Learning Center

Worship Times has developed a plug-in for sites on our network that allows you to easily manage and organize a variety of different types of files. This Webmaster Class will walk you through a broad overview of how the plug-in works and then go into detail on display. Publications allows you to choose the order in which things your files display.

Most of our partners use the Publications tool to display lists of sermons, newsletters, and bulletins. Church governing bodies use it to organize board and committee resources, forms, and meeting documents. Do note that there are slight variations with this plugin on our different networks. If you’re interested in the features mentioned in this video, and aren’t seeing them, please reach out to us at support@worshiptimes.org or via a support ticket to begin a discussion about upgrading.

• From your dashboard, click on Publications to see a list of all of your publications.
• Hover over Publications and click on Publication Types to view, add or delete any of your publication types.
• Click on Authors to view, add or delete any authors.

To create a new publication:

• Hover over Publications and click on New Publications.
• Alternatively, you can click on New Publications at the top of your main Publications page.
• Begin filling out the details for your publication.
  • Give it a title and a date. This is usually a Sunday for bulletins and sermons or the first of the month for newsletters.
  • Most people leave the short description blank, but you can use it to reference scripture or something similar.
  • Then the next three fields are for your actual content. You can use just one of these fields or all three.
    • Add a PDF for newsletters, bulletins, or sermon texts, or add a URL to an external site/resource.
    • Add a link to an MP3 file or sermon audio.
    • Add a link to a video for a worship service or sermon.

      A note about audio and video files. While it is technically possible to add these types of files to your website if they’re small enough, we do not recommend it, as these larger file types will quickly slow down your site. For audio files we recommend creating an Amazon S3 storage account and uploading MP3s there. For video files, we recommend uploading to YouTube or Vimeo than pasting the link in your Publications.

  • Once you’ve added your files, on the right hand side under Publication Types, be sure to select the correct publication types, which function like categories. This is what tells your website where to display the publication.
  • If you’d like, you can also add or check an author, which can be a single person, a committee, or a church or organization.
• And once you are ready, click Publish.

If your publication lists have already been set up, this publication will automatically display in that publication type as long as you’ve selected the publication type that matches the list on the page. If you’ve created a new publication type however, or if you wish to add an already existing publication type to a page:

• Open the editor for a page or create a new page.
• Click on Add Media
• Click on Publications List.
• Select your publication type from the dropdown menu.
• Select how many publications to display.
• On our newest networks, you can sort by publication date or publication title. You can also sort in descending order or ascending order.
• Choose whether or not to show the author and show the description.
• Change the title of the view file link if needed.

  If you do not see these options but need one of these things done, contact support@worshiptimes.org, and we’ll help you edit your short code.

• Click on Insert Publications List, which enters a short code – everything in between the brackets tells the page which publication type to display and how to display it.
• Publish or Update your page, and then view the page.
• Any time you add a publication to this publication type, it will automatically be added to this page.

Note that on our oldest networks, you won’t have the publications list option at all in Add Media. Instead, you’ll have to link directly to the publication types archive page.

• Navigate to Appearance –> Menus.
• Under Publication Types, select your publication type and click on Add to Menu.
• Alternatively, get the direct link for the publication types archive page by going to Publications –> Publication Types, and click on View under your publication type.

As always, if you have any questions, please submit a support ticket from your website or email us at support@worshiptimes.org.