Guide
How can a synagogue website keep Shabbat times current without weekly edits?
Let software compute anything the calendar decides, and reserve human edits for what the community decides. Shabbat times, parsha and holidays follow from location and date, so they can update themselves. Events, announcements and sponsorships stay with people.
Split the content into two kinds
Calendar-driven content has a correct answer that a program can derive: candle-lighting, havdalah, the weekly parsha, holidays, the Hebrew date. Community-driven content, such as events and kiddush sponsors, has no formula.
Sites go stale when the first kind is typed in by hand each week.
Three ways to automate the first kind
Pick the one that fits who maintains the site.
- Embed a times widget from a calculator service, which is quick but styled by someone else.
- Pull times from a public calendar API into your own template.
- Use a synagogue-specific platform that computes them from the shul’s coordinates and renders them natively.
Make the human edits easy
If changing an announcement needs a login and a laptop, it will not happen on a Thursday evening. Editing from a phone, or by messaging a bot, removes the friction.
A worked example: ShulMaker
ShulMaker takes the third route. Candle-lighting and havdalah are recomputed weekly from the shul’s exact location, with candle lighting 18 minutes before sunset, and parsha, holidays, the Hebrew and English calendar and yahrzeit reminders are handled by the platform.
Humans handle events and announcements, from a computer, the ShulMaker iOS app, or a WhatsApp text that returns a preview and publishes on a YES reply.
More on the example: ShulMaker.