Case study
A new website for the Australian Islamic Centre in Newport, with prayer times on every page and a studio the centre's staff run themselves.
The challenge
The Australian Islamic Centre in Newport is a working mosque, a home for classes and programs, and a landmark building by Glenn Murcutt and Hakan Elevli. Its old WordPress site ran on a stack of plugins: one for prayer times, a web shop for donations, a slider and a form builder.
The centre needed one site its own staff could keep current, built around what people come for: when to pray, what's on, and how to give.
Prayer times on every page
The next prayer and a countdown sit at the foot of every page. Open it and the day's adhan and iqamah times appear, with both Jumu'ah services, the Hijri date and any other day a tap away. Adhan times follow Melbourne's calendar, daylight saving included. Staff set the iqamah, Jumu'ah, Taraweeh and Eid times in the studio.
Run by the centre
A content studio is built into the site. Staff publish events, programs, announcements and giving campaigns without waiting on a developer. An event can be tied to a prayer, so a class after Maghrib shows the right time every evening of the year. On Fridays, a banner appears while the khutbah is streaming live.
A building worth the visit
The centre is a destination in its own right, with 96 coloured lanterns lighting the prayer hall from the roof. The architecture has its own page, and a visit can be booked from the home page.
The result
The new site went live in March 2026, in the last week of Ramadan. Prayer settings, events and campaigns are now the centre's to change, and giving runs through FundraiseUp, the centre's own platform, set into the donate page.
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