The Sermon Hub Plugin is Back

If you’ve used WordPress for a church website you know that having an accessible and eye catching sermon library is a MUST. It is usually the second most visited page on the sites I build and always at least in the top five. You probably also know that great sermon plugins are very few in number.

That is why I was SO EXCITED last year when Sermon Hub came onto the scene. In my opinion it was the best looking right out the box at the time. You could activate it, change the two color scheme, add your sermons and have a bangin’ sermon library.

The dev was responsive. There were a lot of promises around where the plugin was heading. I bought a life-time license because of the potential. And then….crickets. The developer went dark the changeling hadn’t been touched since Dec 2017. Finally got the breakup letter in June from ChurchHub. I feel for him man. It seems he was going trough a pretty rough patch.

Needless to say, I was pretty bummed. Not just for the few sites I was using it on, but for the WP for Church community as a whole. New plugins like this always foster creativity and push the existing sermon plugin devs to take it up a notch.

Fast forward to July and I got an email saying that Sermon Hub was being resurrected. Hooray! Then, I got an email last night saying that the new plugin was live and ready.

Now, I got a free download as an existing customer. If you had a license to Sermon Hub make sure to check you inbox for an email from Rebecca VanDenBerg. In it you will find a coupon code for the free year. I haven’t heard back from them on whether lifetime licenses will be honored or not. We’ll see!

A few things I love:

The audio/video toggle on the sermon page. Love it!
Works with any theme and looks great with any theme. Most sermon plugins don’t look good without a lot of work, unless you use one of their themes.
Easy setup. Just a few color options. Also, it pulled my defaults from Beaver Builder.
The sermon filter. Styled, given attention, works with WP’s native search.
Easy to navigate backend. Adding sermons and notes is super easy.
No ‘options overload.’ I love that it doesn’t overcomplicate adding sermons.
Featured sermons. Simple shortcode lets you add a sermon and build a ‘latest message’ area on the home page.
Great documentation. I’m a ‘video’ guy, so following along is easy if video tuts are your thing.

A few caveats if you already have Sermon Hub:

Your old account is gone. Make a new one when purchasing the plugin.
You’ll need to delete the old plugin and upload the new one.
A few things are missing in the demo, like Series for example.
The plugin seems to be basically the same. But they promise improvements!

A few things I’d love to see:

Page Builder Integration (BB, Divi, Elementor specifically)
Design settings as a whole. Not everyone is as ‘boxy’ as their default design.
A few Preset design options to select the grid and sermon views. Basically a ‘choose your layout’ area.
A dedicated series list page. Not just to see sermons in a series, but a page that displays series. The only sermon plugin that does this reasonably well right now is Series Engine.
Series name in grid view. I don’t see a way to do that presently.
Checkboxes where you add the series on the backend (hierarchal CPT setting).
A multi-site option.

I’m always a bit leery of the “future proofed-ness” of new plugins that seem to have a single dev. And with good reason! i.e. the plugin in this post. 🙂 But, I’m also excited to see this great sermon plugin resurrected and get a second chance and also excited to see where it pushes the Sermon Plugin market as a whole!

If you already had a license, it’s definitely worth it to go ahead and set up a new account and redeem your free coupon. If you are searching for a new sermon plugin, this could be a real contender in coming months. Here’s to you Easy Sermon Hub!