Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

There is no requirement for Sections to have a website. However, if your Section wants a website, they must use the national hosting service.

If your Section wants to have a website – Yes – Convert your existing site by Sept 30, 2022. Section websites currently hosted by the Central or Western Regions will be migrated during this conversion period.

No – You will be provided a domain name that complies with the naming convention of the OA. Save your money and spend it on your conclave instead! Domain names will be in the format of sectionx.oa-bsa.org (e.g., sectione1.oa-bsa.org or sectiong1.oa-bsa.org). This is being done for consistency and to prevent sites from having their registration lapse resulting in domain loss and misuse.

Sections can change all content and some limited styling. Our system has been designed to unify the design of all our section websites and remove as many technical barriers as possible by removing the need for Sections to manage their own site’s infrastructure.

Anyone that the Section wants to administer the website can be added as long as they are 13 years old and a registered member of Scouting America. Sections will be able to add or remove users from their websites. Additionally, we require that any website administrator read and agree to abide by the National terms and conditions, as well as the additional terms for this service. https://sectionweb.oa-bsa.org/additional-terms-and-conditions/

There is no cost to Sections. This service is 100% free. National OA Technology Services for Sections include a WordPress website running the Nationally approved theme and a subdomain, email forwarders, Google Drive, and/or Slack. Sections can request any or all of the desired services by contacting the National OA Technology Sub-Committee.

The amount of time required for the conversion will be dependent on how your site is set up. Thus, we can not give a definitive answer to this question. All sections currently using a WordPress hosted website will be able to import their current website data. Non-WordPress websites may not have this ability and may need to be migrated in a more manual way.

Generally, a Section will need to devote time to planning the layout of their website and moving their imported content around to better fit their needs. All of this can be done in easy-to-use menus. The length of time this will take is dependent on how much content there is and how much editing a Section wants to do.

Maybe – We already have selected an arrangement of plugins that we encourage Sections to utilize. If there is a plugin that a Section wants to be added, they should submit it to the National OA Technology Sub-Committee for review. This review will include technical, security, and legal reviews of the plugin. If approved, the plugin will be installed for all sites.

We will not be providing any sort of e-commerce support though the section web hosting platform. If a section wishes to operate an e-commerce store or accept payments of any kind, this will need to be done through a third party service such as Square.

Section website can not be directly used for event registration. With that said national encourages all Section to use the National Order of the Arrow Event Registration System (NOAERS) for all Section events.

The sites are hosted on cloud servers controlled and administered by the National OA Technology Sub-Committee. WordPress Multisite is being used to host the websites. A Nationally approved theme and plugins are installed for all sites.