Creating your church

Creating a church makes you its first admin. It takes about five minutes, and you can change your church's details afterward from Your website in the admin sidebar.

Start the wizard

Choose Create a church from your dashboard. The wizard walks you through eight short steps and saves your progress as you go.

What you'll set up

• The basics — your church's name, its Web address (like yourchurch.psalmly.app), your denomination, the year you were founded, a short tagline, and an "about" description. The web address must be unique, and a few addresses are kept for Psalmly itself, like help and support; Psalmly checks as you type and tells you if one is taken or reserved. These details also help members recognize the church and, on a paid plan, help the assistant answer questions about you.
• Brand & look — your logo, a cover image, and an accent color. Your website starts on the Bright look; you can choose a different one later from Your website.
• Contact — email, phone, website, and your Instagram and Facebook. Add an extension in the Ext. box if your office number has one; your website shows it written out, and tapping it dials it. Replies to your church emails go to this email.
• Location — your address, country and Time zone. Psalmly serves churches in the United States only for now, because online giving runs on US bank details. (Your members can live anywhere.) The time zone starts at your computer's own, and you can search it by name — "Central", "Eastern" — or by city. It decides which events count as upcoming and when the giving month turns over.
• Service times — your regular gatherings. A single service can list more than one start time (for example 9:30 AM & 11:00 AM). A service you've typed in is kept when you press Continue, even if you didn't press Save service first.
• Invite your team — email invitations for the admins and leaders who help run things. It's optional, and you can do it any time.
• Visit info — also optional: what to expect on a first visit, plus parking and accessibility.
• Review & publish — a last look at everything, and whether to publish (below).

Inviting your first members

Every church has one shareable member join code that anyone can use to ask to join as a member. The easiest way to share it is a welcome sheet you print and hand out on Sunday — people point their phone's camera at it to ask to join, and you approve them (see Approving new members). For specific people (including other admins), send a targeted email invitation instead; those are tied to the person's email and can carry an admin role. You can do both during setup or any time afterward.

Publishing

The last step, Review & publish, asks whether to publish. It's set to Publish my website by default, so your website goes live as soon as you create the church — choose Save as draft instead if you'd rather keep it private and publish later from Your website. Either way, people you invite by email can join immediately, and anyone who scans your welcome sheet or types your join code into Psalmly can ask to join. Publishing only decides whether visitors can see your website.

After creating

You become the church's lead (its founding admin). The screen that follows names your next step, and Psalmly also emails it to you, so it's in your inbox to come back to. Your dashboard keeps a setup guide at the top until your church is set up. It asks for one thing at a time:

1. Publish your website — only if you saved it as a draft. Publish it whenever you're ready for visitors to see it; your join code and welcome sheet work either way.
2. Add your service times — only if you didn't add them in the wizard.
3. Invite your members — done once someone besides your admins has joined.
4. Turn on online giving — done once giving is live. The guide lists what to have on hand before you start.

A step is finished only when it has really happened, so the guide stays put while you add events or post prayer requests. The next step also shows at the top of your other admin pages; until a member joins, the Directory shows it in place of its empty list. If a step doesn't apply to your church — say you only take offerings in person — choose Skip for now on the dashboard; Undo brings it back.

From the admin area you can also look after your website and church details in Your website, manage your people and their roles in the Directory, and run announcements, bulletins, events, groups, prayer, and giving.