Choir Master CMS documentation

Choir Master CMS gives a choir its public website, a private area for its members, email to those members, ticket sales and donor records, all looked after from one admin panel in your browser. This guide explains how to use every part of it.

The home page of a sample choir's website made with Choir Master CMS

Start here

There are two ways to have a Choir Master CMS site. Pick the one that is yours. If you have not decided yet, read Hosted or self-hosted? first.

We host your site

We run the site for you. You sign up, choose a web address and start adding your choir's details.

1. Start a site we host
2. Log in to the admin panel
3. Set up your site step by step
4. Add a concert
5. Add your members and email them an announcement (Starter and Premium plans)

The account itself, plans, billing and your own domain name are in Hosted service.

You run it yourself

You, or someone technical who helps your choir, install the software on your own server or your own Cloudflare account.

1. Start a site you run yourself
2. Requirements and Choose where to run it
3. Install it: Node, Docker or Cloudflare Workers
4. Configure it: the settings every site needs, then the database, file storage and email
5. Add the first admin and work through After installing
6. Your licence key and How updates work
7. What to back up

Once it is running, whoever edits the site carries on from Set up your site step by step, like everyone else.

What is in this guide

Part	Who it is for
Getting started	Everyone new to the product: choosing how to have a site, logging in, the guided setup and finding your way around the admin panel.
Your website	Whoever looks after the pages the public sees: the home page, concerts, the gallery, extra pages, colours and fonts.
Members	Whoever looks after the singers: the member list, announcements, the schedule, rehearsal tracks and shared files.
Tickets	Whoever sells tickets and runs the door on concert night.
Donors	The treasurer or fundraiser: donors, gifts, campaigns and receipts.
Hosted service	The person who holds the account for a site we host: plans, billing, your own domain name and card payments.
Self-hosting	The system administrator or developer who installs, configures, updates and backs up a site on your own server.
Reference	Anyone who wants to look something up: every setting, limit, role and plan in one place.

Not sure where something is? Try the search box at the top of every page, or the list of common questions in Where to find things in this guide.

Signs used in this guide

Most of what you read applies to every site. Where it does not, the guide marks it in one of three ways.

On a site we host

A box like this is only for sites that we host. If you run your own server, skip it.

On a self-hosted site

A box like this is only for sites that run on your own server or your own Cloudflare account. If we host your site, skip it. These boxes are often technical and may name a server setting such as SITE_URL.

A badge like this one, Premium plan, marks something that a site we host can only use on that plan. A self-hosted site has no plans and can use everything, apart from the few things that only exist on the hosted service. Plans and editions compared has the full list.

Words in bold are the exact words you will see on screen: the name of a button, a menu item or a box to fill in.

The version this guide describes

This guide describes Choir Master CMS version 1.6.12. A site we host is always on the current version. To see which version your own site is running, look at the top right of the dashboard. What's new and version history lists what changed in each version.