thebytebar

<p><strong>Byte Sermons</strong> gives churches everything they need to publish and organize sermon content on their WordPress website — without locking you into a specific theme or page builder.</p>
<h4>Key Features</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Sermon custom post type</strong> — A dedicated post type built for sermons, with support for title, content, excerpt, and featured image.</li>
<li><strong>Video embed support</strong> — Paste a YouTube, Vimeo, or Rumble URL and the video is automatically embedded in a responsive 16:9 player.</li>
<li><strong>Series management</strong> — Group sermons into series with a title, image, and description. Each series gets its own archive page with a hero banner and sermon grid.</li>
<li><strong>Speaker / preacher profiles</strong> — Assign sermons to one or more preachers. Each preacher gets a profile page with photo, bio, and their full sermon listing.</li>
<li><strong>Topic categorization</strong> — Tag sermons with topics (Faith, Prayer, Grace, etc.) so visitors can browse by theme.</li>
<li><strong>Scripture references</strong> — Link sermons to specific Bible books and chapters. All 66 books of the Bible are pre-loaded, organized by chapter.</li>
<li><strong>Live-filter sermon library</strong> — The sermon archive page includes an instant filter bar — search by keyword, series, preacher, or topic without a page reload.</li>
<li><strong>Beautiful archive pages</strong> — Every taxonomy (series, speakers, topics, scripture) has a purpose-built archive template that fits seamlessly into your theme.</li>
<li><strong>Theme-agnostic layout</strong> — Works with any WordPress theme. Plugin pages inherit the active theme’s header, footer, typography, and colors.</li>
<li>Layout settings — Control left/right padding on desktop, tablet, and mobile independently from the Sermons <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Settings page.</li>
<li><strong>Custom permalink slugs</strong> — Customize the URL structure for every content type from Settings <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Permalinks.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Who Is This For?</h4>
<p>Byte Sermons is designed for churches of any size that want a clean, focused way to share sermon content online — without the complexity of a full church management system.</p>
<h4>Template Override Support</h4>
<p>Any template can be overridden by placing a same-named file inside your theme’s folder. This gives designers and developers full control over the presentation of every sermon page.</p>


Byte Sermons

The complete sermon management plugin for churches. Publish, organize, and embed sermons on your WordPress site.

mattytap

<p>Mattytap Sermons lets a church publish sermons online with the structure they actually need: speakers, series, topics, books of the Bible, and service types, all as proper WordPress taxonomies, all searchable, all filterable. Add audio and video, attach handouts (PDF, DOC, PPT, anything), embed video from YouTube or Vimeo, and ship a fully-featured iTunes-compatible podcast feed for the whole library or for any individual series, speaker, topic, or book.</p>
<p>Mattytap Sermons is a maintained restoration of <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sermon-manager-for-wordpress/" rel="ugc">Sermon Manager</a> by WP for Church. The original plugin was last published to WordPress.org in September 2024 (version 2.30.0); the upstream maintainer’s web presence is no longer reachable, and several publicly-disclosed CVEs remain unpatched in 2.30.0 and earlier. Mattytap Sermons is the successor line. Existing Sermon Manager installs (including 2.30.0) can switch to Mattytap Sermons as a drop-in replacement: the database schema, custom post type (<code>wpfc_sermon</code>), taxonomies (<code>wpfc_preacher</code>, <code>wpfc_sermon_series</code>, etc.), all <code>wpfc_*</code> option keys, six core shortcodes, and view templates are preserved. Multi-attachments for notes and bulletin, post-body editor support, and Twenty Twenty-Four theme wrapper are cherry-picked from upstream 2.30.0.</p>
<h4>What Mattytap Sermons preserves</h4>
<ul>
<li>Same shortcodes (<code>[sermons]</code>, <code>[sermon_images]</code>, <code>[list_podcasts]</code>, <code>[list_sermons]</code>, <code>[latest_series]</code>, <code>[sermon_sort_fields]</code>)</li>
<li>Same custom post type and taxonomies: existing sermon data carries over without import</li>
<li>Same template files in <code>views/</code>: existing theme overrides continue to work</li>
<li>Same Bib.ly Bible-reference integration</li>
<li>Same iTunes-compatible podcast feeds</li>
</ul>
<h4>What’s new in Mattytap Sermons</h4>
<ul>
<li>Active security maintenance, with <a href="https://github.com/mattytap/Mattytap-Sermons/security" rel="nofollow ugc">private vulnerability reporting</a> for responsible disclosure</li>
<li>Modernised for PHP 8.1+ and WordPress 6.0+</li>
<li>Bundled outdated third-party dependencies removed or upgraded (CMB2, wp-background-processing, the entry-views polyfill, taxonomy-images)</li>
<li>Continuing development on <a href="https://github.com/mattytap/Mattytap-Sermons" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Popular shortcodes</h4>
<ul>
<li><code>[sermons]</code>: list the 10 most recent sermons</li>
<li><code>[sermons per_page="20"]</code>: list the 20 most recent sermons</li>
<li><code>[sermon_images]</code>: list all sermon series with associated image in a grid</li>
<li><code>[list_podcasts]</code>: list available podcast services with large buttons</li>
<li><code>[list_sermons]</code>: list all series or speakers in a simple unordered list</li>
<li><code>[latest_series]</code>: display information about the latest sermon series, including the image, title, and description</li>
<li><code>[sermon_sort_fields]</code>: dropdown selections to navigate to sermons by series or speaker</li>
</ul>
<h3>Credits</h3>
<p>Mattytap Sermons is a restoration of <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/sermon-manager-for-wordpress/" rel="ugc">Sermon Manager for WordPress</a>, originally by WP for Church (Jason Westbrook and contributors). The full upstream contributor list is recorded in <a href="https://github.com/mattytap/Mattytap-Sermons/blob/main/CONTRIBUTORS.md" rel="nofollow ugc">CONTRIBUTORS.md</a>. Translations were originally contributed by GITNE (German, Polish), Gilles Pilloud (French), and the Dutch translation behind v2.15.13.</p>


Mattytap Sermons

A maintained restoration of Sermon Manager: publish, organise, and podcast sermons on a WordPress site.

Byte Sermons vs Mattytap Sermons