Audio Sermons

Last couple of days I have been working on a system whereby Father Vin will be able to upload sermons from his dictaphone onto the website.  These will be similar to the sermons he delivers at Mass and will not only be useful for members of our Parish who are unable to attend Mass, but also for anyone around the world who is interested on what Priests say during the Homily part of the Mass.  

The sermons are in Windows Media Audio, not the universally-used MP3 I would have preferred, it is the only format that Father's dictaphone records with.  This format is playable on Windows Media Player for PCs and if you have a Mac like myself, you can download the Flip4Mac plug-in that enables you to play WMA files on your browser. 

Last night I got as far as uploading audio files onto the webserver (where the website is stored) successfully.  The problem I was having was enabling users to download the stored file off a webpage. Once I worked that out earlier this evening, the only problem I had was making the date display correctly so users would be able to tell which sermon corresponds to which mass week. All the file information is stored on a database so each sermon is listed tidily on the Audio Sermon section.  This includes the date that the sermon was submitted.  In order for the date to be printed correctly on the webpage, the date on the database had to be converted into something that the programming language that displayed information liked.   Once I worked out how to do that I was quids in and it was sorted.

If you go on the website now you may be wondering why it isn't up yet.  The section will not be live until there are some genuine sermons uploaded.  Once Father gets round to doing that the section will go live.  What's the point in having a blank page on there?

I've added another banner to the website as requested by Father.  He asked me weeks ago to put a link on the website about the Lourdes Grotto and how you can visit it online by using the webcam section of the Lourdes website.  There is now a Banner that will take you straight through to that webcam section for you to check out.  It is part of a random banner generator that loads up a different banner everytime you open up the home page.  If it doesn't come up first time you will have to press your refresh button  (See above picture for what a refresh button looks like) until it does come up.