Your website

Every church in Psalmly gets a public website — a simple site that anyone can visit without signing in. It's your church's front door: someone searching for you can see who you are, when you gather, what's coming up, and how to get in touch or give. You manage it from Your website, in the Website group of the admin sidebar.

Website, pages and the app

Psalmly uses three words for three different things:

• Your website — the site anyone can visit, no sign-in needed, at an address like yourchurch.psalmly.app.
• A page — one page of your website: Home, About, Visit, Events, News, and any page you add.
• The app — where your members sign in, on the web and on their phones.

So a switch like Show on your website means anyone can see it, not only your members.

It builds itself — you don't design it

Psalmly is not a drag-and-drop website builder. You don't pick fonts or lay out pages. Instead, your website is assembled automatically from the information you already keep up to date inside Psalmly — your church's name and story, your service times, your events, your announcements, and so on. Think of it as an auto-updating brochure, not a canvas. (If the built-in pages don't cover something — a daycare, a ministry, a food pantry — you can add your own page from a small set of ready-made blocks. See Adding your own pages.)

That has two happy consequences:

• You only ever enter things once. Update your service time in Psalmly and the website changes with it — there's no separate "website copy" to keep in sync.
• It always matches reality. The site can only show real, current information, so it can't drift out of date the way a hand-built site does.

What you do control is the raw material — your church's information, words and photos — and one presentation choice, your look. For exactly where each part of the site comes from, see What appears on your website.

Finding your way around

Open Your website and you'll see your whole site as one list. From the top:

• How much is filled in — a line like 9 of 12 parts of your site have something in them, with Show all (more on that below).
• Your look — a small picture of your website's design, the name of your look, and Change.
• Your pages — Home, About and Visit. Each row says what's on that page, or Not filled in if there's nothing yet.
• Pages you added — pages you made yourself, like a daycare or a food pantry, with how many of your plan's menu items they use. Click one to open it in the page editor, where ‹ Your website brings you back. Add a page starts a new one, and the Pages row takes you to where you change their order, add sub-pages or delete one. When your menu is full, Add a page says Menu full and takes you to Pages instead. See Adding your own pages.
• Church details — Name & details, Logo & color, Address & time zone, Phone, email & links and Service times. These are used around your app too, not only on your website. See Updating your church information.
• Built from your church's data — Events, Bulletins, News, Contact and Give. There's nothing to type in these. Each row says what your site shows and takes you to where you manage it — News comes from Announcements, and Give is managed in Giving. When your site is leaving one out, its row says so: Not in your menu yet, or No Give button yet.

Click a row to open it. To get back to the list, use ‹ Your website at the top, or your browser's Back button.

Three parts of your website have their own place in the sidebar, under Website: Pages for pages you add yourself, Team for the people on your site, and Custom domain for using your own web address.

Your pages

Home is the first page visitors see. It has two parts:

• Welcome — your Tagline, one sentence that sits beside your church's name across your site, and your Welcome paragraph, two or three sentences for someone deciding whether to visit. The welcome paragraph shows on your home page only.
• Photos — your cover photo and up to six more (see Photos below).

About holds Your story: a paragraph or two in the About your church box about who you are and what you believe. It opens your About page, and your home page shows it too. On your About page, a blank line starts a new paragraph. Under it, Staff & leaders shows how many people are on that page, and its Team row takes you to the Team page, where you add them.

Visit holds What to expect, for someone planning a first visit: up to six short cards under Before you come (or pick one under Need ideas?), plus Parking and Accessibility notes under Good to know, which show on your site only when you switch them on.

On a plan with the AI assistant, the tagline, welcome paragraph and story each offer Write with AI (Improve with AI once there's text) to help with a draft.

Photos

Photos are on Home, under Photos. Your look decides where they appear on your home page.

The Cover photo is the big photo near the top of your home page. It's also used on your giving page and your join link — so pick the one that says this is us. Drag a photo onto Add a cover photo, or click it to choose one. Then:

• Replace puts in a different photo (Keep this photo if you change your mind).
• Adjust framing lets you drag a circle onto what matters most, so the right part stays in view when the photo is cropped to fit a computer screen or a phone. Click Done when it looks right.
• Describe it adds a short description for people who use a screen reader.
• Remove takes the cover off your site.

More photos holds up to six photos that show together on your home page. Click Add photo to add one. Once you have two or more, drag a photo to change the order — on a phone, press and hold it for a moment first. Click a photo to open it:

• Framing — drag the circle onto what matters most.
• Description — say what someone would miss by not seeing it. If the photo carries nothing a visitor would miss, check Decorative instead. Until you do one or the other, the photo is marked No description, and a line under your photos counts how many still need one.
• Order — Move earlier and Move later do the same as dragging, if you'd rather use buttons or the keyboard.
• Remove photo — takes it off your site, with an Undo for a few seconds in case you didn't mean to.

Photos can be PNG, JPG or WebP files up to 5 MB each. Every photo change saves by itself, right away.

Saving your changes

Most changes wait for you to save. As soon as you change something, a bar appears at the bottom — for example Unsaved changes on Home — with Discard and Save. When nothing is unsaved, the bar isn't there.

Your photos save the moment you change them, with no Save to press, and your look saves when you click Use in Choose your look. Service times save one at a time, each with its own Save service button, so they have no bar either.

If you try to leave with unsaved changes — with ‹ Your website, your browser's Back button, or the sidebar — Psalmly asks first: Save, then go back (or Save, then leave), Keep editing, or Discard changes. If a save doesn't go through, your changes are kept, with a message saying so, and that row on the list says Didn't save until it saves.

Previewing your changes

On a wide screen, a live preview sits beside the list, sized like a phone. It shows the page you're working on — open About and it moves to your About page — and it shows your changes as you type, before you save. The line under it tells you whether you're looking at your saved site or at your unsaved changes. You can scroll the preview, but its links and buttons don't do anything — it's only for looking.

Full screen opens a bigger preview, with Desktop and Phone to compare. (Desktop is grayed out when your window is too narrow to show the desktop layout.) Click Done to close it. On a smaller screen there's no preview beside the list — use Preview at the top instead.

A few changes only show after you save — a new web address, a new time zone, and a service time you're still editing — and the line under the preview tells you when that's the case.

Visit site at the top opens your site in a new tab. While your site is a draft, that button reads Open preview instead and opens a private preview that only your admins can see. To show the draft to someone else, use Send a preview (see Publishing).

Choosing your look

Your look decides how your whole website is designed — its lettering, its colors, the shape of its edges, every page of it. Every look shows the same information:

• Bright — modern and calm, with rounded cards, an italic touch in the headings, and your color in the details.
• Meridian — crisp black-and-white pages with big headings, your photos in rounded frames, and your color on the buttons.
• Homeward — warm paper pages with big headings, dark bands for what's coming up, and a menu that floats at the top.
• Broadside — loud headlines, hand-drawn marks, and your own facts scrolling across the page.
• Evensong — graceful serif headings with an italic flourish, and calm, open pages.
• Narthex — pages softly tinted with your color, bold headings circled by hand, and dark bands for your gatherings and events.
• Timberline — quiet, open pages with big headings, your color in soft tints and deep bands.
• Mesa — warm, earthy pages with wide capital headings and handwritten touches, in your color and two partner colors drawn from it.

(This is your website's look. A graphic has a look of its own, picked when you make it — see Choosing a look.)

Trying a look before you use it

Click Change beside Your look (or Change beside your look's name in the full-screen preview). Choose your look opens full screen, with the looks on one side and your own website beside them — your real words and photos, not an example. Each look is shown as a small picture of its design, drawn with your church's own name and details, and the one you have now is marked On your website.

Click a look to try it. The preview shows your website in that look, and the look is marked Trying. Nothing changes on your real website while you try. The arrows above the preview step through the looks one by one. The tabs let you see other pages in the look you're trying: Home, About and Visit, plus Events, News and Give when your site shows them.

When you find the one you want, click Use — for example, Use Evensong. Your website changes right away, and the message that pops up has an Undo. If you click Done while you're still trying a look, Psalmly asks whether to use it or keep the one you have.

How your home page is arranged

Bright also lets you choose how your home page is arranged. When you're looking at Bright, its three arrangements appear underneath it, with a check on the one in the preview. Click one to try it, and Use it the same way:

• Photo first — a large photo across the top, with everything else below it.
• Side by side — your photo on one side, your name and service times on the other.
• Words first — your welcome in large type at the top, with photos further down.

Meridian, Homeward, Broadside, Evensong and Timberline each have a single arrangement, Photo first, and Narthex and Mesa each have a single arrangement too, Side by side — so there's nothing to choose underneath them.

If you change look, the arrangement you chose on Bright is kept, so it's still there if you go back.

Changing your look never changes your words, photos, events or service times — only the way they're presented. A new church starts on the look picked when it was made (Bright, unless another was picked), and Bright's home page starts Photo first.

Your web address

Your website lives at an address like yourchurch.psalmly.app. You can change it from Name & details under Church details — but changing it breaks links to the old address, so read Updating your church information first.

Already own a domain like firstbaptist.org? On a paid plan you can put your website on your own web address instead, and your .psalmly.app address keeps working and forwards to it. See Connecting your own domain.

Publishing

The tag beside Your website at the top says whether your site is Live or a Draft. Visitors can only see a live site. While it's a draft, your church's admins can see it in the preview, and so can anyone you send a preview link to.

• Publish makes your site public right away — there's nothing else to save.
• Unpublish takes it back to a draft, any time.

A new church is published when you create it, unless you chose Save as draft. Saving a change never publishes a draft by surprise.

Showing a draft to someone first

While your site is a draft, Send a preview sits beside Publish. It gives you a link to send to anyone — your pastor, your board, a friend — and they can see your website without an account until the date it shows, two weeks from when the link was made. They can look but not change anything. Copy link copies it. Turn off this link stops it working (the message that pops up has an Undo), and Make a new link gives you a fresh one. If you publish while a link is still on, it takes people to your live website instead.

It's fine to publish early and keep filling things in — the site only ever shows what's ready, so there's nothing embarrassing to hide. You don't have to wait for everything to be perfect.

What's filled in so far

At the top of the list, a line says how many of the twelve parts of your site have something in them. Click Show all to see each part — Header & logo, Tagline & welcome, Photos, Service times, Plan your visit, Events, Announcements, Giving, Team, Custom pages, Contact & follow, and Find us. Each one says what's there now, or Not yet and what your site does instead — for example, No photos — that part of your home page is left out. Click a row to go straight to where you'd fill it in; Hide folds the list away again.

It never forces you to fill everything in. Not yet simply means that part won't appear on your site yet — not that anything is broken.