26/03/2026
More people are visiting your sites on AChurchNearYou.com than ever before! In 2025, we saw more than 251 million page views from the public (27% more than in 2024) and more than 21 million page views from editors (120% increase on 2024) on AChurchNearYou.com.
Alongside this, 19,299 services and events were added to a calendar, and 10,081 services and events were shared via social media or email in 2025. It’s so encouraging to see that more people are not only searching for services and events but also sharing them and adding them to their calendars, showing intent to attend.
Keeping your site up-to-date, and making the most of its features, gives you the best chance of engaging those who come to AChurchNearYou.com. Here’s five simple things you can try to help maximise your reach.
1. Quickly add your services and events
When you are adding services and events to your church or benefice sites, remember you can reuse events from previous years, instead of creating them from scratch – making adding and updating your events a much quicker process.
By using clicking on the drop-down menu (the yellow box where it says ‘Show published events’), you can filter to view past events on your services and events page. By selecting ‘Show past events’, your most recent previous service and events will appear at the top of the page.
Once you have located the service or event you would like to reuse, click on the pencil in the top right corner. Then all you need to do is review/edit the details (including the date and time) and click save!
Using the Custom Frequency option
Sometimes the services for your church do not occur on the same day each week or you may rotate your services between multiple churches within your benefice. If this is the case, when creating your regular services on AChurchNearYou.com there is the option to select Custom as the Frequency option. Choosing this allows you to select the specific dates the service is occurring, which will then be reflected on the calendar for your church site.
Creating one regular service with custom dates, instead of multiple one-off services or events, allows you to quickly create a calendar for your upcoming services.
2. Make a welcoming and informative homepage
Page content section / The welcome
The welcome on your AChurchNearYou.com site is the first contact a visitor will have with your church, and it can either make them want to go in further or turn away and leave. Write a short welcome message and introduce your church. Make it clear that everyone is welcome and avoid using terms that people who don’t go to church might not understand.
You might be talking to someone who has never stepped foot in a church before. How can you make them feel as though your church might be somewhere they would feel comfortable? You could give visitors an idea of who goes to your church, so they know whether they’d fit in. Could you explain what happens when you meet on a Sunday, or what events or services are available throughout the week? Are you a quiet, reflective group or a lively congregation? Is there a worship band or lots of activities for children?
What’s on & News panel
Remember to take advantage of the ‘What’s on’ and ‘News’ panels on your homepage. These panels automatically show the next upcoming service or event or the most recently added news article. However, it is possible to override this and choose a particular service or event or news article to be displayed on your church homepage.
Through the editor help desk we get multiple requests to be able to change the order of the services and events listed on your Services and Events page, which is not currently possible. Events are shown in calendar order and any regular events included are shown only once, on their next occurrence.
However, it is possible to promote one particular event, and you can do this by adding it to your church homepage under the ‘What’s on’ panel.
3. Make the most of your custom pages
Add more information about your church
How can your other pages beyond the home page help people feel informed, welcomed and prepared to visit in person? The more detail you can add about your community, the better.
Custom pages are a great way to add information on different topics for those who are interested, whilst keeping the home page concise. Custom pages could explore:
The history of the building/community
Information about youth and children’s work
A page for watching recordings of the latest service
Find out how to add a custom page.
Safeguarding information
All churches must display a safeguarding statement on the homepage of their website, and this includes their AChurchNearYou.com site.
It is also encouraged for churches to use the 'add custom page' feature to create a Safeguarding page for your site. This page could tell visitors more about safeguarding in your parish, including additional contact details and downloadable documents.
Additional online donation links
Another common question from AChurchNearYou.com editors is how to add more than one online donation link to their church site. You can add a donation button to the homepage of your church, which can be set up in the 'Marketplace'.
However, if you have multiple online donation platforms, the next best thing is to create a custom Giving page. Within a custom page you can format the text and include hyperlinks to each of the online donation platforms you have set up for your church or benefice.
4. Add/resize images
Using Canva to resize your images
There are several different image sizes in use on AChurchNearYou.com and the system will automatically crop your image to fit the location. If you want to guarantee the image you upload appears on the screen exactly as you uploaded it, without any edges cropped off, you need to make sure it is exactly the right size for its intended location before you upload it.
To achieve this, we recommend using the Canva templates available in this editor help centre article. Simply upload your image into the required Canva template and resize the image so that it fills the whole template. Once you have downloaded the image from Canva, you can then upload the resized image to your AChurchNearYou.com site and it should fit the image section perfectly.
Your Image Gallery
The image gallery allows you to add up to 20 photos to your site, and is a great way to show the life of your church, from images of your worship to social events and the activities you run in the week. You can also add a caption to these images, which helps with accessibility.
Remember to show the full diversity of your church, in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, age and physical ability, for example. Also, consider the time of year. Is it time to remove the Christmas photos and add some Easter ones? Could you add photos of last year’s holiday club as summer approaches?
Make sure you have the correct permissions to share any images used, and that they are being used in line with your safeguarding policy. Find out how to add to your image gallery.
5. Customise your church/benefice domain name
Want a more personalised web address for your page? You can request an additional domain name customised with the name of your church or benefice. This domain name will forward to your site on AChurchNearYou.com, so anyone can use it to find your church or benefice in the same way as the main domain name.
This allows you to use a more personalised domain name for your church or benefice for any informational or promotional material. Only 2% of churches on AChurchNearYou.com have taken advantage of this free feature, so reach out to us if you are interested in this and we will be in touch. The format for these domains can be seen below.
For a Church/Chapel/Chaplaincy:
www.achurchnearyou.com/’Church-Name’–Location
An example for a church site would be:
www.achurchnearyou.com/St-John-North-Cliffe
For a Benefice:
For a benefice site, you can also choose to add ‘Benefice’, or your chosen term to group your churches, at the end of your domain name. Other terms could be Team Ministry, Team Parish, Group, or something else.
www.achurchnearyou.com/’Benefice-Name’
OR
www.achurchnearyou.com/’Benefice-Name’-Team-Parish
An example for a benefice site would be:
www.achurchnearyou.com/North-Cave-with-Cliffe
OR
www.achurchnearyou.com/Whitton-Team-Parish
If there are any other features you need help with, do visit our Editor Help Centre, or reach out to the AChurchNearYou.com help desk with any questions.
Do you use your own church website as well as AChurchNearYou.com? Take a look at this blog with 6 quick tests to improve your church website.
