To enable Network Committee members to view and download documents relating to Committee meetings the following links provide access to the relevant documents prepared for each meeting:

June 2022 at North Lakes

Next Meeting

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The Queensland Government has published a guide to starting and operating an incorporated association in Queensland. This publication aims to provide incorporated association administrators with a general understanding of their responsibilities in running an incorporated association in Queensland. Although comprehensive in its descriptions of good management practices and governance it is not a comprehensive statement of the law.

The guide does however provide a valuable insight into the requirements of associations in managing their affairs.

Download a copy of the Incorporated Associations  Smart Business Guide

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The U3A Network Constitution is an important document. The constitution of an incorporated association such as the Network is a contract between the association and its members, who agree to adhere to the provisions outlined in the constitution.

Every incorporated association must have a constitution, and it needs to cover the following requirements:

Membership qualifications: The requirements, if any, to become a member.
Register of members: The register of the association’s members.
Fees and subscriptions: Any entrance fees, subscriptions and other amounts, if any, to be paid by the members.
Members liabilities: A member’s liability, if any, towards the debts and liabilities of the association.
Disciplining members: The procedure for disciplining members, including an appeals process.
Internal disputes: The procedure for the resolution of disputes between members and between members and the association.
Committee: The composition, functions and processes of the committee, including the calling of general meetings, the procedure for calling and holding a general meeting, and the interval between meetings.
Notice of general meetings: The process for notifying members of a general meeting and notices of motion.
Procedure at general meetings: The quorum, procedure and requirements for conducting a general meeting, and whether members are entitled to vote by proxy.
Sources of funds: The sources of the association’s income.
Management of funds: How the association’s funds are to be managed and the procedure for drawing and signing cheques on behalf of the association.
Custody of books, etc: Who is responsible for the association’s books, documents and securities.
Inspection of books: The procedures for the inspection of books and documents by members.
Winding up: The winding up of the association.

There are additional elements to the constitution of incorporated associations.

Please view/download a copy of the U3A Network Constitution here

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Having your own website is great for communicating with members and visitors which is exactly its purpose. As you will well know, operating a U3A require a lot more work in regard to the management and processes in order to get things done such as putting members into actual classes and letting them know the dates and times.

These processes including the administration can only be done in a limited way with Weebly as it is not a U3A class management system. The good news is that it is possible to connect your U3A website built in Weebly to a purpose built administration system for U3A.

It should be noted that to undertake the journey of U3A business process or adminstration automation takes quite some effort in planning and understanding how volunteers and members will interact with the technical solutions.

Build some of the business management in Weebly

As explained previously, Weebly is primarily a website building tool but does have a few features that can be utilised to start the journey of automating some of the business process through the website.

Some of the Weebly features that you may consider using include:

Creation of forms in your website for members to complete and submit online. These forms could be the replacement of the existing paper versions for membership application or renewal, selection of classes, general visitor or member enquiries just to name a few.

Web pages that only members can see can be created which allow only paid members to renew their membership, select classes to enrol, change their personal details or for tutors to see their class lists.

Weebly includes the feature for an online store which can be used to pay for items such as new and renewing memberships, special events and lunches or even paying for a course of classes if there is a fee attached. This store can be set to not oversell any classes or events and provides the convenience to members to be able to purchase from home using various means of payment such as debit card, credit card, PayPal. The Weebly store also allows the event or class to be set at no charge, so it is essentially just managing the enrolment quota.

Purchase or subscribe to a business management product

Rather than use the Weebly features described above you may consider connecting your website to a complete administration system built for U3As or general education providers such as schools which have a similar mode of operation with staff, teachers and students.

Complete administration systems for schools are constantly being developed and generally speaking are quite expensive and the evaluation of each of these is outside the scope of this U3A website kit.

There is one product called MyU3A which can link into your Weebly website and is a complete administration system for U3As developed in Australia and is very reasonably priced. MyU3a has in excess of 20,000 users and is expanding rapidly in all states including Queensland.

MyU3A focusses on the management of:

• Courses
• Classes
• Enrolments – online and offline
• Venues, venue keys issued, cost/performance analysis
• Scheduling
• Timetabling
• Rolls Attendance and class performance
• Membership joining and renewals – online and offline
• Volunteers
• Committees and sub-committees​

If you would like to learn more about MyU3A go to their website here.

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Online Store

The first goal of your U3A website should be to get it up and running with visitors and members using it to see information such as membership, enrolment and classes on offer. As explained in the beyond basics section, the use of online forms allows members to complete class applications or membership applications from their home without the need to post or deliver completed paper forms to the office.

At this stage any payment for membership or classes still needs to be arranged as well as any manual checking processes regarding class quotas; that there are not too many members enrolled in one particular class.

This is where the next step can be taken with Weebly and your U3A website to include a store where membership and classes can be purchased online and controlled in regard to the quantity sold. Receipts are sent immediately, and payments are sent to the U3A electronically.

Note that the extensive and up to date details on setting up a store in Weebly can be found in the ecommerce help section.

The remainder of this section is a high-level overview of what a typical U3A online store could be in Weebly and what is needed to set one up, which is quite straight forward.

U3A Store Details

Setting up a store in Weebly is very straight forward and basically requires just your general U3A business details. All this is done through your Weebly main control page that you see when you log in.

Payments Setup

In order to receive payments electronically an account with a payment platform is required and in the example below stripe was chosen. This allows members or potential members to securely use debit cards, credit cards with options to use Apple Pay, Android Pay or PayPal. As indicated, there are different charges for each of the payment methods.

These charges were accurate at the time of developing the kit but should be checked at the time you are considering the possibility of a store.

Membership Examples in the Store

The store you create for U3A will consist of items that can be sold to members or potential members. The items have a name along with a picture, the price as well as a stock which is effectively a limit on the number that can be sold.

As you will see below the cost can be set to $0.00 for items that are free which can be events or special classes, or even all classes if that is the particular business model of your U3A.

​In the example there are 4 different types of membership that are available and again there is no limit on the number of types that can be offered to align with your business model of your U3A.

Class Examples in the Store

After memberships, classes would be the next item that could be sold to members in the members only area as explained in the beyond basics section. As you can see below each class can have its own price and also a limit that can be sold, referred to as stock. The stock limit ensures that you do not oversell a class, and the great thing is that Weebly is keeping count for you as the purchases are made so you can always see how many places remain avaialble.

If your U3A business model has free classes then the price can be simply set to $0.00 and the stock number would be set to the maximum class size. Weebly will manage the selling of free items, that is zero dollars at no charge to the member or the U3A.

Store Purchases

Examples

As items are sold, they appear in the Orders screen showing which member has purchased what item, the date and time of purchase along with the price they paid. This information can then be entered into a membership system if a membership was purchased, or class lists if a class was purchased. The membership system and classroom class list system is not part of Weebly.

​A fully integrated U3A management sytem is discussed further in the Business Management section of this U3A Website Kit.

Purchase Confirmation Emails

All purchases from the store generate an email confirmation / receipt to the member purchasing the item as well to a specified U3A staff, usually the treasurer, class co-ordinator or membership manager.

Refunds

Subject to your U3A business rules, should a paid class be cancelled, or a member advises that they cannot attend a class, then a refund is easily able to be applied through the payment platform which in this example is stripe.

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Tell everyone your website is here and to check it out!

Once your U3A website is built it will take Google and other search engines up to a month to find and show it when people type searches such as “activities or classes in myowntown”. People who know your website address can go there immediately which is why it’s important to tell everyone once your website is published and what the website address is!

• Here are some suggestions that you may wish to undertake.
• Tell organisations before your launch date
• ​Inform U3A Network Queensland, U3A Online and any other organisations within your area that you have a new website.
• Local libraries, community centres, and even some doctors surgeries may be willing to put up an advertisement for you even if it is just an A4 sheet or a poster to pin on a noticeboard.

Train your members and volunteer staff

The website will be new to your members and volunteer staff so training them to look for information here is essential. This is even more important as the world is moving towards the internet and digital way of providing information, rather than the paper way we have been used to for so many years.

Volunteer staff may need to be shown what information is on each of the web pages and explained when it is updated, such as when classes are advertised for the next term. Most U3A websites have a contact us page with an online contact form and it would be good for all volunteer staff and members to be familiar with using this.

You can have separate training sessions for members if this is appropriate, or you can have your tutors or volunteers staff do a small introduction on the website at the beginning of classes.

Produce posters and advertise

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Time to Design and Build your Website

With the good preparation you have done in the get ready part of the website kit you should now be in a position to start to design and build your U3A website. This is very much a creative process and the website you desgin and build will be unique for your own U3A.

​As mentioned in the start of the website kit the website building tool that will be used is a product called Weebly. There are many other website building tools that are just as popular or even more popular than Weebly, but the one thing that Weebly usually comes out best with is ease of use. So regardless of your prior technical knowledge or skill, you can use Weebly to set up your U3A website.

Weebly is not an application that is installed on your computer, it is used through your internet browser such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox or just about any other that you use. It also does not matter if you are using an Apple computer, Windows computer, a Desktop or laptop. Any computer will be fine although you may find that the larger the screen the easier it is to move objects around and adjust photos.

Whilst it is possible to do, it is not recommended to build your website using a tablet such as an iPad.

It should also be noted that Weebly allows you to design and build a website for free and never pay a cent. However, by paying an annual fee for the hosting of the website there are many advantages which will be explained in detail later.

So let’s get started and by the time you have been through the following 6 steps you will have your website up and running for the whole world to see.

Step 1 – Sign Up for a Weebly Account

You will firstly need to go to the Weebly site which is weebly.com.au to create your U3A Weebly account which will need an email address and password. As mentioned in the get ready section, using a personal email is not a good idea so we always suggest to use a business email.

When you go to weebly.com.au your screen should look similar to that below and you will need to click on the blue button Create Your Website.

You will then need to enter the relevant details with your name,  email address and creating a new password for your weebly account. Select Australia as the country, then click Sign up for free.

Next you will be presented with a screen with 2 options for the kind of website you wish to create.

Click I want a personal website.

An online store can be added later should you want to sell anything online like membership. However, we recommend MyU3A as the Business Administration application for a U3A. More on that later.

Step 2 – Select a Theme

After your Weebly account is created you are asked to select a theme for the website you are going to create. A theme is like a template where alot of the design work has been done for you and so you only need to make changes by adding pieces and removing pieces. If there were no templates to choose from everyone would need to build a website from scratch like a blank sheet of paper.

It should be noted at this point that you should not worry too much about the theme you select as this can easily be changed later, as many times as you like.

Some point of difference in the themes incude the position of the menu whether it is on the top or side, some look clean and simple whilst others look busy, some have more white space for easy to read texts whilst others have the texts over the pitcures.

As you will see, there are many themes to choose from so take your time to look around or just choose by clicking the one that will be used in this kit which is the “wag&paws’ which has a dog on the front.

Once you click on a theme you will be taken to the Theme Preview screen where you can click on the different pages and if you are unhappy with it then press the X in the top left corner, or if you wish to use this as your theme to start with you click the blue button Start Editing.

Step 3 – Choose your website domain

​Once you have picked a Theme, you will see a screen that want you to select your domain name. The domain name is that actual unique address of your website and often this is the name of your U3A in this situation. For example, myownu3a then press Search. Weebly will search if the domain is available for you to use.

After Weebly checks your domain name it will make some suggestions that you can use. The first group of suggestions are using a professional domain which you have to pay for or have already paid for. The subdomain option of using a free weebly.com will be given to you which we will choose for the moment.

Once you have chosen the subdomain, in this example, myownu3a.weebly.com it will be set up for you and a Subdomain setup complete screen will be shown.

You have now finished all the setup and it is time to start to have fun with editing your website.

Step 4 – Design your Website in the Weebly Editor

The Weebly website editor is the place where you design and build your U3A website by adding in the texts, pictures, maps and forms that you have been planning in the get ready stage. This is where your website will come to life and where you will probably spend most of your time maintaining your U3A website over the years to come.

​The following video has been produced by Weebly as a beginner’s guide and is worth watching as it provides you with a live demonstration on how to actually use the editor as well as an overview of the different tabs. If you prefer you can skip over the video and continue on.

View Beginner’s Guide Video

Homepage

When you start editing, you will automatically be taken to the homepage of your website, and in our case here in this website kit we selected “wag&paws’ which has a dog on the front. As mentioned earlier, building a website on Weebly is incredibly easy. On the left side of your screen, you will see a whole panel, full of options to edit and design your website.

These are basic Weebly elements, such as adding titles, text boxes, images, etc. Moreover, you’ll also find more advanced elements as well, such as adding products for eCommerce, Youtube media, social media icons, and so on.
​
Using the ‘Element Menu’, on the left hand side, simply drag and drop your chosen media icon anywhere on the page. You can throw text, videos, buttons, and more anywhere you like. Furthermore, any icons that have a lightning bolt on them means you need to upgrade to a paid version to use them.

Editing Text Boxes

​Weebly is a ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) website builder. This means you can click and edit, as well as drag and drop media, without needing to know any code. So to update the text, simply click the box and type.

Deleting Elements

​When you wish to delete an element, simply click on the element, and look for the small blue cross that appears in the top right corner of the editing box. Click on that cross, the box will turn red, and you’ll have the option to delete that element.

Changing the Layout and Colour

If you don’t like the background image, you can click on it and you’ll get several options on how you can change it. Similarly, you can also change the color scheme of the theme from the ‘Theme’ tab on the top of your screen.

Making New Pages and Deleting Old Ones

​Also, on the top of the screen, you’ll see some other tabs as well, along with the ‘Theme’. One of these is the ‘Pages’ tab. From here, you can add pages to your website. When you click on this tab, you’ll further get more options on what type of page and header type you want to add.

Besides that, if you’re not feeling great with some page, you can even delete it. Simply click on the page you don’t like, and select delete from the navigation menu.

Step 5 – Settings including SEO – Search Engine Optimisation

​Before we publish your U3A website there are some settings that we need to point out to be aware of and some you need to change. To get to the website settings you need to press the Settings tab and then you will see the setting categories on the left hand side. Let’s go through these now.

General

Site Address is your U3A website address which up to now is still the free one such as myownu3a.weebly.com. This can be changed to a domain you have purchased elsewhere or purchased in Weebly, but more on this when we discuss upgrading to a paid Weebly plan.

Site Title should be the title you wish to give your website such as “MyTown U3A”. Make sure you change the default which is “My site”.

Site Category should be left as Business. There are other categories but none would be relevant to any U3A.

SSL should be enabled by default so nothing to do here.

Favicon is the little symbol some Internet browers show in the Tab, and this defaults to W for Weebly until upgraded to a paid Weebly plan.

Site Password is a feature which only allows people on the Internet to see your website if they know a password. This should be left blank for your U3A website.

Navigation has a tick box for when you have too many web pages to be displayed in your menu so a tick will make the excess pages group under a More heading. Leave this ticked but if you have 6 web pages or less you should not be impacted by this.

Archive – should not be available until you publish your website and is used as a way to save you Weebly files. You will not need to archive you website in the normal course of events.

Site Formatting should be set to:

Date Format :DD/MM/YYY
Time Format: 12 or 24 hour
Time Zone: Brisbane
Site Language: English

Cookie Notification can be left as default as seen above.
Authorize Adsense can be left as default.
Un-publish allows you to remove you website from the Internet immediately. After you publish your U3A website for the first time a button will appear here so that you can unpublish your website. Normally this would not be done unless you really wanted to remove your website.

SEO Optimisation

To enter the details for the search engine optimisation you must click SEO on the left hand side.

Site Description will be the line that is displayed in the Google search for people looking for your website. This is usually one or two short sentences just to gain attention and hopefully then a click to go to your U3A website.

Meta Keywords help google match search words that people type in order to find your U3A website. Some suggestions have been included here with the mandatory ones being your U3A name, town or city, as well as some or all of the classes you hold. All of these are brief key words separated by a comma.

Footer Code and Header Code should be left blank here for the moment but are explained in more detail in the beyond basics section of this website kit.

Hide site from search engines can be turned on if you wish your website not to appear in Google searches, This could be turned on when you develop and build your website but most people will just leave this turned off.

Editors, Members, My Apps and Blog
These are explained in the beyond basics section of the website kit.​

Step 6 – Publish your Website

​Congratulations on getting this far, you are done setting up your website and all that’s left to do is publish it. Remember that you will always be able to come back and make changes and republish your website, even if it is in 5 minutes time.

When you publish your website it goes live for the world to see!

To publish your website, go back to the Weebly Editor and go to the Pages tab. In the top-right corner of your screen, you’ll see a bright blue button with the words ‘Publish’. When you click on this, Weebly will start publishing your website, and you’ll see a pop-up confirming it when it’s done.

So now if you go to your internet browser such as chrome and type in the address of the website you have just published you will be able to see it. The free website address we have used here is the from weebly which is myownu3a.weebly.com.

Most U3As and other businesses will choose to use a website address also called a domain that they have purchased rather than keep with the free one from weebly which has the weebly.com in the name. This is explained in detail in the beyond basics section of this U3A website kit.

So well done, you now have your own U3A website on the internet. When you take a look at your website you may choose to make some changes, this is quite normal. Also over time, classes, events, newsletters will all change and need to be added and taken off, so really the website is never really finished and must always be looked after by the webmaster.

To make changes you simply go back into the Weebly editor and go to the pages you would like to change, make the changes and then press the publish button again.

Remember you will need to tell everyone about your website and details about this can be found in the ‘Tell Everyone about your New Website’ Section.

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This section of the U3A website kit is aimed at helping you do more of the advanced items that you need to do to get your website published on your own domain, finished off with some of the extra things like changing the footer and favicon as well as entering in as much as you can for the search engine optimisation.

There is also some information on how to change the size of images so they load onto your website quickly, check that your website looks good on mobile devices and a brief explanation on setting up members if you wish to have web pages that only members can see.
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Choose and purchase your own domain

​Your domain is effectively the name of your website on the internet and it is important to find a domain name that your members and visitors will be able to identify. Take a look at the domain names currently used by Queensland U3As to get some ideas, but as you will see the domain name will usually include U3A, the area it operates within and then at the end .com, .com.au or .org.au. A simple and easy to remember example of the domain name would be something like U3AMyTown.com
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Queensland member U3A

​Once you have an idea of your domain name you will need to check that it is available meaning that someone else has not already purchased it. At this point is should be noted that the domain names are actually not purchased outright, but more akin to being rented for a period of time usually for a minimum of 1 year.

There is the option to purchase a domain name from any of the popular domain name registrars such as Netregistry or if you wish to purchase the domain name through your website hosting provider which for this U3A website kit is Weebly.

​The advantage of purchasing your domain name through Weebly is that you will have only one bill per year and that connection of your domain name to your website is all done in one place being Weebly. Weebly also provides 1 year of domain name for free when you purchase a paid website hosting plan.

The advantage of purchasing your domain name through a popular domain name registrar is usually ease of portability, to move or connect to different webhosting platforms over time without having to transfer the domain name from one registrar to another. It is possible to also shop around for a cheaper price on the domain name, but you should find you can purchase your domain name from anywhere between $10 to $20 a year.

Purchase a paid website hosting plan with Weebly

​Once you are happy with your U3A website it is time to upgrade from your free Weebly plan to a paid Weebly plan even if you only wish to only connect your domain name that you have purchased from another registrar. To look at paid Weebly plans you simply click on the orange button in the top right corner with the lightning and Upgrade.

You will then be presented with the option of 3 plans, any of which will allow you to connect your own domain name purchased from another domain registrar. The professional and Performance plans remove any Weebly brand ads on your website. The prices shown are for 12 months but there is a 24 month option once the plan is selected which is slightly cheaper. For example, the Professional plan is A$12/month billed upfront.

The features of the Professional plan would suit a U3A wishing to create their own website, with a few of the main features explained below.

As noted earlier, a free website domain is provided with the Professional plan for 1 year, but not with the Personal plan.

Two features that may also be useful in the future are website or web page passwords as well as members only areas which are available in the Professional plan but not the Personal plan. These features could be used as part of the business management and are briefly discussed in the business management section.

Finally, when you are ready to purchase the Weebly plan you should check the actual plans and prices as they may have changed from these shown here in the Website kit.

Connecting your domain in Weebly

When you are ready to connect you domain your simply go to Settings, then General and click the Change button for Site Address.

You will then be able to select connect or transfer it now to connect to a domain you have already purchased from Weebly or any domain registrar.

Changing the footer of your website

With a Weebly Professional plan you can change the footer on each of your web pages to remove the Weebly advertising as well as to add something useful such as contact times, links to your U3A Facebook account or even any copyright information. To change the weebly footer you just click inside and add elements as you have done when building the website.

Changing the favicon on your website

The favicon is the symbol or graphic that appears in the tab of your internet browser for your website. You may not have noticed this before but take a look and you will see that all the websites have the favicon.

The default Weebly free plan shows you that the favicon is currently W and to make a change to your logo or other graphic you must upgrade the plan.
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With the Weebly Professional plan you can change the favicon from the W which is he default for Weebly to something you prefer which could be your logo by pressing the Upload button. If you wish to remove the logo the Remove button should be pressed.

Changing the size of your photos and images

Photos can be taken today at resolutions of 10 megapixels or more with the latest cameras and smartphones. This high quality is needed when printing or displaying on large monitors and TVs but comes at a cost of time to display. With many members and visitors likely using a mobile device, delivering optimal image file formats & sizes is critical. Any long delays in page load times might cause your website’s members and visitors to lose interest and leave. The larger the photo size the slower it will take to appear on your web page.
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Search engines that look at all the websites take into considerations the speed to load your webpages and slow loading pictures may cause Google to eventually drop your ranking on the return results. Depending if your photo is to go across the entire screen or just take up half the screen width, a rough rule is to keep all your photos less than 300 kilobytes (300KB).

Check your website looks good on mobile devices as well as computers

When building your U3A website on your computer desktop or laptop you will need to keep in mind that many people are now using mobile devices such as iPads and smartphones. Weebly automatically builds your website for both desktop and mobile so there should be no extra work needed, but it is worth checking what the mobile site looks like just in case you want to change your website to make it look a bit better on the mobile device.

To take a look at what your website looks like on the mobile device you simply click on the small picture of the monitor and a drop-down list appears. You then click mobile and Weebly will show how your website will look on a mobile device.

You can make changes to your site in either the desktop view or the mobile view, and then flip to the other view to check it is acceptable there.

There are many photo editing software products available to change the size of any photo and most computers have a basic capability to change the size of photos. Explaining how to edit your photos is beyond the scope of the Website kit but to do basic resizing there are good instructions on the wikiHow website which can be seen by clicking on the following image.

Members only area

Weebly provides a feature where you can give members the ability to log in to their own area to see members only web pages. This has been used in some U3As for members only to nominate and enrol into classes through the website which obviously is restricted to paid members only and not the general public.

Members use their email address to log in as well as a password which they set themselves.

Membership management is done through Settings > Members.

Members can be added manually by the webmaster one at a time or as a bulk upload through a CSV file. Once this is done, members will receive an email from Weebly inviting them to log in to members area only by clicking a registration link.​

Weebly allows you to create Groups, which can have members assigned to them so that they all share the same permissions and level of access. In this way you do not need to manually manage all of your users and can instead have them gain the permissions provided to the group as a whole.

Advanced Search Engine Optimisation

In order to have search engines such as Google find your website and understand it better so your website ranking can possibly increase making it appear higher in searches, a few simple things can be done in Weebly.

One of the first steps to take is filling out the Description and Keywords both for your entire site and the individual pages that make up your site. Description and Keywords for your entire site can be found under Settings > SEO.

The Description field is the more important of the two as it’s what Search Engines actually display as the description for your site in their own results.

For the Keywords field, you’ll want to use around 10 to 30 words that match your content, and the types of searches people may do to find that content.

Ae sure to Publish your site after you’ve added Descriptions and Keywords, as they will not have any effect on your live site until you click the Publish button.

Check your U3A website traffic

Once your U3A website is up and running you can check how much traffic it is getting over time. This can be useful in determining if more training and advertising for members is required. Furthermore you can see which pages are the most popular in the Site Activity section. This could provide you with valuable feedback as you may have a gallery page or newsletter page and find out how often it is checked.

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