Outdated, hard to follow advice for building a Lodge website like the below abounds on the internet and in Masonic circles. There is a reason we have built hundreds or websites for Lodges and Masonic venues since 2011. In fact there are several reasons.
- We are experts at it
- We are very reasonably priced, with no ongoing monthly fees
- We will get your masonic website built in a matter of weeks (if you wish, or we can go slower obviously!!)
- We provide free ongoing support
- It is your website, on your domain
- Even if you do manage to create a website yourself, if it’s not built properly, who maintains it when you are no longer in charge?
We particularly like the section below that says – “The third step involves identifying and installing suitable web design software, such as Serif or Microsoft FrontPage” – DO NOT DO THAT!!! Trust us on this!! 🙂
The below is a great advert for just contacting us here at MasonicWebsite instead
Poor advice for building a Lodge website
A typical Lodge website should contain:
- A welcome page containing an introduction to the website. This will usually be the first page displayed when visiting the website and it is therefore very important it creates a positive first impression.
- General information about Freemasonry, including: the history of the fraternity; the three grand principles on which it is founded; the three degrees; the structure and organisation of the United Grand Lodge of England and Provincial Grand Lodge in which the Lodge meets; and the Masonic charities and their work. – Not true. We recently built a website that focussed on attracting new members by deliberately keeping this information for further down the line. They wanted to keep it simple. See it here (UGLE Charter approved as well)
- Information about the Lodge, including: its history; its banner; its seal; its meeting dates and times; its membership; its officers; the Worshipful Master’s programme of work; details of social events; contact details; and how to find the Masonic hall or centre in which the Lodge meets.
- Membership information, including details of how to become a Freemason.
- News, covering both local and national issues.
- Contact details.
- Links to other Masonic websites.
The method of building the involves several technical steps, all of which must be followed in order to produce and publish as website. The first step involves the registration of a domain. The recommended format is your Lodge name, followed by its number, followed by .org.uk (e.g. mylodge1234.org.uk). You may choose to omit the number (e.g. mylodge.org.uk); however, as every domain must be unique, the inclusion of the number prevents ambiguity and is generally recommended. A .org.uk is cheaper and easier to manage than a .org, which should be avoided. The letters www are often prepended to the domain and refer to the host name of the web server. This is usually done automatically by the service provider from which you purchased the domain, or can be configured at their website. Please note that the registration records associated with your domain should be in the name of your Lodge. These records are published on the internet and care must therefore be taken to ensure they do not contain any personal information. – There is some poor advice in this section
The second step is to identify a web hosting facility, which is the space in which the website will live. This is often provided free-of-charge by internet service providers and of often combined with the registration of a domain. Check with your internet service provider, or those of your Lodge members. Many companies also provide this service, for which they will charge. Expect to pay no more than £50 per year for a domain name, ample web space and email forwarding to a large number of email addresses.If you would like to create email addresses that contains your Lodge, such as enquiries@mylodge12345.org.uk, you should ensure email forwarding is provided as part of your domain registration or web hosting package. Email forwarding allows an email address ending in your Lodge’s domain to be linked to one of more personal email addresses. For example, email sent to enquiries@mylodge12345.org.uk would be automatically forwarded to myname@myisp.net. This has several advantages: your personal email address does not have to be published on your website; you can associate a single email address with one or more personal email addresses; you do not have to edit your website when you change your personal email address; and it gives your website a consistent and professional appearance. –
The third step involves identifying and installing suitable web design software, such as Serif or Microsoft FrontPage. There are many software packages available and they differ with respect to their complexity, features and price. – NOOOOOO!!!!!!
Finally, you should design and publish your website. You can start from a blank page, or download and customise a free template. Free templates are available from a number of sources, including OSWD and Open Web Design. You must ensure that the website template you select does not contain any commercial advertising; you are, of course, encouraged to acknowledge the author. – Simple, just start from a blank page!!!
If followed, these steps will lead to the production of a very professional and flexible website. – No they won’t
Remember: your website will be visible to the world and will be seen to represent Freemasonry. – Exactly – Contact the professionals at MasonicWebsite instead
Don’t end up with something like this
by following poor advice for building a Lodge website. We look forward to hearing from you
FreemasonsWeb
- ByPaul Masonic Website
- January 14, 2025
FreemasonsWeb was a hosting platform for Masonic Websites. Freemasons web closed down in 2022, closing all of the websites that were hosted on it at the same time. Despite it having some success for a few years in recruiting Lodges to its self generated platform, it was a fundamentally flawed business model, which inevitably lead to its closure. We are sincerely sorry for those Lodges that saw their internet presence disappear overnight. If you are one of the Lodges who’s site was closed, we can help, contact MasonicWebsite today.
The biggest problem with the Freemasonsweb model – it didn’t work
Yes, they created you a (hideous, old fashioned) website from one of just 5 pre-made templates.
And if you sent someone the link they could view it on a computer (maybe not on a phone though)
However
No-one could find the websites via Google search!!!
Why? – Because the websites had ridiculous urls forced on them as they were a subdomain on the overall platform
You had the choice of one of the following domains:
- UK Lodges:
- subdomain.masonic-lodge.org.uk
- subdomain.masons-lodge.org.uk
- subdomain.masonic-website.org.uk
- subdomain.masoniclodge.org.uk
- Lodges outside the UK:
- subdomain.masons-lodge.org
- subdomain.masonic-website.org
- subdomain.masonic-lodge.ca
All of these are absolutely terrible from a Google search point of view. If it is on a sub-domain Google doesn’t view it as a separate site (which it isn’t) so won’t rank you highly. Combined with the weak overall rankings for Freemasonsweb as well and you had a recipe for very small organic views of your website. Sure, members of the Lodge may have looked at it (assuming they could type the URL correctly), but the main reason we work with Lodges to create them a website is – they want to attract new members. And if you aren’t ranking well in Google, then you aren’t going to achieve that.
Examples of Freemasons web urls we saw included:
- www.helensburgh-503.masonic-lodge.org.uk
- www.helensburgh-522.ra-chapter.org
- www.st-george-helensburgh-503.masons-lodge.org – This one in particular!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!
- www.st-george-522.ra-chapter.org.uk
Reasons for the failure of Freemasonsweb
Monthly subscriptions – Exorbitant cost
At MasonicWebsite we are fundamentally opposed to monthly subscriptions. No-one needs another monthly subscription. Freemasons web was built on a monthly subscription model. There was a set up price of £100, and then a monthly subscription. Not only are monthly subs annoying, they can fail when credit cards are changed etc. The monthly subs to Freemasons web were £20. This was £240 a year, meaning one of our MasonicWebsites would pay for itself within under 2 years in comparison. If you had a Freemasonsweb site for 10 years it would have cost you £100 set up, plus 120 months x £20 = £2,500. In comparison, a MasonicWebsite site would cost you £500 over the same period in total. 1/5th of the price. Plus it would actually work.
Freemasonsweb email addresses were unbelievably complicated
The standard Freemasons web email template was for example secretary.lodge-example-1234@masonic-lodge.org.uk – This might be our favourite email address ever! The chance of someone making an error while typing this is ridiculously high. At MasonicWebsite we can set you up email addresses that will be in the format secretary@lodgename.org – Which one looks more professional?
Freemasonsweb websites weren’t mobile ready
So 60% plus of people searching the internet wouldn’t be able to properly use a Freemasons web website. In fact Google severely punishes (quite rightly) any website that isn’t optimised for mobile with reduced rankings. Naturally everything we build is responsive, so it fits and works perfectly for whatever screen your audience is viewing your Lodge website.
Single point of failure
If Freemasons web closed down, your site went with it. And it did. And they did.
We have built in redundancy, because we use proper proper web hosts like 123reg and WordPress.com.
And WordPress.com and 123reg are not going to themselves close down. 123reg’s turnover for 2023 was £57.59M (source)
This is why we do not host any site we build. We build it for our clients on a proper webhost, and hand the site to the client. It is their site. We remain on hand for updates.
Plus don’t get us started on their excessive use of Javascript
Just no.
Summary of why Freemasonsweb closed
Freemasonsweb couldn’t afford to keep running, so they closed. And left their clients in the lurch. If Masonicwebsite closed down (we’ve been highly successful since 2011 so this isn’t going to happen), but if we did, all of the sites we build are hosted on either WordPress.com and 123reg, and not by us. Nothing would change for our clients, (except for the fact that we wouldn’t be doing the free updates for them which we offer as part of our service). Freemasons web was a flawed business model, with out of date inflexible practices that burnt every client. At Masonic Website we are built in exactly the opposite manner so this could never happen with any site we create.
