A complete website for your monastery, from one form.

An opinionated, free website builder for Catholic monks and nuns. Fill in your community's details and download a finished site: a horarium, a vocations page with an inquiry form, a giving page that sends gifts straight to you, prayer requests, retreats and the guesthouse, events and news. It is fast, readable on any phone, and found by search engines.

Build your site See a monks' example See a nuns' example

Free and open source (MIT). For abbeys, priories, Carmels, Poor Clare and Visitation monasteries, convents and friaries. The two examples are made-up communities.

Everything a good community website has

Vocations

Who may apply, the stages of formation from postulancy to solemn vows, Come and See retreats, the questions discerners ask, and an inquiry form that goes to the vocation director.

Giving

Your online donation page with monthly giving, cheques, Mass intentions or enrollments, current needs, a campaign with an honest dated total, and the legal name a will needs.

Horarium

The Divine Office and Mass, weekdays and Sundays, with the hours open to visitors marked, and a link to your livestream.

Prayer requests

A short form, no name required, sent to the community and kept private.

Visit and retreats

The guesthouse, a stay request form, retreats, directions and what guests should know.

Found by search

Page titles and descriptions, structured data for your community, events and FAQ, a sitemap and an llms.txt for AI assistants.

Opinions it holds, so you do not have to

The pages are fixed. Home, our life, horarium, vocations, visit, events, news, prayer, shop, give and contact. A page you leave empty disappears; you cannot add a tenth menu item that nobody finds.
Six palettes, all legible. Each is checked for the contrast people with low vision need. A custom accent colour is checked too.
Vocations and giving are in the first screen. They are the two things a community most needs its website to do.
The money never passes through the website. Gifts go to the donation page your community already trusts; the site only links to it, over https.
Nothing is invented. The template never writes a tax statement, a total or a promise for you. The checklist asks for them instead.
No tracking, no cookies, no plug-ins. Plain pages that load fast on a rural connection and need no updates.

Build your site

Everything runs in your browser. What you type is saved in this browser only. Start from an example and change it, or start blank. Lists take one item per line, with a | between parts.

1. Your community

Name of the community

We are

Order (as you say it)

Place

Founded

Patron

Diocese

Superior (optional) One sentence about the community

2. Look

Palette

Accent colour (optional)

Logo (web address of an image, optional) Main photograph (the church, the cloister or the community at prayer) Describe the photograph for blind visitors

The photograph is added to the download as images/hero. Keep it under about 500 KB so the page loads fast; it is not saved between visits, so choose it again before downloading.

3. Contact and address

Street

Town or city

State or region

Postal code

Country

Phone

When the phone is answered

General email

Vocations email

Guesthouse email

Map link

Website address, once you have one

4. Home page

Headline Under the headline Welcome (paragraphs, a blank line between them)

5. Our life

Introduction Our charism A day in the community History year | what happened

6. Horarium

First schedule is for Times time | hour | public (if visitors may come) Second schedule is for (optional) Times Livestream link (optional)

7. Vocations

Opening sentence

Vocation director

Title

8. Giving

Online giving links button label | https:// address | monthly (if it offers monthly gifts)

Legal name (for wills and cheques)

Make cheques payable to

Mass intentions or enrollments (how to request one) Current needs need | a sentence about it

Campaign (optional)

Total as of (date)

Goal ($)

Raised so far ($)

Bequests (a sentence for people remembering you in a will) Tax ID (optional, as your accountant gives it) Tax statement (optional, in your accountant's words; never filled in for you)

9. Visiting and the guesthouse

Opening sentence Mass and the Office for visitors The guesthouse (leave empty if you have none) Guesthouse details (one per line) Booking link (optional; without one, a request form is shown) Getting here

10. Events, news, shop

11. Forms

Form service address (optional, https://)

Leave it empty and the vocation, prayer, stay and contact forms open the visitor's email program with the message ready. With a form service (Formspree, Basin, Netlify Forms, or your own), messages arrive by email even from visitors with no mail program. The forms send a hidden _gotcha field to catch spam robots.

Advanced: the whole site as a file

community.json (every option, including ones the form above does not show) Open a saved community.json

Launch checklist

Putting it online

Download the website above. It is a .zip of plain pages; unzip it.
Choose a free static host. Cloudflare Pages, Netlify and GitHub Pages each let you upload a folder on their free plans. Drag the unzipped folder in, or connect it to a repository so the site rebuilds when you change it.
Add your domain in the host's settings, then put its address in "Website address" and download again, so search engines get full links.
Set up giving. Use the donation page your bank, diocese or a donation platform gives you. Compare their fees and whether they offer monthly gifts, then paste the link into "Online giving links".
Test every form by sending yourself a vocation inquiry and a prayer request.

Developers can do the same from the command line: node build.mjs community.json --out site/, with the checklist as a deploy gate. Source and README.

Questions

Does this take donations for us?

No. The giving page links to your community's own donation page, the one your bank, your diocese or a donation platform gives you, and prints your details for cheques and bequests. The money goes straight to you; this template never touches it.

Where do vocation inquiries and prayer requests go?

To the email addresses you type. With no form service set, the forms open the visitor's email program with the message ready to send. With a form service address in Forms, they post to that service, which emails you.

What does it cost to put online?

The template is free. The download is a folder of plain web pages, which several hosts serve on their free plans. A domain name is the one thing you would normally pay for, and you can add it later.

Can we change the design?

Within limits, on purpose. Choose one of six palettes and an accent colour, add your logo and photographs, and write every word yourself. The layout stays fixed, so the site stays fast, readable and easy to keep up.

Is what we type uploaded?

No. The builder runs in your browser. What you type is kept in this browser's local storage on this device, and photographs stay in memory until you download the site.

Would you rather someone set it up with you? This portfolio also takes free custom development requests: ask for help with your community's site.

Count anonymous feature use in this browser

Everything runs in your browser. What you type is stored only in this browser's local storage and is never uploaded. Usage counts hold only feature names, stay in this browser, and are turned off by the checkbox, Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control.