Best Structure for Sermons Looper

[texaskiwi13]

Hi team,

I’m setting up a past sermons page for a client and am looking to use Loopers to automate it as much as possible. The final structure I’m after is

1. a main sermons page that will automatically populate with list of the past sermon series
2. then when you click on the sermon series, you will land on a page that has all of the individual sermons in that series
   3)Then you can click on an individual sermon to land on the page for that specific sermon

It’s exactly like the structure used here- https://lifefellowship.tv/series

They need to be able to update it themselves without much technical know how, so I’m trying to do it the easiest way possible, but can’t really work out what that is. Note that the videos will be embeded from youtube. My ultimate goal if possible is that using ACF that for each new sermon, they could just create a new post (using the CPT “messages”) and then all of the affected pages would auto populate (the individual sermon page/post, the sermon series page (listing all of hte sermons in a series) and the main sermon page (which lists one instance of each sermon series).
The different ways I’ve been able to think of how to do it are:

1. using custom post types & their archive pages: each individual sermon would get entered as a “messages” post" and then the category of that sermon series (ie: “call to community”) would be added to the post. each sermon series page would be the archive page for the category (ie: call to community). Then somehow the main sermon page would only show one instance of the sermon series and when you click on it you would land on the corresponding category archive page. My questions are 1A) can I custom design the archive pages like any other normal page and use loopers to do this? 1B) for the main sermons page, is there a way to use loopers to get it to automatically update with one instance of a new sermon series when a new sermon series/ category is created

2. using pages/ subpages and custom posts - so the main sermon page would be the parent page, then each child page would be a sermon series, then each individual sermon would be the CPT “messages”. My understanding is that if I do it this way, they would then have to 1) create a new post for each sermon and 2) create a new child page every time there is a new series

Basically, I’m trying to minimise their work and possiblity of error. In a perfect world, I want them to just create a new post for each sermon, and then all three places update (main sermon page, individual sermon series pages, individual sermon page.). Again, just trying to recreate this using ACF, CPT if needed, and Loopers - https://lifefellowship.tv/series

What is the best way to structure the data?

Thanks,
Ashley

[ruenel]

Hello Ashley,

Thank you for the very detailed post. Actually, you are on the right track. What you really wanted can be done exactly with the help of the Pro theme’s Layout Builder.

1.) You can use the Layout Builder to create the layout that you want to display the Sermons on each of the respective archive pages. You can also use the Page Content Builder to create the parent Sermon page and the sub parent pages. Yes, you can use the Loopers to display the latest sermons or part of the sermon series.

1a.) Yes, you can design the archive pages but you have to do it with the Layout Builder. With the archive layouts, you do not need to have a Looper Provider. The archive has its own WP looper so you will only need to have Looper Consumer.

1b.) In your main Sermon page, since this is just a normal page, you can use a Looper Provider so that every time a new sermon is added, it will automatically populates the main Sermon page.

2.) Yes, you are correct. Every time there is a new sermon, they would have to create new post (Message custom post type) and then if it is part of a new series, then a new child page is created as well. You can use a custom single layout so that when you create a new child page, it automatically displays the sermons that are part of this new series.

You have already the Message custom post type in place. You just need to add your sermons, the main Sermons page and its respective child pages of your sermon series. We can then help you set up some of the Loopers needed to display the sermons on each of the pages or archive pages later on.

Best Regards.