12 Step meeting list: importing meetings from a virtual region

[mrdaviddaris]

I am a member of AA/OA and webmaster for our OA virtual Intergroup. I want to change our event calendar for meetings from a top heavy and expensive plugin to 12 step meeting list (which we use in our district, thank you!) but I am having a hard time importing our meetings into the plugin in WP because virtual meetings (phone, Zoom, and other online services) do not match the columns that are required. Is there an easier way for the non-programmer to do this?

[joshreisner]

hi there, could you upload the CSV (or a sample) so we know what we're dealing with?

my guess is you probably need to form complete URLs for your Zoom meetings, and possibly add a general location and timezone, but we'll see when we can see a sample of what you're trying to import!

thanks

[mrdaviddaris]

Josh Thank you for responding and if I end up using this for the OA90.org calendar, I will drop a $50 donation for saving us $108 a year from the Time.ly Event Calendar folks. I realized that the export from our current calendar is .ics and the excel/csv files I have are from the master list of meetings one of our oldtimers maintains. I attached those and attached the ICS to boot. Whenever I try to load the csv, it tells me address is mandatory and won't allow the upload to stick. Thank you. Dave

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On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 6:16 PM Josh Reisner ***@***.***> wrote: hi there, could you upload the CSV (or a sample) so we know what we're dealing with? my guess is you probably need to form complete URLs for your Zoom meetings, and possibly add a general location and timezone, but we'll see when we can see a sample of what you're trying to import! thanks — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1866 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASH7MP3GDN75BBY5FTSSID34I75W7AVCNFSM6AAAAACTDNE5FSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKNRSGI4DKNY> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: <code4recovery/12-step-meeting-list/repo-discussions/1866/comments/15622857 @github.com>

[SIA-WEBSUP]

Could you attach the CSV ( or a good sample of meetings you are having importing ) here?

Online meetings need an 'approximate' address (e.g. City and State).
And if your meetings span multiple timezones, you'll likely want to give the metings a timezone we well.
If you don't have a location for the meeting, you could assign a generic one in the correct timezone.

[mrdaviddaris]

Sorry, I did a reply to all from my email and I guess that never made it. Here are the Time,ly ICS export, the meeting list I got from the person that collects all the data for our Integroup, and it's subsequent translation to a CSV file. Ok, I see you do not support ICS so here are the two other ones.
OA90 Phone Meeting List January 2026.csv
OA90 Phone Meeting List January 2026.xlsx

[joshreisner]

ah thanks, so there are a lot of changes you'll want to make to this!

we suggest starting with the oldtimer, and seeing if they are amenable to maintaining the meeting going forward inside of WordPress. maybe suggest they try entering one or two meetings and see if that works for them.

if it does, i think it might be simpler to go ahead and enter all the meetings fresh into wordpress, rather than trying to import, because i think it might actually take longer and be less accurate to try to massage the info in the CSV into our format

the alternative would be to have them start maintaining the list in a Google Sheet, but that is error prone and not recommended. if you do want to go that route though we can help. here is a partial list of the changes needed, but there are likely to be more:

• Time should be all in the same normalized Google Sheets time format
• there should be Names for all the meetings
• Location can be "Online Meeting" for all
• rename City to Formatted Address and put "New York, USA"
• add a Timezone column and put "America/New_York"
• don't need Sub Region
• Type should be comma-separated and only be values in the list below (eg replace "Persian" with "Farsi") and include "English" on all meetings ideally
• Phone numbers should go in a "Conference Phone" column
• Zoom ids need to be made into zoom addresses (prepend https://zoom.us/j/ and then the number with no spaces or other characters. These should go in a column called "Conference URL"

there's more, but that should get you started!

[mrdaviddaris]

Yes I was originally thinking that we should just put it all in manually as well. I appreciate you guys taking a look at this as well as the long reply.

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On Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 8:45 PM Josh Reisner ***@***.***> wrote: ah thanks, so there are a lot of changes you'll want to make to this! we suggest starting with the oldtimer, and seeing if they are amenable to maintaining the meeting going forward inside of WordPress. maybe suggest they try entering one or two meetings and see if that works for them. if it does, i think it might be simpler to go ahead and enter all the meetings fresh into wordpress, rather than trying to import, because i think it might actually take longer and be less accurate to try to massage the info in the CSV into our format the alternative would be to have them start maintaining the list in a Google Sheet, but that is error prone and not recommended. if you do want to go that route though we can help. here is a partial list of the changes needed, but there are likely to be more: - Time should be all in the same normalized Google Sheets time format - there should be Names for all the meetings - Location can be "Online Meeting" for all - rename City to Formatted Address and put "New York, USA" - add a Timezone column and put "America/New_York" - don't need Sub Region - Type should be comma-separated and only be values in the list below (eg replace "Persian" with "Farsi") and include "English" on all meetings ideally - Phone numbers should go in a "Conference Phone" column - Zoom ids need to be made into zoom addresses (prepend https://zoom.us/j/ and then the number with no spaces or other characters. These should go in a column called "Conference URL" Screenshot.2026-01-28.at.6.38.08.PM.png (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4e26aafb-0915-4ac9-8196-096945e297ec> there's more, but that should get you started! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1866 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASH7MPZDYXFYIZMYWLM6I6T4JFX4JAVCNFSM6AAAAACTDNE5FSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKNRTGUYDAOA> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: <code4recovery/12-step-meeting-list/repo-discussions/1866/comments/15635008 @github.com>