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Lodges

One of our services is the provision of WordPress powered web sites specifically designed for Freemason Lodges that operate under the auspices of the United Grand Lodge of England (www.ugle.org.uk).

How are we trying to help Freemason Lodges like yours?

  1. We engineer web sites designed to provide a feed of quality, new prospective members for your Lodge
  2. At the same time, the web site provides an online resource to keep your members and visitors up to date
  3. Above all, we allow your local community to see the good works of the Lodge

What we do for you

  • On request, we deploy a Lodge Site, with draft content already in place and to one of three designs. The site is designed to work equally well on mobile phones, tablets and PCs
  • We send you a copy of the Lodge Site Maintenance Guide, which gives the step by step instructions on how to update your website; you are free to download this now if you wish from Lodge Site Maintenance Guide (note: circa 15MB PDF).
  • You customise the site to your own requirements; all pages are pre-populated to get you started. Your lodge can see the site as it develops
  • Once (and only if) the site and content is approved by your lodge, we request payment of an invoice £300+VAT (£360 total) for the site content, deployment and first years support/maintenance. Subsequent years cost £100+VAT (£120), payable either monthly by standing order, or annually, at your option.
  • On receipt of payment, we supply and/or assign your choice of domain name to the site, making it visible to search engines and the Internet at large. We also enact various tools to drive prospective new recruits (who search for terms indicating joining interest by people in your local area) to the join-us page on your web site
  • We keep all the Internet plumbing up to date, and ensure your site remains secure
  • After the initial one year payment, if at any time you elect to move away from us in the future, we will provide the site content and domain name back to you at no further cost.

Service Components

  • Provision of Web Site and Lodge related content that you can tailor
  • Payment for any themes used, hosting costs, domain name, updates, backups and maintenance
  • Telephone Support
  • Ensuring Site integrity and security (there are 7 new exploits published every day, and we take the appropriate precautions to prevent your lodge site getting hacked)
  • Initial Cost: £300+VAT = £360 for the site set up, domain name and first year of operation
  • £100+VAT = £120 per annum in subsequent years (can be paid annually or monthly)

What’s so special?

  • The web site designs are built to comply with UGLE content and administrative user access guidelines
  • More than half of web site access to the lodge sites we design is on mobile phones and tablets (we suspect to a younger audience than is typical of membership of most lodges); content you provide once only will reformat themselves to look neat and tidy to everyone, whatever device they use to view your Lodge web site.
  • The full structure and sample text is supplied; a lot easier to edit than to start on your own bat with a several blank sheets of paper.
  • You edit and add to the site using a WordPress dashboard (you login remotely to this through any browser or WordPress related Mobile Application; we supply you with an admin web page address, confidential username and password)
  • We provide a user guide to help get you started editing your Lodge web site content and adding pictures as fast as possible.
  • Once paid, we provide a web site domain name for your lodge (or can use an existing one if already purchased). We will also initiate some work with Google to direct people enquiring about Lodge membership on the Internet in your catchment area to the “join us” section of your web site.
  • We are available on the phone, or by email, if you need any help or assistance. We are also happy to consider alternative template designs, if we can source these cost effectively and if they are “responsive” in nature (that’s the industry term for web sites that can repurpose their layouts automatically to fit on different size screens, from small mobiles up to large TVs).

Procedure in Full

  1. Nominate a person in the lodge to maintain the web site (and related Social Media feeds)
  2. Please send us your Lodge Name, number, town and county by email to [email protected]
  3. If available, please provide a picture you’d like added as your large banner image
  4. If available, please provide a picture of your lodge logo
  5. Attach any photographs you’d like us to start off your own image gallery
  6. Choose one of the three designs (LD1, LD2 or LD3)
  7. Tell us about any Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or other social accounts the lodge and/or your province has; we will provide links to allow users to find these
  8. We will provision a web site for you, pre-populated (you can add more, or remove any of these):
    • Home Page
    • News
    • Join Us
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Officers (you can choose to enter the names/titles, or delete the page at your option)
    • Events Calendar
    • Picture Gallery
    • History
    • Links
    • Contact Us
  9. Your site will be deployed under www.software-enabled.com/LodgeName+Number
  10. You are given access to the WordPress Admin Panel to tailor the site, add your own words and pictures
  11. The full site, as you tailor it’s content, can be viewed by your Lodge by entering that web address we provide.
  12. Once approved by the lodge and fee paid, we will buy a domain name for you (or use any existing one on request), and point this to your site. At that time, the Lodge site will become viewable on the Internet at large and indexed by Google.

Want to get started? Just email [email protected] or call Ian Waring on 07446-840511. We can typically have the first instance of your web site up and ready for tailoring in under one hour.