Church-Ops Africa Website Builder Guide

Church-Ops Africa includes a built-in Website Builder that helps churches launch a public website without writing code. This guide describes the live builder as it exists today so teams can publish confidently without expecting features that are not yet part of the public workflow.

Table of Contents

1. Website Dashboard & Core Pages
2. Design Presets & Themes
3. The Visual Layout Editor
4. Supported Page Sections
5. Connecting Dynamic Church Data
6. Interactive Forms & Workflows
7. Media Library & Asset Management
8. SEO & Domain Publishing
9. Common Mistakes & Best Practices

1. Website Dashboard & Core Pages

To open the builder workspace, log in as an administrator and open Website Builder from the church admin workspace.

The Dashboard Overview

Visual note: Website Builder dashboard showing main configuration settings and analytics cards The dashboard displays:

• Core Analytics: Page views, form responses, and visitor-style summary metrics.
• Manage Pages List: List of active pages on your site. By default, three system-core pages are created automatically:
  1. Home (home): Your church landing page.
  2. About (about): History, staff members, and doctrinal beliefs.
  3. Contact (contact): Interactive visitors card, prayer requests, and location map.
• Add Page Wizard: Create custom sub-pages (e.g., youth-camp or building-project) by typing a title and customized slug.

2. Design Presets & Themes

Establish your visual identity under the Theme Settings panel. You can select one of the tailored presets:

Advanced Layout Customizations:

• Border Radius: Set structural rounding (12px, 16px, 32px for modern card elements).
• Navigation Style: Toggle transparent headers, center menus, or fixed top bars.
• Enable PWA: Check this box to enable mobile visitors to install your public site as a lightweight application.

3. The Visual Layout Editor

Click the Edit Page button next to any page to enter the visual editor workspace.

Visual note: Visual editor canvas showing sections re-ordering and content editing fields

How It Works:

1. Open the page you want to edit.
2. Add or modify sections.
3. Reorder sections to shape the page flow.
4. Save the page layout.
5. Publish the page once the mobile view and live data both look right.

4. Supported Page Sections

The editor allows you to build pages using various dynamic and static sections:

• Hero Section: High-impact banner with an eyebrow, headline, background image, opacity overlay, and primary call-to-action button.
• Text Block: Standard structured markdown editor for paragraphs, list items, and header tags. Supports optional side-aligned images.
• Church Services: Highlights worship schedules, times, and lead teachers.
• Dynamic Events: Displays real-time calendar cards drawn directly from your Events module.
• Dynamic Sermons: Pulls a list of recent sermon uploads, enabling visitors to stream audio or download sermon outlines.
• Dynamic Leaders: Displays circular avatar directories of pastors, deacons, and departmental directors.
• Dynamic Giving: Renders official Mobile Money numbers, bank transfer details, and payment instructions.
• Form Block: Injects an interactive web form (e.g., guest contact registry or prayer request box).

5. Connecting Dynamic Church Data

Instead of manually typing everything, the builder can pull live information from other modules in the system:

• Events: Future gatherings scheduled in the church calendar.
• Sermons: Recent sermon entries and media references.
• Leaders: Church leaders already stored in the system.
• Giving Info: Giving instructions already configured for the church.

6. Interactive Forms & Workflows

Public website interactions automatically feed your administration system, reducing data entry tasks:

Interactive Forms

The live builder supports public forms such as:

1. Visitor Card (visitor_card)
2. Prayer Request (prayer_request)
3. Volunteer Form (volunteer_form)
4. Membership Form (membership_form)

Public forms are now prepared in Admin > Forms with a visual field builder. Teams can:

• choose a connected module
• load starter fields for that workflow
• add, remove, reorder, and mark fields required
• configure select options without writing JSON or pipe-delimited field definitions
• set website-ready titles, submit labels, and success messages
• publish only the forms marked Show on website
• open a direct standalone share page for each public form
• copy a ready-to-share link or use the generated QR code when promoting that form

The Submission Workflow

1. A public form submission is stored as Pending.
2. Church staff review the submission from the website builder workspace.
3. Once approved, the submission can be processed into the relevant church-side workflow such as guests, prayer requests, members, or volunteer interest records.

Member Portal Form Visibility

The same forms workspace can also publish forms into the member portal:

• turn on Show in member portal when a form should be available to signed-in members
• share the portal-specific form link when the response should stay inside the authenticated member experience
• use the portal QR code for in-person announcements, notice boards, or service screens where members will open the form from their phones

7. Media Library & Asset Management

The integrated media library keeps all your media assets organized.

• Upload Limit: Supports uploads up to 50 MB per file for supported image and video formats.
• Video Backgrounds: Hero sections can use uploaded video backgrounds where the chosen design calls for it.
• Media Reuse: Uploaded media can be reused across builder sections once stored in the church's media flow.

8. SEO & Domain Publishing

Before publishing your page, configure structural search metadata to make it discoverable on Google:

• SEO Title: Recommended length is 50-60 characters (for example, Your Church Name | Welcome Home).
• SEO Description: A short summary of 150-160 characters describing your church, location, and service times.

Custom Domains and Subdomains

• Default Church-Ops URL: Every published site automatically works at churchopsafrica.com/w/{church-slug}. This URL requires no DNS configuration and remains the safe fallback.
• Reset to Church-Ops URL: If a custom domain is unavailable or was entered before DNS was ready, open Configure Domain and select Reset to Church-Ops URL. This preserves all website content and publishing settings while removing only the custom hostname.
• Custom Domain Mapping: If custom domain mapping is enabled for the church, enter a domain the church owns after its DNS is configured. The default Church-Ops URL remains available.

Search Visibility

• Published church pages include canonical URLs, search descriptions, social-sharing metadata, and Church structured data.
• Published blog posts include article metadata and structured data.
• Church-Ops automatically publishes a sitemap for each church and lists published church sitemaps in the platform sitemap index.
• Draft pages, unpublished websites, and unpublished blog posts are excluded from public sitemaps.
• Search engines decide when pages appear in results. Publishing complete page titles, descriptions, location details, and useful original content improves discovery.

9. Common Mistakes & Best Practices

Warning Always test on mobile: Verify that hero sections and text columns do not look crowded on smartphone screens before publishing.

Tip Keep layouts clean: Use 3 to 5 section blocks per page. Overloading homepage layouts slows down load times for users with slow 3G/4G connections.

Cameroon Context Note

In the Dynamic Giving section, include clear instructions around Mobile Money numbers, fees, and any manual confirmation expectations so members do not guess.