archived sermons module and Sermons List problem

First of all, what a brilliant component! At first I thought it was okay but lacking something, then I discovered all the extra modules and plugins. Wow!

For all that, I'm hoping you can solve my little problem.

I'm using Joomla! 2.5.8 with PHP v5.2.17 and mySQL 5.1.67. I don't have specifics about the version of Linux, I'm afraid: it's a site hosted by 1and1.fr

I've installed SermonSpeaker 4.4.0 and SermonArchive 4.4.3 (and some other modules), and all is working fine.

The church's sermons are stored in images/predication and we are using date and month subdirectories (so, currently, from 2012/09 to 2013/03).

Problem 1 - the main problem.

The site has three areas: left, right snf msin (about twice the width of the other two).

The main menu option using a sermon list (limited to works as required ... the first time. I.e. it provides a list of the 8 most recent sermons from any folder. This is displayed in the main area.

In the area on the right is asermon archive list, set to year and month, which correctly lists all folders. When I click on one of these, it goes to a new page (displayed without left or right areas) and correctly lists the sermons in that folder. If I go back and then refresh (or, of course, return to the sermon list via the main menu), sermon speaker remembers my visit to the archives and I no longer see the most recent 8 but the same list that I saw in the archive.

Is there any way I can get the sermon list to reset its cache so that it doesn't remember the choice made in the archive module?

Problem 2 - an alternative approach

If I can't do that, I do have an alternative. I found that, by linking the archive to the speaker list menu element, when I click on a specific folder it changes the list there and then. That's cool. But I then have the problem that initially the sermon list returns a blank screen.

Is there any way to set the archive (or sermon list) automatically to the most recent folder? I can do it manually but that means that I have to change it each month manually. I'd like it to do it automatically - which would work alongside others doing the upload.

Problem 3 - how do I access the <b>All Sermons</b> page?

The archive list (in Problem 1) lands me in a page with the heading "All Sermons" but I can't find anything that allows me to configure this. As there any way I can access it?

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Beleive me, these are not gripes. You're getting these detailed problems because what you've done is so good it gives us real flexibility. The problem is, we always want more! (There's a sermon in that, somewhere!)

Thanks in advance,

Len Clark

PS, I've just tried problem 1 on your demo page and the same thing happens there

Hi Len

First: You should consider updating your Joomla to 2.5.9 and SermonSpeaker to 4.4.11 if magic quotes are disabled or 4.4.8 if the're enabled and you can't turn it off.

The problem with the problem 1 is that it's not a cache issue. The selected filters are set in a userstate, which is stored in the session. So closing the browser and reloading the page will reset the filter. However I see your point but I fear there is not an easy solution for this. Of course you can use the filter options (global tab in SermonSpeaker options) like in the demopage. The the user could reset the filters manually.

To get a list of the most recent sermons, you can use the option to limit the shown sermons. This option can be set in the menu item parameters for the sermons list. This will disable all sorting and pagination for the list and show the latest sermons only. That sounds like what you want to do?

The "All Sermons" is a translated string, the keyword is "COM_SERMONSPEAKER_SERMONS_TITLE". You can use the Joomla language overrides (in Joomla Language Manager) to change this. This title is used if there is nothing set in the menu item (or there isn't an active menu item at all). You can set a menu item in the module settings and in the respective menu item you then can set the pagetitle (or hide it).

I hope that helped

And if you have ideas how to improve SermonSpeaker, don't hesitate to post them

And what a fast response!

Okay, I'll take a good look and digest all that tomorrow. Just one question: is the suggestion to upgrade just good practice or might it offer some help in resolving one or other problem?

I really am impressed.

I do have a few suggestions and I'll add a separate topic - but it sounds as if you have plenty on your hands. Thanks for all your effort.

Sometimes upgrading solves problems, but in this case it's probably not. Since the same happens on my demopage
But it's for sure good practice and especially for Joomla it is for security. In case of SermonSpeaker you get some added features like improved categories, Google Analytics support, tags, nice series download, ...