Mattytap Sermons
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.
Mattytap Sermons is a maintained restoration of Sermon Manager 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 (wpfc_sermon), taxonomies (wpfc_preacher, wpfc_sermon_series, etc.), all wpfc_* 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.
What Mattytap Sermons preserves
- Same shortcodes (
[sermons],[sermon_images],[list_podcasts],[list_sermons],[latest_series],[sermon_sort_fields]) - Same custom post type and taxonomies: existing sermon data carries over without import
- Same template files in
views/: existing theme overrides continue to work - Same Bib.ly Bible-reference integration
- Same iTunes-compatible podcast feeds
What’s new in Mattytap Sermons
- Active security maintenance, with private vulnerability reporting for responsible disclosure
- Modernised for PHP 8.1+ and WordPress 6.0+
- Bundled outdated third-party dependencies removed or upgraded (CMB2, wp-background-processing, the entry-views polyfill, taxonomy-images)
- Continuing development on GitHub
Popular shortcodes
[sermons]: list the 10 most recent sermons[sermons per_page="20"]: list the 20 most recent sermons[sermon_images]: list all sermon series with associated image in a grid[list_podcasts]: list available podcast services with large buttons[list_sermons]: list all series or speakers in a simple unordered list[latest_series]: display information about the latest sermon series, including the image, title, and description[sermon_sort_fields]: dropdown selections to navigate to sermons by series or speaker
External services
Mattytap Sermons doesn’t need any outside service to work. A few features do reach one, either in a visitor’s browser or from your own site. Each is listed here with what is sent, when, and how to avoid it.
- Bible verse popups (Faithlife Reftagger). On sermon pages, the visitor’s browser loads a script from api.reftagger.com, which turns Bible references into links that show the verse when hovered. It’s on by default, as it was in Sermon Manager. Turn it off under Sermons > Settings > Verse > Verse Popups. Faithlife terms and privacy.
- YouTube and Vimeo. A sermon given a YouTube or Vimeo address in its Video Link field plays in that service’s own player, which the visitor’s browser loads from YouTube or Vimeo when the sermon is opened. With the Plyr player, the default, YouTube videos come from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s reduced-tracking address, though YouTube may still set cookies of its own, and Vimeo is asked not to track the visitor. Plyr also asks noembed.com for a YouTube video’s title. A video pasted into the Video Embed Code field plays exactly as pasted. Nothing is embedded unless a sermon has a video. YouTube terms and privacy. Vimeo terms and privacy. noembed.
- Audio file size. When a sermon is saved with an audio file address rather than an uploaded file, your site sends a single request to that address to read the file’s size for the podcast feed. Only public web addresses are checked, and nothing about your site is sent.
- PodTrac. Off by default. If you turn on PodTrac Tracking under Sermons > Settings > Podcast, the audio links in your podcast feed pass through dts.podtrac.com, so podcast apps fetch each episode by way of PodTrac, which counts the download. PodTrac privacy.
- Importing a Sermon Manager export file. When you import an export file under Sermons > Import/Export, your site downloads each attached file from the address recorded in the export. Only public web addresses are fetched.
The Plyr player’s icons are part of the plugin and load from your own site.
Credits
Mattytap Sermons is a restoration of Sermon Manager for WordPress, originally by WP for Church (Jason Westbrook and contributors). The full upstream contributor list is recorded in CONTRIBUTORS.md. Translations were originally contributed by GITNE (German, Polish), Gilles Pilloud (French), and the Dutch translation behind v2.15.13.