Welcome to this totally new version of the American Jujitsu Association (AJA) website. It has been rebuilt from the ground up, wrapped around a series of databases: Dojos, Blackbelts, Members.
This new site is powerfully interactive and dynamic: you can pay yourself for your annual AJA membership renewal if you are a student or a Sensei. As a Sensei, you can also collect money and pay for your students’ AJA memberships yourself – or easily set up their membership online, then send a PayPal link to the students to pay for it themselves. You can even continue to send in checks via regular mail. That choice is yours. As each year rolls around to January 1st, the Registered AJA Members will disappear from the member database, and reappear as not-yet-paid-for members… However, all the previous information will already be there, so you (or they) can easily renew AJA memberships for the new year using these PayPal links.
Each Sensei now can change or update her/his Dojo information if they choose. Senseis now can have their own login areas (just ask the Webmaster to set this up if you want it). Here Senseis can add or subtract students, and edit their students’ and their Dojo information. This includes control of your Sensei contact information, your Dojo address, student lists, ranks, and promotions – you won’t have to request someone to do this for you anymore (but we can if you want). Senseis can now order rank certificates for their students online – no more paper, stamps, or envelopes! As a Sensei, you can collect money and pay for all of these yourself – or send a PayPal link to the students to pay for these themselves. Postage stamps are a thing of the past – unless you choose to send requests and checks the old way. The point is, you can make that choice now.
I said this new website is dynamic. You can now also comment about a martial topic of interest to you on this website, and exchanged news and ideas with your fellow Jujitsukas. You can announce events, tournaments, and even results. That’s because there is now an events section built in, and also a blog component, content subject only to review for language by the Webmaster.
A quick summary: Senseis now have the options to have their students pay themselves for their registration and certificates, or the Senseis can collect payments and pay the fees themselves. If the Sensei wishes to have his students register and pay for their annual AJA membership (with the insurance coverage this entails), they can create the membership themselves for each student, and send a PayPal link directly to the student to pay. The Sensei can also send in checks by mail. ALL THREE options are available to the Sensei.
For both Senseis and students, we have some initial videos lined up, and these will be constantly expanded. We encourage you to post videos on YouTube, and we will link to them right on the front page of this new website.
As I said, this new website is designed to be very dynamic, and we hope both students and Senseis will find it fun and useful, and spend time on it on a weekly basis.
We hope you will enjoy all the improvements!
Jeff Wynn, AJA Webmaster