Meet the Masonic Website team
The Masonic Website story
Masonic Website was founded in 2011 when our founder Paul offered to build a website for his mother Lodge. Very quickly this attracted new members, word spread and he was asked to build sites for other Lodges. Masonic Website was born. Since then we have built hundreds of Lodge and Masonic venues in the UK and globally. We have created websites for our clients other interests, as well as churches, village halls and more. Our small team are all on the square, and experts at helping Lodges exceed their requirements as we understand Freemasonry.
Portfolio examples
- UGLE Charter Mark Lodge website – https://baberghlodge8122.org.uk
- Local community and charity focussed Lodge – https://hootonparklodge.org
- Masonic venue now generating increased hires – https://wakefieldfreemasons.org
- “The lodge has had two positive enquiries for membership in the short time that we have been up and running with your updated site”
- “We have had a positive response and a good number of enquiries. We fully recommend Masonic Website. You will not be disappointed with the cost and results. ”
- Will our new website get a Provincial or UGLE Charter Mark – Of course!
- Can we have a member’s area? – Yes
Hi I’m Paul Ray, owner and lead developer at Masonic Website. I have been building websites for over 20 years, and a Freemason for a similar length of time. I set up Masonic Website in 2011 as it was obvious that my two interests could be combined to benefit Lodges worldwide.
Get in touch, we’d love to help your Lodge generate new members. We know what works for Lodges, but of course we will work with you to get the exact website you are looking for and to fulfil all of your requirements.
We look forward to hearing from you and getting started on creating the perfect freemason site for your lodge. If you aren’t a Freemason may we recommend you head to this page at the United Grand Lodge of England’s site.
Masonic Lodge website testimonials
Our clients have said nice things about the Freemasonry websites we design since the very start. These are three of the very earliest sites that we designed. Naturally website design has moved on significantly since then, but the end results have stood the test of time, and continue to bring in 3-4 new members to the Lodges every year.
Edmonton Latymer Lodge No. 5026
“We found masonicwebsite.co.uk very easy to deal with and are completely happy with the whole project.”
Peninsula Lodge USA
Enough cannot be said about the great work Masonic Website did to overhaul our outdated Lodge website
How to build a masonic website
The simplest, quickest and best way to to build a masonic website is naturally to contact us here at Masonic Website. Every website we build helps our clients attract new members to their Lodges. You can see our all 5 star reviews at Trustpilot as to how effective they are. We have been doing this since 2011 and have built hundreds of Lodge sites, because we know how to build a masonic website. What we have learnt in how to attract customers to our business we pass on to our clients, to help them attract new Lodge members, visitors or hirers of their Masonic venue.
The story of how we built Masonic Website
Our founder Paul had worked on major websites across numerous niches in his job. Upon joining Freemasonry as a Lewis in 2010 he became interested in the recruitment process. Many members of his mother Lodge were of “advanced Masonic experience” and he was the youngest recruit in more than 10 years. The honest answer was that there wasn’t any active recruitment. The Lodge was waiting for potential members to express an interest, the way it had traditionally been done. But the Lodge was shrinking, whilst others in the same Province were growing. So he offered to build the Lodge a website using his career experience. Any low and behold, new prospective members started to contact the Lodge. And the Lodge started to grow. And these new members bought other new members with them. Word of this reached across other local Lodges, and Paul was asked to build websites for them as a result. And before he knew it MasonicWebsite was born. We have ben helping Lodges find new members since 2011 as a result.
Why do the masonic websites we build work so well?
Essentially it boils down to “People these days research everything before they buy or visit” – And that research is done via Google. When was the last time you went to a museum, restaurant or bought a sofa without doing research into it first? And if a business doesn’t have a website? Well people just aren’t going to come, because they can’t research it. And as time goes on, this is only going to increase, younger generations check EVERYTHING on Google first. So building a website for your Lodge is absolutely essential in attracting new members. Without it they literally won’t know your Lodge exists.
How we built Masonicwebsite.co.uk
Firstly we have always used WordPress. This is the best CMS for getting your Lodge website out into the world. WordPress powers at least 50% of the worlds websites for good reason, it is the best platform out there. We use both WordPress.com and WordPress.org depending on the usage case. We use a Mac as both our desktop and also our laptop. We find that the MacOS (operating system) is much more stable than a PC (Windows), and a lot more flexible than Google based OS. PC’s are still plagued by constant demands for operating system updates and security patches, and frankly we don’t have the time for that. Macs do require the odd (sometimes large) system update, but that’s it, and we are happy with that.
Naturally everything we build is platform agnostic, the masonic websites that we build work perfectly on Mac or PC, any type of smart phone, and any type of tablet. They are all responsive, which means that they automatically adjust size to the size of screen of the person viewing them. This doesn’t cost extra, it is part of our normal service. There is also a great app for WordPress.com that we use that enables us to make changes when we are on the move. So we built our website in the same manner.
For hosting we use either WordPress.com or 123-reg. We have tried numerous other hosts, and these are our current choice. Hosting is one of those things you do not want to have to worry about. So don’t, at Masonic Website we do it all for you. There are super cheap hosts out there. We would very strongly advise letting the experts (us) pass on a word of wisdom on this front – don’t do it.
We also built Masonic Website so that it is future proofed. Remember FreemasonsWeb ? They hosted all of the websites they had on sub-domains. And when they closed down, they took all of the websites down with them (plus they looked horrible and didn’t work on mobile but that is another story). So the way we built masonic website means that can’t happen, as we don’t host your website. We set you up on one of the worlds biggest webhosts (currently WordPress.com or 123-reg). They are not going to go bust like Freemasonsweb. Once we have launched your website it lives on the host. We will provide you free on going support but you don’t have to worry about your webhost being future proofed.
How we the built Masonic Website as a business
We followed our own advice to build Masonic Website as a business.
We made sure that everything we build is first class. We made sure that we got positive reviews from our clients (although we wish we had joined Trustpilot and Google Business sooner). We get recommended a lot by our clients which is always nice to hear.
We used social media to get our name out there. Over the years the value of different social media platforms has changed for us. Originally Facebook was great, but the ongoing changes to the platform meant that for a business Facebook has become less relevant. We do still recommend a Facebook page for Lodges and venues however. We have trialled and then stopped spending time on both Instagram and TikTok. (We’ve never used Snapchat for Masonic Website). We spend our time where we can gather the most information and engage directly, which despite it’s problems remains X (what used to be Twitter). But social is just part of the puzzle, and increasingly organic (ie non-paid) for social content is not delivering the results it used to.
We advertised effectively and consistently across social media and Google search ads. In fact it might be the reason you are reading this post now. We used our experience in understanding the data to double down in some areas and regions, and to park others. This ensured limited wastage in advertising spend. Over the years we have honed our advertising and message, so that now when we do spend on adverts we can be sure of a good response. We are happy to now offer this experience as an additional service to clients, contact us today to find out more about how paid advertising can compliment your digital presence.
We have updated our logo on several occasions, to keep up with current trends, and also because we want to look cool…
One of our earlier logos
We built our business by making sure that we are great people to deal with. We are on the square so we know what Lodges need and how they work. We offer free ongoing support and changes to your website. We are always at the end of an email. We charge no ongoing cost, ever.
From a technical point of view we keep this website up to speed with all of the latest Google guidelines. While this is like painting the Forth Bridge (ie you are never really finished) we react as required to any changes in SEO best practice. For example the move from jpeg to webp images. If all of this seems overly technical, don’t worry, it’s what we are here for, and we will make your website really appeal to Google, which will mean more website visitors, and more new Lodge members.
As a website builder we have overhauled our own site multiple times in the 14 years at time of writing that Masonic Website has been running. Sometimes finding the time to do this has been a challenge as we are working on client sites. This challenge is echoed by our clients, everyone knows it needs to be done, but someone has to actually build it. So we have learnt that it is impossible to get to 100% exactly where you want to be. We know there are still some pages on this site that we would like to work up a little further, but overall we are happy with how the site looks and works.
We built Masonic Website by using data – We use Google Search Console, Google Analytics, SEMrush, GTMetrix and various other tools for keeping our content fresh and relevant. Again, this can be a steep learning curve, so we are happy to offer this as an additional service for clients.
And by combining al of these, we have made our website both useful for the audience and useful for us, it provides us a steady stream of Lodge who need our hep to build a new website, update an existing one, or use any of our other additional masonic media services. And we’d be delighted to hep you and your Lodge, Order or venue – Contact Masonic Website today and let us know what you need.