Tags, Joomla 3.0 compatibility, automatic sermon creation
SermonSpeaker 4.4.6 is released. Besides the usual minor bugfixing and cleanups there are of course some new features.
Tags
SermonSpeaker 4.4.6 now has a "Tag Manager" in the backend. It allows you to create and manage common keywords which can then be assigned to sermons (in the metadata section). This tags can be used as the search keywords and/or as the meta keywords in the sermon detailpage. The exact behaviour can be set in the SermonSpeaker options.
Also the updated "related sermons" module and the "search" plugin will respect those tags.
Joomla 3.0 compatibility
SermonSpeaker is now forward compatible with Joomla 3.0 Beta. Due to this the minimum requirement for SermonSpeaker 4.4.6 was raised to Joomla 2.5.5. This also means that SermonSpeaker 4.4.6 will not run on Joomla 1.6 or 1.7 anymore.
While you can install SermonSpeaker in Joomla 3.0 and everything should work, the layout needs to be redesigned for the new responsive templates they introduced. I will work on this soon and hopefully have it working for the release of Joomla 3.0.
Automatic sermon creation
This was requested multiple times in forums and emails so I had a look at it, and it was easier than expected. So now you have a new function in the tools section which will create a sermon for each file found in the sermons path that is not yet assigned to a sermon. It uses the same code as the "Search orphaned files" function does, so you can preview which files the function will find. For each file found it will perform an id3 lookup and create a new sermon from this information.
This function can also be started from an extern script or crontab. For this you use the URL
index.php?option=sermonspeaker&task=script.createAutomatic&username=admin&password=1234
Of course replace "admin" and "1234" with the username and passwort of the user you need. This user needs permission to the new action "Run Scripts" which can be set in the SermonSpeaker options (tab "Permissions").
Other new stuff
- HTML5 fallback for Wordpress Audio Player (thanks to forum suggestion from Ian)
- Added an option to the sermon view to always show the most recent sermon, allowing for a last sermon view
- Added an option to track downloads with GoogleAnalytics
Modules and Plugins
Most modules and plugins are also updated. Mostly because they are now also forward compatible with Joomla 3.0 and in case of the related sermons module and the search plugin to support the new tags.