Praise Director User Guide

Plan Sunday in WordPress. Put it on the screen. Take it anywhere.

For Praise Director 0.32 · A product of avdude.com

1. Welcome

Praise Director turns the WordPress site your church already has into a worship projection system. During the week you build a setlist for Sunday: songs, scripture, announcement slides, countdowns and videos. On Sunday you open the Present page, and the lyrics appear on the projector screen while the band sees a stage screen with the next slide and a clock.

What you need

• A self-hosted WordPress site, version 6.6 or newer, on PHP 8.1 or newer.
• A computer with a browser for the projector (Chrome or Edge are the ones this guide was tested with), and optionally a second screen for the stage.
• Your church's own CCLI licence to project copyrighted songs. Praise Director does not include song lyrics: you add your own songs.

Installing

1. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin, choose the praisedirector-x.y.z.zip file and press Install Now.
2. Press Activate Plugin. A new Praise Director item appears in the WordPress menu on the left.
3. Deactivating the plugin never deletes anything. Deleting it removes your data only if you switched on Delete all songs, setlists and settings too in Settings (it is off by default).

Who can do what

Site owners can change this with any WordPress role editor plugin. The two permissions are prsdir_manage (build and edit) and prsdir_present (run the presenter).

Praise Director Pro

Everything in this guide is in this plugin, which is complete on its own with no trial and no limit. Praise Director Pro is a separate plugin from avdude.com for churches that want more, such as sermon slides from PowerPoint, an offline file for services without internet, and more import formats. See praisedirector.com.

2. Quick start: your first service in 15 minutes

1. Add a song. Go to Songs > New song. Type a title, then put the lyrics under tags such as [Verse 1] and [Chorus] (the buttons above the lyrics box insert them). Press Save song.
2. Make a setlist. Go to Setlists > New setlist. The date is filled in with next Sunday and the time with 10:30. Press Create setlist.
3. Add items. Under Order of service press Song, click your song to add it (the window stays open so you can add several), then press Done. Add a Scripture or a Slide the same way; Countdown adds a countdown at once.
4. Present. Press the green Present button. On the Present page, under Screens, press Open window next to Projector. Drag that window to the projector and press F for full screen. Click once anywhere in it.
5. Go live. Back on the control page, click the first slide (or press Next). It appears on the projector. Use the arrow keys or Space to move on.
6. Open the stage screen the same way with Open window next to Stage, and send it to the band's monitor.

The Get started checklist

The first time you open Praise Director, the Dashboard shows a Get started card with five steps: add your songs, install a Bible, add your CCLI license number, plan your first service, and try it on the screen. Each step ticks itself off when you have done it, and the Bible and license steps have a Skip button. Hide puts the card away for you (Show the setup checklist in the Status card brings it back), and it disappears by itself when everything is done.

If you want to look around first, Load the sample makes three public-domain hymns, two slides and a setlist for next Sunday, so you can press Present straight away. Remove the sample takes away exactly what it added; your own songs and setlists stay. The sample does not count as your own songs or setlist for the checklist.

3. Finding your way around

Every page sits inside the same app shell. The tabs along the top are grouped, and the WordPress menu (Praise Director) lists the same pages in the same order:

The header

• Logo and name, with a small pill showing the installed version. Click it to go to the Dashboard.
• Search box (on Songs, Slides, Videos and Scripture). Press Ctrl+K (or Cmd+K), or /, to jump to it.
• Colour swatches choose the admin theme: Sanctuary (the default), Lagoon, Aurora, Ember, Harbor and Crimson.
• Sun button switches between light and dark. Theme and mode are saved for you personally and do not affect anyone else or what the congregation sees.

Messages and confirmations

A small message appears at the bottom of the screen after you save ("Settings saved"). Errors stay a little longer. Anything that deletes something asks first with an Are you sure? window.

4. Songs

Praise Director > Songs is your library. Songs here can be used in any number of setlists.

The song list

• Buttons: Import, Export all (appears when you have songs) and the green New song.
• Search looks in title, author, CCLI number, themes and the lyrics. Every word you type must match somewhere, so "grace sing" finds songs containing both.
• Sort by Title (the default, A to Z), Author, Key, or Recently edited. 25 songs are shown per page.
• Each row shows the title, author, key, BPM, time signature, CCLI number and up to three themes. The row buttons are Edit, Download as text (that one song as a .txt file) and Delete.

The song editor

Press New song, or click a song to edit it. The page has two columns.

Left: details

Right: lyrics and preview

• The Lyrics box takes up to 30,000 characters. Put each part under a tag on its own line. The Insert a part buttons add [Verse 1], [Verse 2], [Verse 3], [Pre-Chorus], [Chorus], [Bridge], [Tag], [Intro] and [Ending] at the cursor.
• A blank line inside a part starts a new slide.
• The Slides preview shows the title slide and then every slide in the order it will be sung, with a live count. A sequence code that matches no part shows a red Not in the lyrics tile.

The layout. On a wide screen the editor has two columns: details, sequence and notes on the left; the lyrics and the slide preview on the right. Drag the bottom edge of the Lyrics box to make it taller or shorter so you can see the preview while you type; it remembers the size you chose.

Press Save song. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, your browser warns you.

Writing lyrics: the tagged format

[Verse 1]
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me

[Chorus]
My chains are gone, I've been set free

[Verse 2]
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved

• Lyrics must sit under a section tag. Words written without a tag are not lyrics.
• A section with no words is dropped with a warning, except the instrumental sections (below).
• Tag names are tidied: [verse 1] becomes [Verse 1]. Any other tag of up to 40 characters is a section too.
• Three or more blank lines in a row count as one.

Instrumental sections

These can be saved with no words: Intro, Interlude, Instrumental, Outro, Ending, Coda, Turnaround, Vamp and Solo (each can have a number, such as "Intro 2"). They give one blank slide that keeps its place in the order, so the screen is blank while the band plays.

How lyrics become slides

• Every song starts with a title slide (the title and author).
• Each blank-line-separated group of lines is one slide.
• A group longer than 8 lines is split into equal parts (10 lines become 5 + 5, not 8 + 2). You can change the 8 on the Look page (3 to 14).

The sequence

The sequence says in what order the parts are sung, using short codes. It lets you sing the chorus four times without typing it four times.

• A number is added: "Verse 1" is V1, "Pre-Chorus 2" is PC2. Any other section name uses its first four letters or digits.
• Codes are not case sensitive. Separate them with spaces or commas: I V1 C V2 C B C C O.
• The box under Sequence lists the codes in this song.
• With no sequence, the parts are shown in the order you wrote them.
• A code that matches no part is skipped when presenting, and the editor warns you when you save.
• If two parts have the same name, the first one is used.
• You can set a different sequence for one service without changing the song (see Setlists).

Importing songs

Press Import on the Songs page. You can paste text, choose files, or both.

Limits: up to 200 files at once, and 5 MB per file.

Check before importing

After Check songs, you see every song found with its parts, author, CCLI number and a label: New or Already in library. A song counts as already there when its CCLI number matches, or else its title does (ignoring capitals, spaces, punctuation and accents). Anything left out appears under "These were left out", and cautions under "Worth a look".

For songs that are already in the library, choose:

• Skip them (the default): keep the library as it is. Importing the same file twice changes nothing.
• Update them: replace the stored song with the imported one, notes included.
• Add as new: keep both copies.

Press Import. You see "Import done: X added, Y updated, Z skipped". The preview expires after an hour; if so, paste or choose the files again.

Exporting songs

Export all downloads praisedirector-songs-YYYY-MM-DD.txt, every song in tagged text that you can import again. A single song's download button gives you title.txt. Export is plain text only. It is a good way to keep a backup of your library.

5. Setlists

Praise Director > Setlists is where you plan a service. It opens on the soonest setlist dated today or later.

The page

• Header: the date and time, the title, and buttons Details, Duplicate, a trash icon, New setlist and the green Present (if you may present).
• Four numbers: Items, Songs, Slides and Video time.
• Upcoming lists future setlists (click one to open it). Past services shows the last three, and Show more goes back up to 40.
• Order of service is the list itself.

Making a setlist

1. Press New setlist (or the + beside Upcoming).
2. Fill in Title (it becomes "Sunday Service" if left empty), Date (required; next Sunday is pre-filled), Time (10:30 is pre-filled; optional) and Notes (up to 5000 characters).
3. Press Create setlist.

To change these later, press Details.

Adding items

Under Order of service there is a row of buttons, one for each kind of item:

Pressing a button opens a window ("Add a song", and so on). Type to search (up to 40 results). Click a result to add it. The window stays open so you can add several; press Done when finished. At the bottom is a link to make a new song, slide, video or passage in a new tab.

• New items go after the item that is selected, or at the end if nothing is selected.
• A setlist holds up to 150 items. You can add the same song more than once.
• In the Scripture window you can also type a reference ("John 3:16-18"), pick a Bible and press Add: the passage is looked up, saved to your Scripture library and added, all in one step.

Working with the order

• Drag an item by its grip to move it, or use the Move up and Move down buttons. With the keyboard: Up and Down move between items, Alt+Up and Alt+Down move the item. Changes save immediately.
• Click an item to select it. A card opens below with a preview of its slides and an Edit in library button.
• The red remove button takes an item out of this setlist only. The song, slide or video stays in your library.

Settings for this service only

Select an item to see fields that apply to this setlist only. They save when you leave the field or press Enter.

Reusing last week: Duplicate

Press Duplicate. Pick a title and a date (a week after the original is pre-filled). The whole order of service is copied, along with each song's sequence, the notes, and the time. This is the quickest way to start a new Sunday.

If something was deleted

If a song, slide, video or passage is deleted from its library, the setlist keeps the item but shows it as missing ("This was deleted from the library. Remove it, or add it again."). A missing item plays nothing.

6. Presenting a service

Open Present from a setlist's green button, or from the tab (the dropdown Setlist to present lists the next twelve). You will see three areas: Setlist on the left, Slides in the middle, and the Projector controls on the right.

Going live

• Opening the page shows "Click any slide to go live". Nothing is on the screens yet.
• Click a slide, or press Next, and the setlist goes live from that point. If another setlist is already live you are asked: "Another setlist is on the screens. Put this one on instead?". Only one setlist can be live at a time.
• The setlist starts on the first item that has slides. If that item is a countdown, it starts by itself.
• The badge beside the title says Live, Not live or that another setlist is live.

The controls

Clear and Black look pressed while they are on. The keys do nothing while you are typing in a box or holding Ctrl, Alt or Cmd. Because the arrow keys and Space are used for the slides, they do not scroll the page.

• Slide tiles. Every slide of every item is a tile labelled with its part and code. Click one to go straight to it. The live tile has a red outline and the next tile a green one. Double-click an item in the left list to jump to its first slide.
• Now and Next. Under Projector you see what is on the screen now and a smaller preview of what comes next.

Videos and countdowns

• Video. When you land on a video item it starts playing from the start. The controls Play, Pause and Restart appear, with the time left if the video's length is known. Leaving the item stops it.
• Timer. When you land on a timer item it starts at its full length. Controls: Restart, -1 min and +1 min. A timer never moves on by itself: at zero the digits pulse and you press Next.

A message to the stage

Type up to 200 characters in Message to the stage (for example "One more chorus") and press Send. It appears large on the stage screen. Clear removes it. The congregation never sees it.

The projector and stage screens

The Screens card has Open window and Copy link for the Projector and the Stage. A counter shows how many of each are connected right now.

1. Press Open window next to Projector. If nothing opens, allow pop-ups for your site.
2. Drag the window to the projector and press F (or double-click) for full screen.
3. Click once anywhere in the projector window. The first screen says "Click anywhere to start". This lets videos play with sound.
4. Do the same for the Stage, on the band's monitor.

You can also Copy link and open it on any computer, TV or tablet that can reach your site, without logging in. The screens ask the site for changes about twice a second. On the same computer as the control page they update instantly.

What the projector shows

• Lyrics, scripture, titles, your own slides, countdowns and videos at full size. Slides fade into each other (you can turn that off on the Look page).
• On lyric slides, a small footer: title, author, copyright, CCLI song number and your CCLI licence number (switchable on the Look page).
• If the connection is lost for a moment you may see "Reconnecting...". The screen keeps the slide it has.

What the stage screen shows

• A clock; a top line with the part name, song title, key, and your notes for this service.
• The current slide large, and the Next slide below it, or "End of setlist".
• Flags for Words hidden and Screen black.
• A big red banner when you send a message.
• The stage screen always uses a plain look: it ignores the Look page's colours and picture.

Changing things after going live

Press End to stop presenting: the screens go back to "Waiting for the presenter".

7. Slides

Praise Director > Slides holds slides you make yourself: a welcome, announcements, the offering, Communion. Each slide is one screen of words, on a colour or a picture.

The slide editor

A live Preview on the right shows how the projector will draw it. Press Save slide.

• A slide is one screen: long text shrinks to fit. For more words, make more slides.
• A slide keeps its own colours and picture. The Look page's background does not replace them.

8. Videos

Praise Director > Videos lists the videos you can drop into a setlist: announcement videos and countdowns from YouTube or Vimeo.

Adding a video

1. Press New video and give it a Name.
2. Under Link paste a YouTube or Vimeo address. Praise Director works out which it is.
3. Under Playback you can set the Length, written 1:30, 1:02:03, 90, or 1m30s. It is optional; it only adds up the setlist's "Video time" and shows the countdown on the screens.
4. Press Save video.

• YouTube plays through youtube-nocookie.com and Vimeo through its own player. They need the internet on the projector computer.
• On the projector the video fills the screen with no controls. The control page's Play, Pause and Restart control it.

9. Scripture

Praise Director > Scripture keeps Bible passages ready for any setlist. Each passage is copied into your site when you make it, so services never need the internet.

Bibles you can use

• KJV (King James Version) and WEB (World English Bible) come with the plugin. The WEB is public domain; the KJV is public domain except in the United Kingdom, where the Crown holds the rights to it. They are not active until you press Install on the Bibles card (an administrator does this once; it takes a moment). Remove takes the text out again; passages you already saved keep their verses.
• Pasted text from any translation you are allowed to use.

Adding a passage

1. Press New passage.
2. Type the Reference, for example John 3:16-18.
3. Under Text from choose A Bible and pick one in the Bible dropdown (it remembers your last choice), or choose Pasted text.
4. For pasted text, fill in Translation (such as NIV), the Text, and optionally a Copyright line. Keep the verse numbers in the text if you can: they are found and shown on the slides.
5. Check the Preview, then press Save passage.

You can also add a passage straight from a setlist's Scripture window.

References Praise Director understands

Abbreviations, en and em dashes and full stops are all accepted. The saved reference is tidied to the standard form ("1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 13").

How passages become slides

• Verses are packed into slides of about 330 characters. A verse is never split, and a very long verse gets its own slide.
• A passage on several slides is labelled with each slide's own range ("John 3:16-17").
• Verse numbers appear as small raised numbers in the accent colour. The translation and the copyright line are shown too. A passage can hold up to 400 verses.

10. The Look page

Praise Director > Look sets one look for the projector and the previews. Press Save look when done: if a setlist is live, the screens update at once. Back to defaults only fills in the form; you still press Save.

• Fonts are system fonts only (nothing is downloaded): System, Arial / Helvetica, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Segoe UI, Georgia, Palatino and Impact. A font looks different on a computer that does not have it, so test on the projector computer.
• The text always shrinks to fit. "Largest text size" only caps how big short slides can get.
• Your own slides keep their own colours and pictures. The stage screen ignores the Look.
• Changing "Lines per lyric slide" changes how every song splits, once the live setlist is refreshed.

11. Settings

Praise Director > Settings is for administrators. Press Save settings after changing anything.

CCLI

Enter your church's CCLI licence number (digits only). It is shown on lyric slides as "CCLI License #", together with each song's own "CCLI Song #", when the Look page's CCLI switch is on. Scripture slides show only the copyright line.

The CCLI usage report

Churches with a CCLI copyright license report which songs they used. Praise Director > Reports works that out from your setlists, so you do not have to count by hand.

1. Choose a Period: last half year, this half year so far, last or this year, last or this month, the last 30 days, or Custom dates (set From and To).
2. Press Show report. Every song used in a service in that period is listed with its CCLI song number, author, how many times it was used and on which dates, and the totals are at the top.
3. Print gives a clean page without the menus. Download CSV gives a spreadsheet file to keep or to type into CCLI's reporting tool.

• A song counts once for each service it is in, however many times that setlist holds it.
• Only services up to today count. A setlist for next Sunday has not happened yet, so it is left out and the page says so.
• Songs with no CCLI number are listed too, marked "none". A song in the public domain has no number and is not reported. For any other song, add its number in the song editor (on the song's page in SongSelect) so it can be reported.
• Your CCLI license number from Settings is shown at the top of the report and in the file.

When the plugin is deleted

Delete all songs, setlists and settings too is off by default. Leave it off unless you really want deleting the plugin to wipe your data.

Screens

The Projector link and Stage link are secret addresses that open the screens without a login. Anyone with a link can see the live slides (and nothing else). Make new links replaces the secret keys: every open projector and stage screen stops working, and you must open the new links.

12. Sunday checklists

During the week

• Duplicate last week's setlist, or make a new one, and set the date and time.
• Add songs, scripture, announcements and countdowns.
• Set any sequence for this service and notes for the band.
• Check the preview of each item for typos and slide splits.

Before the service

• Open Present and check the setlist is the right one. Press Refresh if you changed anything.
• Open the Projector and Stage windows, full screen, and click once in the projector window.
• Check the counter shows "1 projector · 1 stage".
• Test: click a slide, press Next, press Clear and Black, send a message to the stage.
• If you want a black screen until the service starts, click the first slide to go live and then press Black. (Clear and Black only work once the setlist is live.)

During the service

• Click the first slide (or press Next) to start. Move with the arrow keys or Space.
• For a last-minute change, edit the setlist, then press Refresh.
• Use Clear to show only the background during prayer, and Black when nothing should show.

After the service

• Press End so the screens return to waiting.
• Report your songs to CCLI as your licence requires.

13. Keyboard shortcuts

14. Limits at a glance

15. Troubleshooting

16. A note about copyright

Praise Director does not include copyrighted song lyrics and does not grant any licence to use them. To project songs your church needs its own CCLI licence (or another suitable licence) and must report its use as the licence requires. If you show lyrics on your website, or stream your service, check that your licence covers it. Scripture text from the bundled WEB is public domain, and the bundled KJV is public domain except in the United Kingdom (Crown rights); other translations come from the service or text you supply, and the publisher's terms apply.