Website

Website Committee Minutes

Regular Meeting and Contact

Second Sunday 1300 ET Zoom
Meeting ID: 152 337 713

website@greysheet.org

Purpose

The Website Committee manages one of the four core functions to accomplish the Vision for World Service: “Whenever anyone, anywhere realizes they have a problem with food, they think of GreySheet.”

The committee is responsible for ensuring that our website, greysheet.org, is one of the first results when someone searches online for a solution to their problem with food, that the website provides answers to frequently asked questions, and that the site makes it easy for newcomers to get started in our program. In addition to these three ways our site directly serves our primary purpose, the website also provides resources for individuals, groups, and intergroups to support their own abstinence and to carry the message.

The chair of the Website Committee acts as Website Liaison, coordinating between the fellowship and the website professional. Requests for new website features and reports of problems with the site go to the Website Liaison liaison@greysheet.org.

The Webservant updates other information on the website at the request of members of the fellowship. If you would like an event listed, contact webservant@greysheet.org.

Requests for group registration and meeting updates should go to registrar@greysheet.org in accordance with the new policy on group registration.

Report

Update

Since our last report, submitted in March 2019, the 2019 World Service Conference approved both of our proposals:

• To make us a stand-alone committee rather than a subcommittee of the Communication Committee
• To hire a professional to create a basic GreySheeters Anonymous World Services Style Guide and a basic set of templates

After the GSA World Service Conference in 2019, the committee onboarded new members and volunteers and divided our initial efforts as follows:

• Coordinating with the Board of Trustees and other committees to create a list of templates and logos needed for the new style guide
• Coordinating with the Board of Trustees and other committees to develop policies and processes that the 2019 committee had identified as affecting the website (e.g. group registration)
• Creating a visual map of the structure of the new website, with additional input from the Board of Trustees, Committee Chairs, and ISRs, as well as committee members and volunteers
• Working with our paid web professional to create a development website, purchase, install, and configure necessary extensions to the content management system, and create a preliminary page structure in preparation for adding content
• Setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console on the existing website. These free tools allow us to see who visits the greysheet.org website, where they come from, which pages they visit most, and what search terms they use to find us and on the website itself. This information is important to developing a hierarchy of

As we moved into 2020, we began to focus on designing and building the new website to better serve the newcomer and the fellowship. This involved working with our website professional, the Board of Trustees, the eight other conference committees, and, more recently, with the ten intergroups. The aim was to launch the new site by the end of 2020. Our Project Manager has continued to work closely with the Committee Chairs and ISRs to review existing content and create new content.

The events of 2020 required the Website Committee to put more attention than we expected on the existing website, including the addition of some features that were meant to be introduced on the new site.

• Working with the Structure Committee and Board of Trustees to develop a new process to register GSA groups and build that into an online registration form
• Adding dozens of new Zoom meetings to our video meeting page as groups became unable to meet in person. At the time of this writing, the committee is working on implementing a more user-friendly way to search and display these meeting listings in a calendar format that will also be used for in-person meetings on the new
• More frequent updates to material on the home page in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for GSAWS to respond to it
• Publishing more documents to create greater transparency about the working of GSAWS, such as minutes from past GSA World Service conferences and minutes or notes from ongoing ISR & Committee Chair meetings, Twelve Concepts and Twelve Traditions meetings, Board Town Halls, and Committees Connecting meetings. Most of these are available at greysheet.org/world-services or on the WSC 2020 page.
• Changing, updating, and removing event information as in-person events were canceled and adding numerous online events hosted by different groups and intergroups
• Ongoing publishing of routine updates such as financial reports and new and revised literature
• Publishing new policies as they have been created, such as the Board’s process for ordering Grey Sheets
• Collecting a variety of video meeting formats and guidelines to be able to help groups transition from in-person to online meeting

The $5,000 approved by the Board of Trustees in 2019 for the website redesign addresses only the most critical concerns of the fellowship about the existing site. The new site will include:

• Integrated design that is more aligned with our structure and our functions making information easier to find
• Meeting calendar that combines all types of meetings and allows groups to submit their meetings directly on the site. Submissions can be approved by World Service trusted servants and published without needing technical
• Event calendar for GSA events

• Expanded blog function that includes not only Service Matters but member stories and other current information, and automated email newsletter creation from the blog
• Document management software with versioning so that all PDF documents can be stored centrally and displayed in multiple places, ensuring that there are no duplicates and they are up to date everywhere
• Seventh Tradition donation function
• A basic E-Commerce function for ordering literature to replace the PayPal buttons

Plans

During 2020-2021, we plan to launch the newly designed group registration process and meeting list on the current site. We also hope to finish transferring existing content to the new website, add new content, and launch the new site. We plan to request that the Board of Trustees approve the $2500 quote for next set of most important improvements:

• Upgrade the following functions to allow direct submission of the item on the site, approval by World Service trusted servants, and publication without technical skills:
• Event calendar
  • Members’ stories
  • US and International Area Contacts
• An integrated, central way to manage person-related information, such as
  • Public contacts
  • Starter sponsors
  • Registered GSRs and ISRs who receive conference-related information
  • Committee chairs, group officers, and other trusted servants who are permitted to add and edit information about the groups they represent and the meetings and events they create
  • The member-only GSA phone list
  • Subscribers to Service Matters and other email newsletters

We plan to request a quote from our website professional to address the third set of improvements, work with the Board of Trustees to fund these, and manage that work.

We have postponed the professionally designed Style Guide and the Board of Trustees has published an Interim Style Guide and MS Word Template on the website.