What Should a Parish Website Actually Include?

Most parish websites fall into one of two traps. The first is the abandoned site — last updated in 2019, Mass times that haven’t changed but might have, a news section with three posts from three years ago, and a phone number that rings a line nobody answers. The second is the overcrowded site — every page the parish has ever thought of, a navigation menu with fourteen items, and a homepage so busy that a new visitor can’t find what they came for.

Neither serves your parish well. This guide covers what a parish website actually needs, what’s worth including, and what to leave out.

Start with why people visit

Before deciding what to put on your website, think about why someone visits it. Parish website visitors broadly fall into three groups:

People looking to attend: A newcomer to the area, someone returning to the faith, or a visitor in town for the weekend. They want to know when Mass is, where you are, and whether they’d be welcome. They need this information immediately, without having to dig.

Existing parishioners: They want to know about this week’s events, check the bulletin, find out about a specific ministry, or get a contact number. They know the parish — they just need the website to be a reliable reference.

People with a specific need: Someone enquiring about a baptism, a funeral, a wedding, a school place, or a hall booking. They may have no prior connection to the parish. They need to find the right contact quickly and feel confident they’ve come to the right place.

Every page, section, and piece of content on your website should serve at least one of these groups. If it doesn’t, it probably doesn’t need to be there.

The essentials: what every parish website must have

Mass times

This is the single most important piece of information on your website. It should be on the homepage — not buried in a submenu. It should be accurate, and it should be immediately obvious that it’s current.

Include:

• Regular Sunday and weekday Mass times
• Confession times
• Any regular variations (e.g. first Fridays, Holy Days of Obligation)
• A note if times change during school holidays or other seasons

Make it obvious when the times were last confirmed. “Mass times correct as of May 2026” gives visitors confidence. A page with no date and no indication of currency does the opposite.

Contact details

A phone number, an email address, and — if the parish office has set hours — when someone will actually be available. Don’t just list an address if it’s a presbytery where no one is reliably available during the day.

The contact page should also answer the question “who do I contact for X?” — baptisms, weddings, funerals, Gift Aid, hall bookings, and safeguarding contacts should each be clearly signposted, even if they all route to the same address.

Address and directions

Your full postal address plus practical directions — particularly parking information and public transport links. Embed a map, but don’t rely on it alone: include the postcode prominently for sat-nav users, and note any quirks (car park entrance on a different street, accessible entrance to the side, etc.).

Events and what’s coming up

A regularly updated events section or calendar showing what’s happening in the parish. If you use ChurchSuite, this can pull automatically from your ChurchSuite calendar — no manual updates needed. If you maintain events manually, someone needs to own this and keep it current. A stale events section is worse than no events section.

The weekly bulletin

Your bulletin is the heartbeat of parish communication and your most regularly updated content. Publishing it on the website — as a PDF, a page, or both — gives parishioners who missed it a way to catch up, and gives prospective parishioners a window into the life of the parish.

If you publish it as a PDF, also consider summarising the key information as page content — PDFs don’t display well on mobile and aren’t indexed as well by search engines.

A brief introduction to the parish

A short paragraph or two about who you are, what tradition you follow, the communities you serve, and what a visitor can expect. This doesn’t need to be long — it needs to be warm and honest. Write it for the person who has never been to your church and is wondering whether to come.

Important but not essential from day one

Sacraments pages

A page for each of the sacraments you offer — baptism, first communion, confirmation, marriage, anointing of the sick, funerals — explaining what’s involved and who to contact to begin the process. These pages serve the “specific need” visitor well, and they rank in search results for people looking for these things locally.

Each page should include:

• A brief explanation of the sacrament for those unfamiliar
• What the parish requires (preparation classes, timescales, etc.)
• Who to contact and how

School links

If the parish has a linked Catholic school, say so clearly and link to the school’s website. Parents looking for school places often research the parish as part of that process — make it easy for them.

Ministries and groups

A directory of the parish’s active ministries, societies, and groups — with a brief description of each and a contact for anyone who wants to get involved. This is particularly useful for newcomers trying to find their place in the community.

Keep this list accurate. A ministry page for a group that folded two years ago is actively misleading. Review it at least annually.

Online giving

A clear, simple route to donate — whether that’s a link to your ChurchSuite giving page, a PayPal button, or a bank transfer reference. Include Gift Aid information alongside it. Many parishes find that online giving meaningfully increases donation income, particularly from younger parishioners who rarely carry cash.

Safeguarding

A clear statement of your parish’s commitment to safeguarding, the name and contact details of your Parish Safeguarding Representative, and a link to your diocese’s safeguarding policy. This should be a standalone page, not buried in a footer link. The diocese will often require this.

Photo gallery or parish life section

Images of the community in action — parish events, Masses, social occasions — help a newcomer understand the character of the parish. Keep images recent and representative. A gallery last updated in 2017 does more harm than good.

What to think carefully about before including

A live streaming section

Online Mass has real value for housebound parishioners, those who are ill, or those who can’t attend in person. But it only works if someone is committed to maintaining it. A streaming page with a broken YouTube embed, a defunct Facebook link, and no indication of whether streaming is still happening is confusing and dispiriting. Only include streaming if it’s an active, maintained ministry.

A forum or community board

Parish community features — prayer request boards, community noticeboards — require active moderation. If no one is committed to moderating them, they become spam repositories or go dormant. Skip them unless you have a specific person who will own this long-term.

A full document archive

Some parishes publish everything — years of AGM minutes, historical newsletters, policy documents, planning applications. Unless there’s a genuine need for public access to these (there rarely is), keep your document library lean. Publish the current safeguarding policy, the current data protection notice, and the current Gift Aid form. Archive the rest internally on Google Drive.

A staff or clergy biography section

A brief introduction to your parish priest is welcome and human. An elaborate biography section that’s out of date because Fr changed two years ago is not. Keep it simple, keep it current, or leave it out.

Social media feeds embedded on the site

Live social feeds embedded on websites often look cluttered, slow the page down, and quickly become stale if posting frequency drops. Link to your social accounts prominently — in the header or footer — but don’t embed feeds. Let the social platforms do what they do best.

What to leave out

Automatic music. It was a mistake in 2004 and it remains a mistake now.

A splash page or “enter site” screen. Nobody wants an extra click to get to the content they came for.

A separate mobile site. Your site should be responsive — adapting to any screen size — not a separate m. subdomain.

A “last updated” counter on the homepage. If you need to prove to visitors that the site is current, make the content itself current.

Clip art, animated GIFs, or stock photos of people in suits praying. Use real photos of your real community wherever possible. Authentic images of actual parish life build connection. Generic stock photography does the opposite.

Navigation: less is more

A parish website navigation menu with twelve top-level items is a sign that nobody has made any decisions about what matters. Visitors scan menus quickly and give up if they can’t find what they want within a few seconds.

Aim for five to seven top-level items. A sensible structure for most parishes:

• Home
• Mass Times (or merged with “Visit Us”)
• Sacraments
• Parish Life (groups, ministries, news)
• Events (or Calendar)
• Give
• Contact

Everything else is either a subpage of one of these, or it doesn’t need to be in the main navigation at all.

Keeping it current: the real challenge

The hardest thing about a parish website isn’t building it — it’s keeping it accurate over time. Clergy change. Groups fold and new ones start. Events come and go. Mass times occasionally shift.

Build your website around a CMS that makes updates quick and easy for non-technical people. If updating the Mass times requires calling the web developer, those times will go out of date. If the person who updates the site changes (and they will), the process needs to be simple enough that the next person can pick it up immediately.

Assign clear ownership:

• Who updates Mass times? (And who updates them when that person is away?)
• Who publishes the weekly bulletin?
• Who adds events? (Or is this handled automatically via ChurchSuite?)
• Who reviews the site annually to check that groups, contacts, and information are still accurate?

A short annual review — going through every page and confirming it’s still correct — prevents the slow drift toward an abandoned-looking site that undermines confidence in the parish.

A note on accessibility

Your website should be accessible to everyone in your community, including those with disabilities. In practice, this means:

• Sufficient colour contrast between text and background
• Images with descriptive alt text
• Headings in logical order (H1 → H2 → H3, not used for styling)
• Links that describe their destination (“Download this week’s bulletin” rather than “Click here”)
• Forms that work with a keyboard and screen reader
• PDFs that are text-based, not scanned images

Public sector bodies are required by law to meet WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. Churches aren’t subject to the same legal requirement, but as organisations committed to welcome and inclusion, the moral case is just as strong.

In summary

A parish website that does a few things well is worth far more than one that attempts everything and maintains nothing. Get the essentials right first — Mass times, contact details, events, bulletin — and build from there. Make sure someone owns each piece of content. Review it regularly.

Your website is often the first encounter someone has with your parish. Make it one that makes them want to come through the door.

Expanse CMS is built for parish websites — with ChurchSuite integration, an admin interface shaped around parish content, and themes designed by people who understand what a parish website needs to do. Get in touch to talk about your parish.