Updates are coming very soon

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your patience.

We have just launched Sermon Manager v2.9 which includes importing from Sermon Browser and Series Engine.

It’s a one click process, you just install Sermon Manager, then go into Import/Export and click the import button on the Sermon Browser box. That’s it!

In the next release we will be adding ability to migrate from Sermon Browser on one server to another server running Sermon Manager. Currently you can only migrate within the same installation.

Please let us know on our own support area if you have any issues, however we hope not ??

Please note we don’t migrate every Sermon Browser field, you can read more about that here https://wpforchurch.com/my/knowledgebase/96/Importing.html.

Enjoy and send us any feedback,

Igor

Igor,

I’m suddenly confused. I thought we were waiting on an update to SermonBrowser. This topic is:
Support ? Plugin: Sermon Browser ? Updates are coming very soon

In fact, Mark said:
“The good news is a new developer is already working on bringing SermonBrowser back to the WordPress repository, and we’ll soon have news of SermonBrowser’s future.”

So I went to my dashboard and checked for a plugin update for SermonBrowser, and it’s not there. In re-reading, I see this is not about Sermon Browser, but about “Sermon Manager”. Has Sermon Browser been replaced, or is this an alternative plugin? I see your first post where you mentioned “Sermon Manager” being able to import from SermonBrowser, but nothing from Mark about a retirement of SermonBrowser.

Are you “the developer” that Mark was referring to? If so, can you connect the dots for us (if they’re actually supposed to be connected)? What’s the plan for SermonBrowser?

Thanks.
Jack

• This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Jack Rogers.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Jack Rogers.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Jack Rogers.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Jack Rogers.

Hey @joeisuzu,

Good question so let me clarify.

Mark and us got talking a few months ago, before this thread started and we decided that we will work with him to bring Sermon Browser users across to Sermon Manager since he was not able to continue with this project.

We agreed on how it would work and then we commenced development and slotted in the agreed features we would bring to Sermon Manager that Sermon Browser users found useful. This can be seen in our public roadmap. https://trello.com/b/xGz75VJD

One of the things we also discussed is our developers bringing Sermon Browser back to life, however once we started down that road, we discovered doing so would be a significant undertaking, where first we all thought it would be a few days work to satisfy the issues WordPress identified. We then abandoned that idea because the plugin would have had to be re-written significantly.

In amongst all that, this thread was started to let all Sermon Browser users know that the plugin will be brought back and that more news was coming. The plan was to fix immediate users issues, get Sermon Browser stable, and then work toward migrating them across to Sermon Manager. That way the Sermon Browser user base was being looked after.

We have just released an update to Sermon Manager which includes importing sermons from Sermon Browser, allowing users to migrate across with one click since the Sermon Browser plugin has reached ‘end of life’.

Mark has other competing priorities so sadly he’s not able to continue with Sermon Browser hence why we discussed how we can look after his user base so you are not ‘stranded’.

I believe there will be an official email sent to Sermon Browser subscribers notifying them of these changes.

So to answer your last question, yes we are the developers Mark was referring to.

More than happy to answer any other questions.

We understand that this might not be ‘good’ news to everyone, especially those who are fond of Sermon Browser. Just to be 100% clear, we did not acquire Sermon Browser and then kill that project, it was simply a matter of competing priorities for Mark and then like minded individuals working together to look after the users in the best way we can.

Thanks,
Igor

Igor,

Thanks so much for the detailed background info. That does indeed fill in the gaps. I installed Sermon Manager on our “test” site months (or years?) ago, but we were already pretty invested in SermonBrowser and with no migration path, I deactivated Sermon Manager.

So based on your response, the only “practical” way forward for SermonBrowser users is to migrate to Sermon Manager.

I see wpforchurch offers subscription-based support for Sermon Manager. Will there be (or is there) community support here or somewhere else?

Thanks.
Jack

• This reply was modified 6 years, 12 months ago by Jack Rogers.

Hi @joeisuzu,

Not a problem.

Yeah you are right, you would be better off migrating to an actively developed Sermon plugin. We have a lot of improvements coming and even a Pro version in the new year.

In terms of support, you can check out our plugin page here which, like this, has it’s own support forum. https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/sermon-manager-for-wordpress/

We provide free support there or users can pay $49 per year to support our project and get support via our member area, i.e. outside of the WordPress directory.

Hope that answers your questions ??

Igor

@wpforchurch (Igor),

You’ve answered my questions, and probably others’ questions. Only time will tell what level of support is available here in the WordPress support forum. Since we use several plugins, it would get quite costly if we needed paid support for each of them. So hopefully, the community here will be helpful.

Jack

Igor,

I believe we have communicated in the past and I think I provided you the contact information for Mark. To keep this in perspective, I’m VERY very thankful for what you and Mark have done. Whether for profit or free, the ability to post sermons for others to hear is amazing and I believe will be well rewarded in Heaven. Thank you!

Regarding the path, I understand it as you both have explained and must accept it.

https://www.baptistpreaching.net I’m a very heavy sermon browser user with 1,920 sermons posted to date and another 400 to post when I can get the time. There were several options for posting sermons that were important to me and these are why I selected Sermon Browser…

1. Import id3 data. With thousands of sermons, I can’t imagine the time that would have taken to manually enter. Whereas I can use spreadsheets to update id3 and then import straight into Sermon Browser with little alteration. I see it on your progression path. (Thank you for including this on your path)

2. The ability to add multiple bible references per sermon and to search for them. Very important to me.

3. Tag sermons and add a tags widget.

4. Ability to add to podcast AND to add a subset in a search to podcast based on a category, preacher, tag etc.

5. Show Player on list page without having to go into a sermon to play.

6. The ability to show stats of sermons. https://baptistpreaching.net/stats This is important to allow preachers to see what stats they have for their sermons and to find duplicate sermon names. Very important to me.

I would certainly love it if these features could be included. Thank you so much for taking this on and providing a pathway for others to move forward.

One question, how does your import work? Understanding the import is intended for the same site, can I import and keep both or once the import takes place does Sermon Browser no longer work?

Thanks for this migration option. I thought I’d post my experience in case it is useful for others considering it:

1. Sermon Manager uses the built in capabilities of WordPress called ‘custom post types’. Why is this a huge benefit? Because at last when new sermons are posted all the existing notification methods let people know (We use Jetpack to post to Facebook and Twitter as well as an email option for those who are registered). One note to learn from my mistake: turn off your notification settings before importing to save annoying people!

2. The import timed out, perhaps because of all those Facebook posts it was generating, but it did complete in something like 20 minutes.

3. Imported sermons do not appear on the archive page, though new uploads do. Any ideas on this?

4. Sermon browser displayed the audio player on the category page as well as the single page. I’ve not managed to figure out how to do this yet with sermon manager meaning an extra click for users.

Thanks Igor and WP for church

@tstephenson –
Thanks for posting this. I’m sure it will be helpful when we and others are ready to migrate.

Jack

Hey @bhosting,

Thanks for your feedback. I will respond to each of your points below:

1. As you mentioned, this is coming ??

2. This one is also coming

3. Currently we have ‘topics’ however not ‘tags’. We tried putting in Sermon Browser tags into Sermon Manager as topics however we found that Sermon Browser tags had bugs which prevented this from working.

4. This is coming

5. This should already be possible, you can enable this option in the plugin settings, then it comes down to the theme.

6. We will be adding a lot more analytics functionality in however that will mostly come in the Pro version. We will consider putting in some basic stats into the free version however.

In terms of how the import works, its currently built to work where Sermon Browser is already installed. Our import process checks the database for Sermon Browser sermons data and then takes that data and converts it into Sermon Manager data.

Soon we will have a plugin which you can install on a separate WordPress instance where you don’t have Sermon Browser installed, and be able to migrate remotely.

Hope that answers your questions,
Thanks, Igor

• This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by wpforchurch.

Hey @tstephenson,

Thanks for your feedback too.

Regarding point 3, would you be able to send us some WP admin logins to [email protected] so we can take a look?

Regarding point 4, there is a setting for this in the plugin settings, so if you enable the player on Archive views, that should show up for you.

The import normally occurs very quickly so i would say your time out was probably due to what you assumed as well, the additional processes that were happening as a result.

Thanks,
Igor

Thank you Igor for the response. I didn’t properly explain, I use a separate plugin to provide stats directly from SQL to bypass no stats with Sermon Browser. Having builtin features on your plugin certainly sounds like a great feature to pay for with a pro version.

I think the only thing holding me back from being able to migrate is that I use multiple bible references in the same sermon post and I have tags assigned to my sermons. If I migrate at this moment will I loose that capability?

Hi @bhosting,

Thanks for clarifying and no problem.

Multiple bible references is definitely coming for Sermon Manager, its one thing we agreed to with Mark, we just wanted to roll out migration already since not everyone will use/need that.

I don’t have an exact time/date but we’re working as fast as we can do add those features in.

With tags, we haven’t intended on adding this, since we have ‘topics’ which can be used in the same way. We just need to see what the bugs are with Sermon Browser tags preventing us from doing this.

If you migrate right now, we will only assign the main bible verse and no other’s and no tags will be imported yeah.

Keep an eye on our roadmap, you can consider migrating once we have multiple bible verses, we’ll do our best to make the tags > topics work too.

Thanks,
Igor

I’m not getting replies on my question posted to the Sermon Manager section of this forum, so I’ll try it here. It should be a “softball” question.

I’ve completed the export process on my “test” site. The “Main Bible Passage” for each sermon did not get imported. Is that a known issue, or perhaps even by design?

Incidentally, I’m still on PHP 5.3.3, but Sermon Manager recommends at least PHP 5.6.0. I doubt that’s related, but may as well specify it.

Thanks.
Jack

Disregard the previous post. It looks like I happened to look at one of the few sermons for which no passage was listed in the original version. The field populated correctly on other sermons.