Directories

I have just updated from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5 and so have been working to manually upgrade SermonSpeaker, as I had an older version. When I tried to upgrade to the version capable of being upgraded, I experienced some errors so just decided to upgrade manually. I am sorry I have not been able to find the answer to this elsewhere on the forum, as I am sure it has been asked, but in my older SermonSpeaker I have a main directory and created subdirectories such as Genesis, John, 1 Corinthians, and General, into which to put sermon mp3's. I noted a warning about using the sermonspeaker directory itself, so I have created a sermonfiles directory inside the joomla directory but outside any sermonspeaker directory. I note a lot of new ways to categorize, etc., (some of which, frankly, I am confused about right now when trying to display sermons), so I don't know if I need, for my own sake, to have subdirectories. I plan to use by ftp to move all my old sermon mp3's to the new place, but I wanted your advice as to whether to continue to have subdirectories or just put them all in the directory that I set up in the configuration. Thanks for any help.

Hi Fred

Asking on the forum is always fine. And I don't think this question was answered already

It's true that you should store the sermons outside the SermonSpeaker directory. The main reason is that Joomla deletes the whole folder on an uninstall and depending on the location it would even be deleted on an update.
I'd recommend a directory inside the /images/ directory, which allows to use the Joomla media manager. I usually do something like /images/sermons/.

As for the directory structure: SermonSpeaker optionally uses subdirectories based on date and/or on language. Or you can have a single directory. If you have this options enabled, subdirectories like this are created automatically depending on language and date:

• /2012/12/en/
• /2012/12/de/
• /2013/01/en/
• /2013/01/de/
• /2013/02/en/
• /2013/02/de/

This is mainly usefull to reduce the length of the dropdown lists in the sermon form where you can select the sermon file. This list gets long without subdirectories with the time
In your case it doesn't matter much where you store the sermons, as you probably will use the automatic creation feature (in the Tools section). You can drop them anywhere within the sermon path (with subdirectories or without) and SermonSpeaker will find the files. So my recommendation would be something like /images/sermons/migrated/.
For the new (future) files, I'd use the subdirectory structure from SermonSpeaker. If you use the integrated uploader, SermonSpeaker will do this automatically for you based on the preferences.

As for the categories: Those are useful for filtering the sermons list, and to apply ACL restrictions if needed. I recommend using the series to group sermons by topic, and use the categories to group them by events (like "Sunday service", "Youth meeting"). Grouping by bible books can be done with the (new) scriptures.

I hope this helped reduce the confusion. If you have further questions, just ask here or by email.

Blessings!
Thomas