easy solution is to use the plugins WP All Export (if you have data in a current install that you need to move) and WP All Import. The heading fields of your columns don’t matter because you specify how to map the information during the import process.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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