Why was LodgeSite built?

After a Mason from California moved to Connecticut in 1997 and began looking for local fraternal group information on the web discovered a severe lack of such, the idea for LodgeSite was born: to make it easy for fraternal lodges or groups to create a presence on the web without having to learn HTML or other complex tools. And even more importantly, create a common area for lodges to find information about each other.

How does one join?

A simple 20 second registration is all that is required to get started posting your lodge information. All the tools to build your lodge website are provided through a series of simple data entry screens.

How much does it cost?

Lodges can post a link to their existing website, if they have one, free of charge. If a Lodge wishes to utilize LodgeSite to build and host their site, a small fee of $10 USD per month (billed annually) will be charged.

Why does LodgeSite charge to host lodges?

LodgeSite uses the proceeds from its nominal fee to cover the costs for internet bandwidth and state-of-the-art hosting hardware, and to support continued development and maintenance of the site. We want this to be the best place to find fraternal lodge information so new features are added regularly.

What types of lodges does lodgesite support?

Currently, the design of the site is highly customized for Masonic information. However, the version currently in development will support additional lodges such as: Moose, Elk, Knights of Columbus, Lions, VFW, etc. Please contact us us if you have interest in a type of lodge we currently do not support.

How can I monitor usage or hits on my lodge website?

LodgeSite supports two mechanisms to do this. The first is that every landing page (your newsletter or trestleboard) contains a hit counter which you can use to easily see the number of times the page as been viewed. For more advanced tracking, we have implemented Google Analytics which you can use for free to track actual usage metrics for all of your pages as well as when people viewed them, what geographic areas they are from, etc. For more information on Google Analytics, click here.

How do I get my lodge listed in search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo?

LodgeSite and all hosted lodge websites created under it are automatically listed in these search engines (Note: this process can take upwards of 4 weeks before your lodge will appear). Additionally, we automatically embed special tags relevant to your site within your pages so that they will appear stronger to search engines and are optimized for people performing searches for your information.

Yahoo also has a website directory which a fee based service. You can optionally have your lodge listed in this directory by submitting your lodge URL directly to Yahoo. The link to do this is here.

Why are the member photos I uploaded squashed?

LodgeSite assumes that the photos you upload are in portrait orientation and automatically resized them to 60x80 pixels. For best results, we recommend that you crop and resize a copy of your photos before you upload them to insure that they look they way you wish without distortion. You can use any standard paint program to accomplish this.

Where is your Terms of Use Agreement and/or Privacy Policy?

Both of these are items are documented in our Terms of Use Agreement. Please review this in detail before agreeing to post your Lodge to the site. We are not responsible for any information which you voluntarily make available to the public through use of this service.