1 – Charter Mark

Lots of our clients ask about Charter Marks. Naturally everything we build more than fulfils UGLE’s requirements. Please see one of our sites carrying the charter mark here

Does our site need a charter mark though?

No – There is no objection to Metropolitan, Provincial and District Grand Lodges, or individual Lodges and Chapters setting up websites

What is the UGLE charter mark?

The UGLE charter mark is a quality standard that you’re an approved Provincial/District or Lodge
website.
Approved sites have the right to carry a Charter Mark on their homepage, which is a small
representation of the UGLE logo together with your Province/District or Lodge name.
The Charter Mark must include a hyperlink to the United Grand Lodge of England website.

If we want one, how do we get a charter mark?

If a Lodge is interested in obtaining a UGLE charter mark, they must contact their Province and District.
Once approved, they’ll be able to issue them with the new Lodge charter mark.

Build Suggestions:

The overriding guideline is to ‘be open and seen to be open’.
Freemasonry is not a secret society
Private members area are not encouraged
Have appropriate content and photos

Social Media Policy

We are also linking social-media-policy as prescribed by UGLE for reference.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions

UGLE Accredited Website for Babergh Lodge No.1822

Fresh, modern, clean website design for this Lodge in Sudbury Suffolk.

See the UGLE Accredited website mark at the bottom of this page. Every site we build will qualify for this accreditation once it is applied for. Contact us to find out more

2 – Speed

We use WordPress for all sites we build, and WordPress.com for many of the websites we use because we love its security, and it has the right level of tools and abilities for the requirements of our clients.

Plus it is fast. And fast is good. Google loves fast. The faster your site, the better it will show in search results, meaning more views which means more potential members. Which is why our clients work with us in the first place.

More on this here – https://www.velocityconsultancy.com/why-website-speed-is-important/

site speed is a ranking factor is that it is, first and foremost, a sign of quality user experience. A fast site speed will result in a better user experience, while a slow site speed will result in a poor user experience.

To attract new members to their Lodge. If you re interested in finding new members, then drop us a line today, obligation free.

But don’t just take our word for WordPress.com being fast – Read this – https://wordpress.com/blog/2021/06/08/fastest-wordpress-host-2021/

Review Signal has published its WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks, and 2021’s results are in.

We’re happy to report that not only did WordPress.com earn Top Tier status once again, but we were proven to be the fastest WordPress host in any pricing tier.

Perfect uptime

Backups – WordPress.com takes care of all backups for you. In their own words:

“ If a very large meteor were to hit all the WordPress.com servers and destroy them beyond repair, all of your data would still be safe and we could have your blog online within a couple of days (after the meteor situation died down, of course)”

2. Availability – WordPress.com is spread across hundreds of servers. The likelihood of all them failing at the same time is highly unlikely. This is not the case with your self-hosted WordPress.org installation. If it fails, all your blogs hosted on that server fail with it.

3. Security – WordPress.com manages security for you and also provide fixes for any security issues that may turn up. Given the spate of recent WordPress hacks this is a critical issue. This more than anything would give someone a reason to move to WordPress.com.

Thats why we use WordPress

What makes a good website for a Masonic Lodge?

ByPaul Masonic Website
March 29, 2026
UpdatedMar 29, 2026

Have you ever tried to look up a restaurant’s menu, book a trip , or order something online and thought to yourself “wow, this is not easy.” In some cases, the website experience may have been so frustrating that you decided to order takeaway from somewhere else, pick a different hotel, or abandon your shopping cart. Looking at you SouthWestern Railways…

While you may not consider yourself a “website expert”, most people can tell the difference between a “good website” and a “bad website” pretty easily — it’s one of those “you know it when you see it” situations that comes with consuming so much content online. Within the first few seconds of visiting a new website, your brain subconsciously analysing load time, design, navigation, photography and content, while also comparing the experience to previous website experiences. You are making a decision about whether to use that website, and in this case members are deciding whether to join that Lodge, based on whether the website works well.

If content is hard to find, or the site doesn’t work well on mobile — You are wasting your time.

What makes great masonic websites?

Unique, accessible design that immediately is clear what the Lodge are trying to achieve
Mobile-first design
Fast load times
Simple navigation
Informative and engaging content
It’s optimised for search
Safe and secure hosting
It’s powered by a great content management system

We have been building beautiful effective Lodge websites since 2011, so let’s examine each of these points in more detail.

1. A unique, accessible design

It goes without saying that the web design itself is the first element of a good website. Ninety-four percent of first impressions are design-related, meaning new and returning website visitors are making split-second decisions about your Lodge or masonic venue solely based on how your website looks. If the website designers website looks ugly, then they are going to create you an ugly looking website as well. And potential Lodge members will form a negative impression of your Lodge because of it.

And while the overall aesthetic matters, so does accessibility. An accessible website ensures that all of your website visitors can fully experience and understand the website’s design and content.

2. Mobile-first design

While an eye-catching design is essential, ensuring that design works well on mobile is just as important. Most schools and districts get, on average, about 50-60% of their total website traffic come from mobile – and it should come as no surprise that a mobile-first design is essential to having a “good school website”. Parents and students are either on-the-go, or using multiple devices (think watching TV while catching up on the latest school news), so ensuring the mobile experience is just as good as the desktop experience is key.

Just consider the following stats:

52% of users say that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company
Mobile users are 5 times more likely to abandon a task if a site isn’t optimized for mobile
48% of users say they feel frustrated and annoyed when on sites that are poorly optimized for mobile

You may be wondering: what is the difference between mobile-first design and responsive design?Aren’t they the same thing? Nope! In this blog, Finalsite content specialist Leah Mangold perfectly articulates how these two terms differ: “The main difference between responsive web design and mobile-first design is how the designer approaches the website. A responsive website is reactive — the design moving fluidly to fit devices. A mobile-first website is when the mobile website planned and designed in tandem with the desktop site, making proactive changes to the overall design to ensure the mobile experience is just as good as the desktop experience.”

Desktop design:

Mobile design:

3. Fast load times

Website users expect your website to load quickly, and therefore site speed plays a major factor as to whether a prospective member even makes it to your website. Forty-percent of website visitors will leave if the site takes more than three seconds to load, and 47% of visitors expect your site to load in only two seconds. If your website is on a subdomain (mentioning no names (Freemasonsweb)) or runs slow, you arent going to get the visitors you should.

For most websites the biggest issue with load time is due to photo load time. If you want to decrease the load time of your website pages, consider the following tips for optimising your website photos:

Make your images at the size they will be displayed on your website: Focus on image size and getting your dimensions right. Uploading a 7000 pixel-wide photo for a 200 pixel-wide thumbnail isn’t necessary, and bogs down site speed. Before uploading, you could also run your images through a free compressor tool, like tinyPNG or CompressorIO.
Only upload images in 72dpi: While in print having 300dpi improves the quality of images, this will not make a difference on the web. This is an adjustment that can easily be made in Photoshop.
Upload JPEGs and PNGs accordingly: Only use PNG files when uploading a graphic. Since they are higher quality, they’ll bog down site time if you end up using a PNG file for photographs. The tool TinyPNG to optimise your PNG images when they are absolutely necessary. Just drag and drop the image into the site, and they’ll reduce the size by half or more.
Cut down on the number of images: While images are great, simply cutting down on the number of images you use on each page of your website can help with site speed.
Use a CDN – This is essential and part of every website we build at masonicwebsite.co.uk.

If resizing and optimising images just isn’t cutting it, you may need to think beyond just content. How and where your website is hosted is potentially the biggest factor in website load time. At MasonicWebsite, we believe that fast, safe and secure hosting is one of the most vital components of a successful website — which is why our clients sites are powered by 123reg hosting and WordPress.com, promising the fastest load times possible.

4. Simple navigation

The way you structure your website’s pages, navigation, and content can greatly impact its success. The effective organisation and structure of website will give your website a lower bounce rate and higher engagement, because the structure of the website simply “makes sense.” Everything we build has this in mind. Our primary aim is for your lodge website to generate new members for your Lodge, or hirers of your venue. To do that you need to rank well in Google. To do that the site’s structure needs to be simple and effective.

Some top considerations for a simple navigation include:

Ensure all important content can be found in just 1-2 clicks. Content that your website visitors need and want to find shouldn’t be buried. We see this time and time again. If it’s hard for users to find, it’s hard for Google.
Keep your main navigation to eight items or less. Too many navigation options can be confusing to website visitors.
Use plain language. Using jargon or uncommon terms can confuse website visitors.

5. Informative and engaging content

While good design can immediately encourage a website visitor to stay on your website, it is the content that fills the design that will ultimately sell your Lodge to potential members. Website content has two key elements: visual content and written content.

Visual content comes in the form of photos, videos, graphic and design elements, and infographics. We can create all of these for you.
Written content is the text you use to tell your Lodge’s story throughout your site. This comes in the form of your Lodge history, but also your membership, and future plans.

While you may be thinking “This is obvious, I know this already!” — Wait!

While the types of content you may use on your site is obvious, how you are supposed to use them may not be so obvious. Today’s website visitors don’t read your content, they scan it — especially if they’re visiting on a mobile device. So, ensuring website pages aren’t filled with paragraphs of small-test font is critical.

When building your website pages, consider:

Headings: Headers are not only important for accessibility, but can also make it easy for potential to scan your website pages for the main points. Google uses Headers to understand the main reason a web page is live. What is this post actually about?
Bullets and lists: These scannable chunks of content are much easier to digest than long paragraphs.
Callouts and font colours: Colours must adhere to Google’s guidelines on accessibility. Certain colour combinations are difficult to read, and so websites using those colours receive lower rankings from Google. Everything we build strictly adhere’s to these policies, ensurign maximum rankings.

6. It’s optimised for search

The best Freemasonry websites have a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy that helps them achieve top rankings in the searches that matter most to them. This normally is to attract new members in their area. All of our member sites receive a welcome pack explaining how to run their site, as well as how to optimise their site for SEO. And of course we will always be a the end of an email to offer advice and help. While this may not tie directly to the website experience itself, ensuring your site is optimised for search is key to actually ensuring potential members can find your site. You can have the best website in the world…but if no one can find it what is the point?

7. Safe and secure hosting

While hosting affects site speed, it also affects some other critical component’s of your website’s health — such as privacy and security of data. In a virtual world hacking is a potential threat to all websites. You want anyone and everyone accessing your Masonic website to feel confident that their private information is safe, this is why we use WordPress. You can’t afford to scrimp on security, we don’t make a profit on your website hosting, we pass on the exact cost to you and make sure that your site is set up properly and maintaned correctly. Everything build has a SSL security certificate, which is essential.

8. It’s powered by a great content management system

At the heart of every good website is strategy, design, and content. But, it needs a home. If you want a website that works and looks great, you’ll need a Content Management System (CMS) that makes maintaining your website easy. WordPress powers more than 50% of the worlds websites for a very good reason, it is the best. This is why we use it exclusively. We will show you how to use this, and provide ongoing free support.

Key Takeaway

The elements of a good Freemasonry website extend from an eye-catching and accessible design to the content that fills it and the platform that supports it. These pieces are woven tightly together, and it’s essential that all of them are taken into consideration for your Lodge or Order website. Here at Masonic Website we are able to offer all of the above in a stress free fashion. We can work through i at your pace, with as much or as little input as you would like. Contact us for a free demo site, to see what your Masonic website could look like.