To understand Sermons on the Web from the point of view of someone browsing your church's web site, browse the online demo. To see the administration features, which sound workers will use occasionally, browse the online demo administration.
To evaluate sermon publication, you need to install software on a PC running Windows 2000 or later. This takes at most a few minutes, since no configuration is required. Install the software in this order:
After installation, run Sermons on the Web Publisher, click Browse, and select an audio file with a .wav extension.
If you don't have an audio file handy, there are several in C:\Windows\Media.
If you create a file named something like 2007-11-10 AM Anderson - Just Looking.wav,
you can see how Sermons on the Web automatically populates fields based on the file name.
Next click Publish. For the demo, the FTP upload step is skipped,
but the other publication actions proceed as they would on an actual deployment.
After publication, you can see your sermon on the online demo.
There are many choices available in creating your infrastructure for publishing sermons on the web. This is good for flexibility, but the many choices can be daunting for those new to the technology. To help out, these instructions provide examples that take you through a reference deployment. The reference deployment is drawn from the actual deployment used by Brookside Baptist Church, the first site to go online with Sermons on the Web.
| Step | Example from reference deployment |
|---|---|
| 1. Obtain a PC to record and upload the sermons, and connect it to your audio mixer. | Almost any modern PC running Windows 2000 or later will do; a 1 GHz or faster processor is recommended. Run a cable from an output of your mixer into the line-in on your computer; most computer motherboards are designed well enough that a separate audio card is not required. |
| 2. Install audio recording and editing software. | Install Audacity.
Sermons on the Web doesn't use the editing software,
but you will need it to create the .wav files. |
| 3. Install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Windows Media Encoder 9 Series, and Sermons on the Web, as listed in the Evaluation section above. | |
4. Obtain a web hosting account that supports PHP and MySQL (if you don't already have one). A web hosting account is space you rent on a computer that serves your web site 24/7/365. Select an account with enough storage to hold your sermons. Each hour of sermons uses approximately 10 MB. |
Obtain a Midwest Websites PHP MySQL web hosting account. 1 GB of storage is enough for two half-hour sermons per week, with lots of room to spare for anything additional. |
5. Configure your sermons web site.
|
Extract C:\Program Files\Sermons on the Web\ChurchWebSite.zip to a new folder on the desktop.
Open Sermons\Config.php in Notepad and fill in the required configuration variables.
Then, if using the starter web site, open index.html in Notepad and replace the placeholders with information about your church. |
6. Create a database, and initialize its structure using SermonDatabaseSchema.sql. |
|
| 7. Upload the web application. | From the extracted web site files, copy the Sermons folder to the public_html folder on your web site.
You can do this with an FTP program such as FileZilla.
If you are using the starter web site, also copy index.html. |
8. Set security on the Admin folder. |
|
| 9. Configure the Publisher. | On your PC, run Sermons on the Web Publisher.
Click Tools, then Options,
and set the options in the Organization and Web site groups. |
| 10. Populate the database with your service types, speakers, and series. | In the Publisher click When you are done, back in the Publisher, click |
Follow these steps to upgrade from an older version of Sermons on the Web.
To see what has changed in a release click its release notes icon
in the
File Releases.
To be notified of updates, click the monitor icon
for one or both packages.
Config.php and any other PHP file customizations.Sermons\Admin\UpgradeSermonDatabase.sql,
similar to how step 6 of the installation instructions calls for importing SermonDatabaseSchema.sql.Since the Sermons on the Web Publisher stores passwords in clear text,
it is important that only authorized users have access to the Publisher's configuration file.
One solution is to limit who can log into the computer;
alternatively, you can use Windows file system security to limit access.
On Windows Vista, the default location for the configuration is C:\ProgramData\Sermons on the Web.
On earlier versions of Windows, the default location is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sermons on the Web.
A common protocol for uploading files (such as sermon MP3 files) is FTP. However, FTP does not encrypt passwords or file data during transmission. For most churches, the chance of interception and potential harm are low enough for this to not be a concern, but if it is, you'll want to use a secure transport such as HTTPS.
In case of difficulty, following are some tests you can perform to help identify the problem:
http://mychurch.org/Sermons/) in a web browser, with no errors reported?http://mychurch.org/Sermons/Admin/) in a web browser,
where the user name and password I enter when prompted match those in the Publisher's configuration?ftp://username@ftp.mychurch.org/public_html/Sermons/Content/) in a web browser,
where username and the password I enter when prompted match those in the Publisher's configuration?Sermons URI to http://sermonsontheweb.sourceforge.net/Demo/Sermons/)?Once you have Sermons on the Web deployed, follow these steps to publish a sermon:
2007-08-20 AM LastName - Title of the Sermon.wav.
Actually, you can use any file name, but this pattern allows Sermons on the Web to recognize information about the sermon and makes it easier for you to sort your sermons.
If you have multiple of the same type of service on the same day (e.g. during a seminar), append the service number to the service type (e.g. AM1 instead of AM).Sermons on the Web Publisher. Drag and drop the audio file onto the Sermons on the Web or click Browse and choose the file.Publish.When there are changes to your service types, speakers, or series, go to the sermons administration web page (you can use the link in the Publisher). From there make whatever changes you need. The administration web page does not support deletion. To delete, you must edit the database directly, for example with phpMyAdmin.
You should regularly back up your sound computer and the database.
Copyright 2008 Edward D. Brey. Free to redistribute and modify per the GNU General Public License version 3 or later.