Favorite WordPress Sermon Plugin?

[BradVos]

Rather than hijack this thread http://www.puritanboard.com/f66/sermon-manager-website-80972/

I thought I would start a new one specifically about WordPress Sermon Plugins.

It seems that are three primary ones out there Sermon Manager, Sermon Browser and the paid Sermon Engine (Sermon Plugin Options:).

I am leaning toward Sermon Manager because it free and has a MP3 Importer for all my older files (150 files). Looking on the Sermon Browser, it seems that a second version is in the works but not out yet. I don't really want to wait.

Do you have any words of wisdom?

 

[BradVos]

Has anyone used the Sermon Manager Import MP# features?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Yes. Sermon Manager is nice for those where you need to create a simple workflow because FTP can get a bit confusing for folks that are not web savvy. I've set it up for others. That said, "uploading" a sermon is a bit more than a way to get it online. I use MP3Tag to make every Sermon or teaching have the tags appropriate for the sermon or lesson and I use dBPowerAmp to convert to 64kbps MP3 as opposed to having a massive file sampled at a higher rate. The drawback to not using a sermon hosting services is that, over time, the size of the files hosted becomes pretty large and backing it up or restoring becomes an increasingly difficult issue.

For Podcast plugins for Wordpress, I prefer Podpress. It requires that you know how to enter the path for a file but I like to create unique posts for every sermon with tags and categories. Over time, the Church website becomes very "rich" in keywords and relevance as more and more sermons are uploaded and the text of the sermon (or the text of the verse) is included in each post. For our Church website (see sig) you can click on the Sermon Audio page to search/listen by book/series etc or you can find the sermons by cetegories and the tag cloud for the site. It's just all part of having a very relevant site for SEO purposes because the whole point in putting sermons online is for people to find your site so they can listen to them.

 

[BradVos]

Thanks Rich I will have to check out Podpress. I was thinking about looking into Blubrry as well. No problem adding a direct link. Right now, we use an offsite blogspot account that goes to Google Feedburner. I don't think it helps our SEO at all.

 

[BradVos]

Rich one more quick question. I have been looking into switching over to a new podcast platform now that we switched our site to WordPress, but I have been waiting to figure out which sermon manager plugin to use. I came across this article awhile back from Podcast Answer man. In it he suggested that you use Google Feedburner for iTunes even if you use another plugin to create it because it makes an easier transition if you ever switch plugins or CMS platforms I guess. Here is the article. How To Change Your Podcast RSS Feed In iTunes – iTunes Redirect Any thoughts on that? Do you see wisdom in this?