Does your lodge have a web presence? How does it look to outsiders; clear, clean easy to navigate, contemporaneous? If you don't have a website, why not?
A quality lodge website can be created at little cost and has the possibility for great return to the lodge. Most men looking for a lodge experience will look first to the Internet to find information. If they can easily find your lodge website, the likelihood of them reaching out to contact you increases. A quality web presence can be maintained for $10 per month or less, and does not require much skill to maintain once created. Here's one example of how to accomplish this:
- Obtain a Unique Domain Name. We chose CrestonLodge.org, but could have chosen other similar identifying names if that was taken.
- Find a Host. For my personal site, I chose Zoho.com as my provider. For less than $40 annually (possibly free), they provide a template-based website creation interface. You can drag and drop the various elements to create a clean webpage. IF you want more bells and whistles, you can pay an additional fee for more features, and a greater choice of templates.
- Find an Email Host. Nothing shows lack of professionalism as a well crafted website with a gmail address as the point of contact. Once again, Zoho comes to the rescue. Up to 10 email users can be attached to your domain free of charge. Each of these can have a number of aliases pointing to the same account, allowing you to create email addresses by both name or office. This will allow you to create a set of contact email addresses for your lodge such as 'info@yourlodge.org', or 'secretary@yourlodge.org'. These addresses can be forwarded to the Brother's existing account, be accessed by webmail, or by your choice of email client on computers or smartphones. The emails can be routed to different officers as roles change, and you have not revealed any personal information.
- Get a Telephone Presence. A virtual phone number can be maintained for less than $2 per month. This number can be set up with a greeting for callers, and transfer them to the appropriate person within your lodge for follow-up. VOIP numbers are managed through a web portal, and have a huge number of options you can implement. There is no need to keep changing contact information for your lodge, you simply redirect callers to the appropriate individual. Instead of maintaing a little used phone line at the Lodge Hall, you have a truly useful phone presence.
Here's the tally so far:
| Domain Name | $10 |
| Web Host | 0 - $40 |
| Email Host (10 users) | $0 |
| Phone Presence | $18 |
| Total | $28 - $68 annually |
So, for less than $6 per month your lodge can have a quality web presence which is easily updated and managed by a Brother with even the most rudimentary computer skills.
For those wanting more options, other hosts and suppliers can provide a wider range of options for those who need them. Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Wordpress, Drupal, Magneto, and Joomla are infinitely customizable; hosts such as 1 and 1, Bluehost or Siteground allow a wider variety of tools to be used in managing a web presence, including unlimited emails, file management and more, but are far more complex to manage. Creston Lodge chose a product 'LiveSite' by Camelback for our site. This product can be hosted on your own server space, or at Camelback. We are still exploring the opportunities offered by this CMS, and we are constantly improving it's content.
Once you have created your web site, don't forget to promote it on your building!
Note: the Grand Lodge of BC and Yukon has drafted standards for Lodge websites in this Grand Jurisdiction. Please take the time to familiarize yourself with these expectations as you build your web presence.