Check out our new look website, complete with Online Shop! All our own work – both the website and the products in the Shop. www.dominicannuns.ie

In late February we discovered a Website creation software programme (Incomedia Website X5 Evo) that seemed to be just what we needed to work on our website. We had for some time thought that we needed to ‘freshen-up’ our website (and we wanted to add an Online Shop) so this seemed ‘God-sent’. By the end of February we had decided on the colour scheme and general layout (the ‘theme’ of the site). Then along came COVID-19 and distracted us all.

By the end of March, however, when it had become clear that the COVID-19 crisis was not going to be cleared up anytime soon, but was going to be with us for a long time, the creation of a new website, which incorporated an online shop, became much more important. Since a number of our sisters are elderly and vulnerable we have had to close the Monastery and Chapel to the public. This meant that people were no longer coming up to our Chapel to pray and calling in to Reception to order Prayer Enrolment Cards or buy some of our cards, candles and craftwork.  In addition we needed to close our retreat house – thus removing a significant source of our income. It now became vital to have the ability to accept Donations, requests for Prayer Enrolment Cards, and orders for cards, candles etc Online as a replacement source of income. So we went back to work on the website.

It took a lot of time (a little over 2 months) to complete because we had to discover how to get the effect/result that we wanted for various items and we kept discovering that we needed more photos (of the Community and our various shop products). Our I.T. sister quite enjoyed working things out, with some help from the Lord in the form of moments of inspiration (out of the blue) during her Adoration – “That’s how we could make such-and-such work/happen!”. After a few rather poor (and unusable) photos however she realised that she had better delegate the photo taking to another sister and she became a ‘Director’ instead – “I need a photo of a Sister studying in the library … and one of someone taking a book off the shelves”, “That kitchen photo we have doesn’t work, can you get another one?”, “We’ve no photos from the ‘quilling’ class, can you take some?”, etc.

It’s finally finished and we’re very pleased with it. If you have any problems with links or anything let us know, but we think that we checked everything.

Dominican Nuns

Monastery of St Catherine of Siena

The Twenties, Drogheda

A92 KR84

www.dominicannuns.ie