Oh, man, I would love this if it existed. I put text formats of sermons on our church's website. The pastor sends them to me in Word, and I convert them to html. I have tried conversion software, but nothing seems to be effective at all, and I just use a template.

I use Word's Edit/replace feature on the document before I cut and paste, changing characters and double spaces to standard html code. Then I just put in the paragraphs and change the title, and add a link to the main sermon page I've got it down to around 10 minutes, but a SMS would be lovely ...

How are the sermons being uploaded? As a file to download, or displayed as HTML?

have you tried converting to pdf docs? I ve been doing that, the user can view or download the sermon and its easily printable, the conversion is simple and quick as well.

Are we talking text or audio?

If we are talking text, I'm sure a simple cms based off of xstandard would do well.

If we are talking audio, I guess it's time for me to finish the project I am working on. It handles uploading, creating the m3u for streaming, and managing the existing sermons.

either way, it shouldn't be hard. Describe in detail what you'd like, Marcus.

If anyone else has any idea's, let me know and as I plan to develop this further.

What you're doing sounds perfect TJ!!!

Well then, I guess I better get back to work on that. I'm about half done, but I guess if I am going to release it for public use I need to make the gui / install / etc more userfriendly.

Any thing you'd like to see included?

openSource? /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />
If it's ok, i think i'd like to convert your program into a plugin ("node", so called) to my CMS /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

No problems. Just give credit where credit is due.

If you were standing here i'd shake your hand.

I recently found a free PDF conversion program ...
Our church has a high number of older folks who are not that web savvy, so we keep things simple. I'll try putting some up both ways and see if any comments come in.
Thanks for the suggestion.

Open Office 2.0 Beta and previous versions allow you to save to pdf. Just open up OOo (OpenOffice.org) and right it out as if it were a RTF (Rich Text File) and then save as a pdf. Not that hard at all Webby.

Did I mention it's FREE!!!

Hi WeBBy, I wrote something in perl once to handle formatting problems. I'll see if I can find it.

Yes. I am here typing this right now.

ok bad joke /whistle.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":whist:" border="0" alt="whistle.gif" />

LOL at Dustin.

Back on track, someone mentioned PDF conversions and mentioned a FREE convertor. I also ran across one and thought I would post the link for those who need one.

http://www.pdf995.com/ (there are liscened versions too, but there is a free version)

I type therefore I am.

There is a Print to PDF thread at OSM.

This is the free PDF converter I have.

I have seen OpenOffice on a friend's computer, also.

I use:

PDF Creator

The sites in German or something, but its free, released under GPL, no Ads and works fantastically. Much faster than PDF995.

There are tons of scritps out there that will show the contents of a directory, maybe thats what you need to do this simply and quickly. Then all you have to do is load up files in whatever format you want to the right directory and viola!

Try this URL for starters. Its all PHP scripts but you can probably find one in PERL etc...

HotScripts PHP File Management

Good Luck.

Here's the site Lostgorilla gave in English (I just clicked "this site in english /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" /> ) click here

so.. tj, how we coming along on this?

Hi all
I'm going to jump into this thread as it's sort of along the lines of what I'm also trying to source. I run a Joomla church site and recently installed the Sermon Speaker Com that's available for it but ran into a couple of problems - namely file sizes for uploads. My server hosts feel that it may partly be down to the Com, but also that it may be their server will preclude large uploads to prevent overloading the systems. However, even if I try to upload a 4 Mb file (as a test as I've not got any actual sermons yet to play with) the server throws a timeout. So I'm now trying to see whether there's any way around this one as I'm hopeful we could provide the sermons directly on the site, rather than having to go to the likes of Sermon Audio to host them (extra cost!). Has anyone any thoughts on this, or other suggestions I could perhaps try?

Thanks
Romayne
Belfast N. Ireland
Bloomfield Methodist

In a default PHP configuration, 2MB is the max file size. You can create a php_info file by creating a blank text file with this code: "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" (without the quotes). Save it as "info.php" and upload it to your server. Then, point your browser to the file (eg: http://yoursite.whatever/info.php) and read that page. You'll find a section under "Configuration" called "PHP Core". In there, you can find the "upload_max_filesize".

Once you know what the max size is, then we can figure out a solution for ya! /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

HTH,
Luke

Apologies for delay in replying, but truly appreciate your help on this as I've now just got my first sermon to sort out but it's a whopping 15 Mb!!! No hope there then, as my info.php says max filesize is 5 Mb which is what I recently set it at for test files, but my host tech set it up as far as 8 but stated even he was getting timeouts on it. So I'm now wondering if I can perhaps squish this Mp3 file down to a more manageable size someway or whether I now need to look at a new host for the site which might better manage to cope with this issue??

Do you absolutely have to upload the data over HTTP? Could you create an FTP account to push the sermons up and simply link to them from the database?

I've actually tried it both methods but still run into the same problem yet I'm on a 10 Mb broadband connection and should technically not have a problem with the uploads (although I know my ISP has a speed restriction once you've gone past your quota which may be impacting this to a degree), thus wondering if perhaps it's the server rather than my PC that's the problem. But yes, I think I'm leaning more towards the pure download link type of event as Sermon Speaker was the problem with the http uploads. How do the rest of you manage to provide larger downloads for your sites??

PS - have just tried the FTP upload again and it's worked ok this time so think I'm pretty much sorted on doing things this way, but would still like to have a streaming option for those with slow connections or who would prefer to play it that way.

You can change those settings with .htaccess.

You probably already have a file named .htaccess in the Joomla folder on your server.

Download it, open it in Notepad, and add the following 2 lines in it:
php_value upload_max_filesize 30000000
php_value post_max_size 60000000

This will give you 30MB per file uploaded and let you send 60MB through a form. It is overkill, but you can adjust the numbers.

Now upload it to the place you downloaded it from.

If there is not a .htaccess on your server already then you can create it like so:

Create a file named htaccess.txt on your computer.
Add the two lines I noted above and save it on your computer.
Upload htaccess.txt to your server and rename it .htaccess

Windows doesn't like making files that just have a . at the beginning. Linux doesn't mind it, and Apache requires it to hide configuration files.

Interesting fix and much appreciated. Haven't the time just now to test it out with Sermon Speaker, but will attempt to do so tomorrow to see what happens. It would just make life a ton easier to use the Mod rather than manually organising everything but at least I feel like things are moving in the right direction, which is great. Will let you know how it goes. Thanks tons.

Hmm - interesting - that fix just provoked a 500 internal error which only resolved when I deleted the .htaccess file completely. Any ideas why that might happen and/or is it something I can overcome to continue trying to use the fix ?

=======================
30/10 - never worry - I've managed to get the system to take the uploads just with the php.ini file now although not sure why it wasn't working before, but at least now I can upload the files and they WORK!!! Thanks again tho for all responses and help.

What are the specs on your mp3?

If it's a stereo, 44.1 KHz (or greater), and 128 bit rate then I would recommend doing a mono, 22.5 Khz and 64 (or less) bit rate.

You'll still get good/decent quality audio but reducing your file size a good amount.

If you are using a Windows machine, I recommend Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) a durn good free audio file editor.

HTH. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Or any other operating system. Works in Linux & OSX as well /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Thanks for that info - another colleague in the church is actually providing the converted MP3s for me and given he's a PHP programmer (I think!) he hopefully will appreciate what I require as I've explained to him the problems. I was ill last Sunday so didn't see him to discuss the matter, but will see how he gets on with that sermon and take it from there. I've used Audacity before so could have a go at changing the spec on the current file and seeing how it ends up. Appreciated /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />.

True.

The best free "sermon management system" I have found is Sermons on the Web. It runs on a mySQL database. Once the database is set up and the Localized software configured it's super easy to use.

Sermons on the Web

If you're using Wordpress, you should check out Sermon Browser. If you're not using Wordpress, Sermon Browser is a great reason to switch :)

Rob and MF did a talk at Drupalcon: Building Church Websites with Drupal (video viewable there). This features a section on how they would implement sermons on a site.
In terms of audio hosting: I've used archive.org (just sign up and click the "upload" button to begin) before. This is free, but has sometimes been offline or slow when I've wanted to use it - but if you had a budget like mine (£0), then it is a reasonable option. If you can afford a little outlay, you might want to investigate Libsyn for audio file hosting. Once you have uploaded your audio fles there, you just use the URL of the MP3 on your site.