Website Builder
The Website Builder is GCM's drag-and-drop tool for shipping a public church website that's wired into the rest of your account. Members, sermons, blog posts, events, and the donation form all live in the same database, so the public site reflects whatever you've already set up — no double entry.
You don't need a developer. You don't pay a separate hosting bill. You pick a template, drop blocks onto a page, set your colours, and click Publish.
What the module gives you
- A public site at
app.geniuschurchmanager.com/s/{your-slug}out of the box. - Optional custom domain like
gracecitychurch.orgon Network and Unlimited plans — see Custom domain. - A library of 40+ church-aware blocks — service times, sermon player, giving button, event list, contact form, photo gallery — alongside the usual hero, text, image, and video blocks. The full list is in the Blocks catalog.
- A WYSIWYG editor based on Puck with autosave every three seconds.
- Built-in blog and sermon publishing (with audio/video, series, scripture references).
- SEO controls site-wide and per page — title, meta description, social share image.
- A live branding sync — colours, fonts, and logo from one place.
How it's structured
The module has three top-level tabs.
Settings
Choose a template, pick colours and fonts, set your logo, configure your header/footer, edit the navigation menu, set up SEO, and turn on optional floating widgets (WhatsApp button, language switcher). See Branding and Navigation menu.
Pages
Every page you build lives here — homepage, about, contact, ministries, whatever the template seeded plus anything you add. Each row has publish state, a homepage marker, the public URL, and edit/delete actions. See Creating a page.
Content
The data-driven feeds: blog posts and sermons. Both are full editors with rich text, media uploads, tags, and per-item publish state. See Blog posts and Sermon publishing.
Two layers of publishing
This trips people up the first time. There are two switches:
- The site itself —
is_live. When off, every URL on your public site returns a "site not published" page. The site URL banner in the header is the toggle. - Each page —
is_published. When off, only that one page is unreachable; the rest of the site still works. Useful for drafts.
Publishing + drafts walks through both.
What the public site shares with the rest of GCM
| Surface | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Visitor form | Form built in Forms — embedded as a block |
| Donation form | Giving — embedded as a block or linked from nav |
| Sermons / podcast | Sermons published here also feed the Podcast RSS |
| Events | Calendar module — surfaced via the Events List / Calendar blocks |
| Staff directory | Members tagged as staff — surfaced via the Staff block |
| Ministries / Groups | Ministry + Group records — surfaced via the showcase blocks |
That's the point of this module being part of GCM rather than a third-party tool. You set up the data once.
Plans
The Website Builder ships on every plan, but capacity scales:
| Plan | Pages | Custom domain |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 5 | — |
| Growth | 20 | — |
| Network | 50 | yes |
| Unlimited | unlimited | yes |
If you hit the limit, the Pages tab shows a banner pointing to your billing page.
Where to start
If you've never opened the module before, the next two articles are the quickest path to a published site:
- Pick a template and add your first page → Creating a page.
- Set your colours and logo → Branding.
- When the homepage looks right → Publishing + drafts.