Hi

The module looks excellent. Well done to the developers. I have been looking for a while to find a module that does a couple of really simple things and i am hoping (desperately) that this might be it. Here are the things:

1. I need to be able to upload a lot of existing MP3 sermon files. All i want at the end is the name of the file converted to the name of the sermon and the original date of the file used for the date of the sermon. All the other information i will fill our sometime ... maybe never.

2. A really easy way of getting new sermons into the system. At present all we do is run an FTP batch file to upload new sermons to our server. We have a simple script that displays those files here www.nickwatson.org/sermons/

Ideally i would like this basic system to continue. That is:
i) Upload via FTP the mp3 files to the server
ii) When finished we go to a page that is publically available that forces a check of the FTP server for new files and adds them into the sermon list. Or maybe a cron job that does the same.

Is this sort of thing possible or likely to be possible?

Thanks
Andrew

Andrew:

This is an intriguing idea. It would most likely take the form of a plugin that would run once a day (like the podcast plugin we wrote).

I would see the parameters including a folder on your server to search for files that have not been indexed since the prior day, using the datestamp of the upload. Or possibly a record could be generated of imported files and the system would check to see if there are any new ones as soon as someone "hits" the index page (this is the method available to Joomla plugins rather than using cron).

The plugin would then take the name of the file, strip off the extension and use it as the title of the message, using information you put in the parameters of the plugin for the teacher, etc.

I'll put this down as a possible future plugin. Right now we are out of the development cycle so perhaps look for something late this summer or early fall.

Tom

Yes Tom, the way you described it could certainly work. Another option instead of running a lookup everytime someone hit the index page would be to create another non-gui page that when visited fires the check on the server. The backup software i use allows me to run a program at the end of the backup that could just be a reference to the non-gui action page.

The key thing for our purposes is simplicity. The people who look after the recording of sermons have very limited skills. Those that have the skills are often busy. So making the system almost completely automatic would be of great benefit for us.

And most times the really simple scenario is all we would ever need. People just want to be able to download the sermon when they get home. If you name the file intelligently then using it as the sermon name is fine. If the speaker wants to felsh out the sermon info then he can upload other files and provide additional info at his lesiure. But just having the file in the system takes a lot of the hard work out.

Rather than storing the speaker in a parameter i would suggest doing a lookup in the file name for the teacher.

Or you could have it searching through subfolders that are named according to teacher name. Our recording process is:
1. Record the file with default time stamp name
2. Rename file with speakers name and message title
3. Copy file to ftp upload folder
4. Run ftp upload

Step 3 could easily accommodate putting a file in the right teacher folder.

Anyhow, would love to use your system. They layout and features are really excellent.

Well done.
Andrew

Thanks, Andrew. One thing you might consider as well is that the new version, not in a release candidate, features front end uploading and creation of studies and media file records. It's 6.0.08_RC2

You might download and install it just to see if it would do the trick for you. Otherwise I'll be taking a look at this in a bit (I'm actually right now on contract to finish a book manuscript so have limited time)

Another thing I was thinking about was using mp3 tags to search for information.

Tom

Oh, i missed that Tom. Will do. And the MP3 tags is a great idea... although i dont think our software allows us to enter such a thing. Would be great to use it if it were there.

Good luck on the book.

Cheers
Andrew

Thanks, Andrew- you might check out this tool on CNET:
www.download.com/Mp3-Tag-Tools/3000-2141_4-10073195.html

It's free though I've not used it.

Tom