What a node page is
A diocese and an archdeaconry each get their own page on the platform, at their own address, with their own dashboard behind it. It works almost exactly like a parish's — the same news, the same events, the same timetable, the same team — because a diocesan office publishing a communiqué is doing the same thing a parish does when it publishes a harvest notice.
What is different is what sits underneath. A parish has a congregation; a diocese has parishes. Most of what is genuinely diocesan on this platform is about seeing them.
How you get in
Nobody registers a diocese. There is no form, and that is deliberate — a diocese is a real body in a real hierarchy, and anyone could otherwise claim one. A platform administrator appoints its first manager, and you will have had an email saying so.
Once appointed, you reach the page from the site switcher at the top of any AnglicanNG screen. If you look after a parish as well, that is where you move between the two: the dashboard is always showing exactly one of them, and the name in the corner tells you which.
Five questions
Setting up your page on your dashboard asks a node almost what it asks a parish, and for the same reasons: say who you are, one photograph, one piece of news, and somebody besides yourself who can post.
Two differences are worth knowing before you start.
- You are asked how to reach the office, not when you meet. A parish is asked to confirm its service times. Nobody attends a diocese on a Sunday morning; they write to it, or ring it. A telephone number, an email address or where the office is — without one of them your contact page is a form and nothing else.
- You are not asked about online giving. Node fundraising works differently and is set up separately, under Giving.
Everything else is the same, including the point of the exercise: a page nobody has said anything on reads as abandoned, and a page run from one account goes quiet the week that person travels.
What a parish has that you do not
Several screens are parish-only, because the thing they record is parish-only. You will not find them on a node dashboard and nothing is broken:
- Registers and banns — baptisms, confirmations, marriages and funerals are entered in the parish where they happen.
- The pastoral care log — visits are made by a parish priest to a parishioner.
- The rota — readers, servers and sidesmen are rostered for a particular church's Sunday.
- The prayer wall and the choir — both belong to a congregation.
- Readership — it counts how a parish's posts were read.
In exchange you get one screen a parish does not, and it is the reason to bother.
Your parishes
Parishes on your dashboard lists every parish beneath you and answers the question a diocesan office cannot otherwise answer without ringing round: which of them have gone quiet.
For each parish it shows how far through setting up it has got, when it last published anything, how many things its own week still needs, and how many of its members were here this week. A parish that has published nothing for three weeks is marked as quiet, and one whose page only a single person can manage is counted apart — it goes silent the week that person travels. Most of them will not know they have gone quiet, and none of them will find out unless somebody tells them — which is the whole use of the screen.
Read it as a list of parishes to encourage, not a league table. The parishes at the bottom are usually the ones with the fewest people, not the least faithful.
Members and invitations
Members on your dashboard counts the members of every live parish beneath you, and who among them was here today and this week.
Your own invite link is on that screen too. Unlike a parish's link, it asks each person to choose their parish as they join, which is what makes it the one to put on the screen at synod or a conference. Print the poster and the room can scan it from their seats.
Circulars and the document vault
Two things a diocese does that a parish does not.
Circulars are addressed downward through the hierarchy — to every parish, or to one archdeaconry, or to everyone holding a particular office — and reach the people they are addressed to rather than being pinned to a noticeboard and hoped over.
The document vault holds files rather than pictures: minutes, forms, constitutions, returns. They sit on private storage by default and are only reachable through a link you deliberately create, which you can revoke afterwards. Documents are versioned, so replacing last year's return does not lose it.
A diocese also stands between its parishes and any fundraising they want to do: a parish fund goes live only once the body above it has endorsed the parish. The requests arrive under Endorsements on your dashboard, each with what the money is for and what the platform has already checked. An endorsement can be withdrawn later, and the fundraisers it covered stop taking gifts at once.
Who is allowed to do what
The same roles as a parish, and the same rule — give the smallest one that lets somebody do their job.
- Website Owner — Everything, including who else is on the team, the page’s own settings, the confidential records and the money.
- Post Editor — Writes and publishes anything, including other people’s work, and runs the rota, meetings, prayer wall, enquiries and members list. Not the team, settings, records or money.
- Post Author — Writes and publishes their own posts, and cannot touch anybody else’s.
- Contributor — Writes posts as drafts, which wait for an editor or owner to publish them.
- Treasurer — Runs online giving and the bank account gifts settle into, and nothing else.
- Subscriber — No access to the dashboard.
A diocesan communications officer is almost always an editor. Reserve owner for the people who should be able to change who else has the keys.
Everything anyone does is written to the page's own activity log, which an owner can read.