New Website for Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine is a meditation garden and spiritual oasis located near Santa Monica, California.  The Lake Shrine is home to a Gandhi World Peace Memorial, a shrine containing Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes, as well as a meditation temple, windmill chapel, houseboat, and a lake surrounded by beautiful gardens.

I started working with the Lake Shrine in early 2015 to help improve security on their old website, which was built in Joomla CMS.

Temporary Site: Moving to WordPress using a free theme helped to quickly resolve security issues.

When we started to plan the new website, our primary concerns were with the security and reliability of the web host, which had on several occasions shut down the site (without contacting the Lake Shrine administrators) because it had detected a suspicious file.

As our goals for the new website included migrating the website to WordPress, we decided that the initial step should be to move the site into a basic WordPress theme, and switch to a secure WordPress hosting provider (the new web host works to prevent and fix security issues, rather than shutting off the website).  This resolved the security concerns and improved the ease-of-use for the administration staff managing the website content.

In addition to improving security, the Lake Shrine also wanted a new design that reflected the feeling of peace that many visitors feel at the Lake Shrine grounds and Temple.  An improved navigation structure, new content to help first time visitors, and a responsive design for mobile and tablet users were also a priority.

The completed re-design has several colour schemes to reflect the different areas of the grounds and temple and also compliment the beautiful photography.  The website is set up so administrators can select one of the colour schemes as well as a custom header image for each page.

Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine – Website Re-design

The new Lake Shrine website features:

• WordPress CMS
• Secure managed WordPress hosting
• Custom WordPress theme design
• Google Analytics
• Responsive design
• Group tours reservation form
• Ceremonies form
• Custom colour schemes
• Custom header images
• Self-hosted video capabilities
• Audio player
• Multiple photo galleries displaying the different areas of the Lake Shrine
• Custom administrator access for volunteers/staff
• Newsletter sign-up forms
• Google calendars
• Google real time traffic map

Visit the new Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine website.

Client Testimonial:

“We at Lake Shrine are very pleased with the final result of our completely refreshed website.  The site achieves our objectives for both security and design.  It also sets the stage for improving our general operations by introducing useful features to make our public interface more effective.  Crystal Rothwell of Createscape guided us through a transparent and easy process which allowed full input and fulfilled the promise of complete satisfaction.  We at Lake Shrine are delighted to have a new web presentation and look forward to continuing the friendly and professional relationship with Crystal of Createscape.”  

Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

Brother Satyananda, minister