Dear Members –

As part of the TGA Committee’s ongoing work to improve and expand the benefits of membership, we determined that some changes to our website were warranted to better position us for moving into the future.  With this in mind, we engaged Net Ninjas, a local team of website experts to design and build a new website.  We are very pleased to announce that the new site is complete and ready to be moved into place.

Our new website is set to go “live” on Wednesday, April 14^th.  The work will take place from 9am to 1pm.  During that time, the website will not be available, and a “work in progress” message will display in place of our Home page while the work is completed.  By 1pm, the new site will be up and available for you to explore.

What you will need to do – Because the underlying system running our “members only” pages is completely new, when you log into the new website’s “Members Only” area, you will be prompted to change your password.  We apologize for this inconvenience, but it is a necessary step to activate the new features.

You will see a very different website design, one that has a fresh new look, is easy to navigate and flexible enough to grow with us.  Important features such as “Events”, “Shop”, “Become a Member”, and “Find a Reader/Teacher” will now be prominently displayed on the home page.  The new “Menu” button at the top right of every page will bring up an extensive menu with all website functions/pages clearly labelled, and only one click away.

One greatly improved section is the “members only” account area.  Changes include:

• A “Membership” tab where you can view your membership status and renew.
• A “My Information & Preferences” tab where you can view and update the “interests” information you provided us when you first joined TGA (information we use when selecting events, speakers, and workshops). We encourage you to have a look at that and make any adjustments you feel appropriate to where your interests lie today.  It’s a great way to influence what topics we delve into in future.
• A “Videos” tab that takes you to TGA Videos which members can view for free.
• And, for Professional Members, there is a clearly labelled tab where you can manage your advertising listing.
• Another important change is the way membership renewals will be managed. Going forward, membership renewal can be an automatic function, with “set it and forget it” convenience.  Of course, not everyone will want to use that, and it’s certainly not mandatory.  The next time your membership is up for renewal, you will be able to use the auto-renew or disable it at that time.  It’s absolutely your choice.

On behalf of the Members and the Committee I wish to extend a very sincere dept of appreciation to our amazingly dedicated Webmistress Liz Davies ably assisted by our Technology expert Cheryl Ford.  Both Liz and Cheryl have contributed an enormous amount of volunteer time and hard work to achieve this goal on our behalf.  Thanks to their work we can now go forward into the future with confidence.