Website Structure
Positive Visitor Experience
- No template driven or cookie cutter websites. Our design services are completely flexible.
- "2 clicks to anywhere" ensures intuitive navigation on your website so visitors can quickly find what they're looking for within 2 clicks.
- Your website is developed using the latest and most widely used technologies so that it's fresh both in function and appearance.
- All features and services were developed from the ground up to ensure they are instantly scalable to support associations of any size.
- User friendly features for both visitors and administrators requires no technical knowledge.
Organize Your Content
Home Page
- Post important announcements, news and upcoming events.
- Homes for sale with contact information.
- Welcome new residents.
- Resident survey with real-time vote results shown after voting.
- Local weather forecast.
- Other content that fits your neighborhood's needs.
Neighborhood Information
- Commonly called "About Us."
- Post information on your neighborhood, community, schools, homes, etc.
- Show details and photos of your neighborhood's amenities.
- Include Google or Microsoft Maps for aerial views of your neighborhood.
- Include your own map of your neighborhood that shows the layout of your lots and roads.
Board Member Details
- Include officer names, contact information and other details.
- Residents can contact the board directly and/or submit messages to a single point of contact such as the property manager.
Committee Members and Special Reports
- Include committee contact information.
- Post special reports from each committee either on the committee page or create a separate page for each committee.
- Include the most important items on the home page under Neighborhood News.
Robust Contact Forms
- Utilize common "Contact Us" fill-in forms but with even more robust features.
- Instead of posting email addresses, you can choose to centralize all communication to board and committee members through the Contact Us page.
- Visitors choose the recipient type/category from a drop down and the message will be automatically emailed to the appropriate person or multiple people without revealing the email address to the resident.
- Use a drop down list by message subject to help you better organize incoming emails.
- Customize the forms to better fit your needs including layout, required fields, check boxes and more.
- If the visitor is logged into the website, common fields can be automatically populated (such as name, email, etc) on the form so they don't have to retype them in.
- Allow multiple attachments with controls for the file types and maximum file sizes accepted.
Property Manager Details
- List your property manager's contact information throughout the website.
- Direct fill in forms and other items directly to the property manager for handling.
Photos, Photos, Photos
- Have some great pictures that show off your neighborhood, residents or your green thumb? We'll create custom graphics of your photos and add them throughout your website. This goes a long way to personalize your website.
- You can also choose stock photography for your website from istockphoto.com. They have 2 million quality photos, so they're bound to have your perfect photo(s). We will purchase up to 5 photos for you at no additional cost and include them in the design of your website.
- Your personal web designer will also have suggestions for photos based on the design you choose for your website.
- If you have photos from a neighborhood event you can easily create an online slideshow for them with descriptions for each photo.
Online Forms and Documents
- An excellent way to ensure your residents always have the most current resources and information at their fingertips.
- Post bylaws, covenants, architectural review form and other important documents.
- Documents can be divided into categories on a documents page plus added to any page on your website. It's completely customizable to make sure your visitors get the documents they're looking for without the hassle.
- Save money on copies, postage and administrative time.
- Restrict documents to board and/or committee members only or any other access level(s) you designate.
- If your documents are not in Adobe pdf format you can use the Adobe pdf Creator tool to convert your documents to full color pdf on the fly.
Fill-in Forms Online
- Want to give residents a method to instantly submit information to the board or property manager? We'll create web based fill-in forms modeled after your paper forms.
- Ability to make certain fields on the form required. If the visitor is logged into the website, common fields can be automatically populated (such as name, email, etc) on the form so that they don't have to retype them in.
- Allow residents to upload multiple documents and images along with the fill-in form.
- Data is instantly emailed to the person(s) you designate.
- Integrated spam controls to help keep junk out of your mailbox.
Newsletters and Meeting Minutes
- Post your newsletters and meeting minutes online.
- No more excuses from residents that they were left out of the loop.
- Include unlimited archived editions.
- Easily convert your existing files in any format (Word, Publisher, etc) into Adobe pdf format with our pdf tool.
Crime Watch Information
- Keep your residents informed by posting your crime watch captains with contact information.
- Include a map of crime watch zones.
- Post special notices and alerts which can also be mass emailed to everybody's email addresses.
Make Money From Sponsors
- Charge realtors, landscapers, contractors and even your favorite house cleaner an annual fee to post their company information on your neighborhood website.
- We recommend $40 per year, but you choose actual price. Sponsors pay your association directly. Money is 100% profit to your neighborhood and a great source of additional revenue. As an additional incentive, we also suggest including them in your newsletters and announcements.
- New submissions can either be immediately added to the website or first require an administrator's approval. The administrator receives an email with the details of every new submission.
- The Sponsor receives an automatic email when their ad has been approved. The message can also be customized prior to sending. Future notifications can be easily emailed to the Sponsor through the website at any time.
- Sponsors can upload images and documents to be included in their ad.
- Configurable automatic expiration date based on number of days the ad has been displayed on the website. The administrator can edit and override the expiration date for individual ads.
- Expired ads are saved in an archived area so that they are easily reactivated or permanently deleted.
- Optionally create unlimited categories to further group similar ads. This can also be used to create premium sponsor listings which you can charge the sponsors additional money for more exposure.
- Private administrator's notes for each ad. This helps keep track of payment history and other comments.
Rotating Ads
- Display ad blocks on your website that have text, images and links to websites/documents. Each time the web page reloads a different random ad will display in the ad block.
- The ad block can appear anywhere on your website including on one, multiple or all website pages.
- Set an individual automatic expiration date for each ad based on number of views or a specific date.
- Statistics for each ad showing how many times it has been viewed.
- Private administrator's notes for each ad. This helps keep track of payment history and other comments.
Upcoming Events
- List your neighborhood events with descriptions, time, place, etc. on the Upcoming Events page.
- Events are automatically removed from the website 24 hours after the event.
- Include images and links to documents/websites along with each event.
- Place events on hold which temporarily hides them from the website. This makes it easier to pre-populate tentative events prior to announcing it on your website.
- Choose how many of your next upcoming events to be automatically fed to your home page. Events can either display with full event details or only the event titles with dates.
- Private administrator's notes for each event.
Helpful Articles
- Instant and informative content added to your website with articles from industry experts.
- Articles are automatically rotated so that there's something new for your visitors.
- Topics include: home improvement, family, decorating, money, health, technology, travel and real estate.
- Provides links to websites with additional information on the article topic.
Other Sites of Interest
- Offer residents additional resources by providing other websites they may find useful. This is easily customized to fit your needs including photos.
- Link to schools, utility companies, government etc.
- Include contact details and other information you choose.
Unlimited Additional Content Pages
- There's no limit on the number of pages for your website.
- Examples: Contacts, Pool Rules, Notices, Property Manager Details, Monthly Request Stats, etc.
Functionality Options
Spam Blocking at the Source
- Built-in features to help prevent spammers from finding your email address.
- Fill in web forms are specially coded to hide the recipient's email address.
- Optional image verification to make sure a human is submitting a web form.
- Web forms will not be submitted if common spam text appears in the message.
- Spam and virus filters included on each email account.
Password Protected Areas
- If you have certain pages you would like to restrict to only residents of your neighborhood, we'll set up a protected area they can log into with a username and password. Pages you choose not be password protected will be open for public viewing.
- You have full control over what pages or sections of a page are protected. If protecting a section of a page, the visitor will not see any of the text or content in the protected section unless they are logged in with the appropriate level of access.
- Ability to have unlimited levels of access to your website's pages. For example: pages for public vs members vs board officers vs the landscaping company.
- Website access can either be set up with a single login for all users or a unique login for each user.
- The "Remember Me" feature allows users to choose to be automatically logged in each time they visit the website.
- For the unique login method the person(s) you designate as the approver will be notified via email when somebody new is requesting access. The administrator's email will contain the new user's details and a "one click" link to immediately approve the user's access request without first needing to log into the Admin Panel. Or the approver can log into the Admin Panel to approve or decline the access request manually. Once approved, an email is instantly emailed to the user with their login details. The email includes their username and a randomly generated password which they can later change in their profile. You may also choose to have new users automatically approved.
- The administrator can run reports for any date range or specific users detailing when they: logged in, sent an email from the email publisher, forgot their password or modified their profile. Reports can also be exported into Excel.
Resident Profiles
- If using the unique resident login method, residents are able to create and update their own profile.
- If using the single resident login method, the administrator can either input the resident's details into the database or residents can input their own details based on a web form they submit via the website.
- To initially load your residents, ability to input their details into our Excel file which we will import into your user's database for you.
- 30 standard fields are included such as: phone numbers, employers, hobbies, children, pets, emergency contact and more.
- 10 custom fields are available to gather additional details on your residents.
- "Forgot Password" feature automatically emails the resident their login details if using the unique login method. Or resident passwords can be reset by the administrator and automatically emailed from the Admin Panel.
- Resident profiles can be created and edited by the administrator.
- Administrator can filter and export resident profile data into Excel for other uses such as mailing labels.
- Use the administrator's notes field, which is only viewable by the administrator, to store private comments on each resident.
Personalized Pages
- Have a special area on any of your pages (including your home page) that will automatically populate with any standard or custom data fields from the resident's profile when they visit the page. The page can also be customized to have whatever text and structure you need. A great example is a Dues Section that shows them the dollar amount they have outstanding and instructions for making a payment.
- You can also have any of the fields from the resident's profile you've chosen to display on the page be editable by the resident instead of view only. This can be helpful if you would like the resident to indicate their preference or fill in missing information.
Email Publisher
- Create email friendly newsletters and other announcements with our Email Publisher and mass email it to your resident's primary and secondary email addresses through the website.
- Easily control the layout such as text color/size, tables, bullets. You can also upload images or link to documents and web pages.
- Personalize each email on the fly with fields from the resident's profile. Example: "Hello Dave, don't forget our annual meeting this Wednesday."
- Preview your message to see how it will look to your residents.
- Spell check features including suggestions for misspelled words.
- Ability to save formatted messages as a template to reuse or edit in the future.
Targeted Resident Email Notifications
- Search and filter residents by up to three fields found in their profile, including custom fields.
- Use the online Email Publisher to compose your message and email it to your selected resident(s).
- The Email Publisher can also automatically personalize each email with data from any field in their profile such as the resident's name.
- Use our custom field functionality to mark certain residents (such as those with pool keys) so that you can quickly send emails to the entire group through the Email Publisher.
Resident Directory
- Your residents can submit their contact information to be included in the online Resident Directory. This requires the unique login method.
- Includes any and all fields you choose to use from the resident's profile.
- Resident Directory is searchable and can be filtered by up to 2 fields.
- Residents can update their own profile in real time and choose which information (if any) they would like shown in the directory.
- Printer friendly version includes name, address, email and phone.
- In order to avoid "empty" sections, each resident's profile page is automatically collapsed when any profile details are not filled in or hidden.
Secheduled News Articles
- Post news articles/announcements on your home page or any other page on your website. Set a start and end date for each article.
- Shows a short text version of long articles along with a "Read More" link to view the long version of the article.
- Automatic RSS feed for news articles.
- Set a start and expiration date for each news article. Expired articles are automatically archived and organized by month on the news archives page of your website.
- Include images and links to websites/documents along with each article.
- Optionally allow users to leave a comment for each article. Comments are displayed along with the article for other visitors to read. The administrator receives an email with the details of each comment posted.
File Cabinet
- Store all of your document revisions, notes, internal minutes etc in your online file cabinet.
- Create your own folders and subfolders to make items easier to find.
- Each board and/or committee member can be given access to the File Cabinet which improves organization and sharing of your association items among the members.
- Storing files online is also beneficial when board members change and historical working documents and notes don't always get transitioned to new board members.
Adobe pdf Creator
- Convert your files on the fly to Adobe pdf format from virtually any application including Word, Publisher, PowerPoint and Excel.
- Adobe is the standard for sharing documents via email and the web and installed on almost all computers. This means residents won't need to bother you because they can't view your documents.
- Perfect for documents, newsletters, meeting minutes etc.
- You are free to use the tool for both personal and association business.
- Choose additional security options for your pdf document including password to open, disable printing, disable text/graphics copying, disable commenting, disable text editing, disable page addition. Plus embed additional details such as creation date, author and description into your document.
Board Member Only Features
- Give board and committee members access to special features to help keep your association running smoothly.
- Board Organizer - Tools to store your vendor contacts, appointments, favorite bookmarks and project notes in a central location.
- File Cabinet - Upload documents to your website for online sharing with your fellow board/committee members only. Great for tracking document revisions for group projects.
- Private Message Board - Create categories and topics for online discussion or to document association matters.
- Private Chat Room - Great for group meetings when members aren't all on-site. Each person can choose their personal font and text color. Plus, private messages to other members even during group chat.
Photo Albums
- Create albums/groups to display photos of neighborhood events such as the annual barbeque or pool party.
- Thumbnail images are automatically generated for each photo. When a visitor clicks on a thumbnail they will see the full sized photo.
- Large photos are automatically resized to be "web friendly" as they are uploaded to the website. So, you can easily upload photos from your digital camera without worrying about manually resizing or file size settings.
- Optional slideshow presentation for viewing photos.
- Include descriptions for each album and individual photos which will also appear with the photo during the slideshow.
- Control which album appears first and reorder photos how you wish them to appear within each album.
- Display a random photo, from any album and on any page of your website, each time the page is viewed. Individual photos are automatically resized so they fit into the area you wish them to appear while maintaining the photo's normal width to height ratio.
- Choose to allow visitors to upload their own photos. The administrator is immediately notified via email when a new photo has been uploaded along with the person's contact information.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Help visitors find answers quick with a frequently asked questions page. Include images and links to websites/documents within each answer.
- Each question is a link that when clicked will slide open to display the answer. This helps save space on your website and allow visitors to more quickly find the answer they're looking for.
- Optionally create categories to group like items.
- Set a stop date for individual FAQ's to be automatically hidden on the website. This is great for seasonal or special event items.
- Individual FAQ's can be set to show or hide status.
- Configurable "New" and "Updated" indicators can appear next to questions. The administrator can disable or set the number of days each indicator will appear.
- Private administrator's notes for each FAQ.
Surveys
- Surveys are more than just a poll. If enabled on a survey, residents can also include a comment to further explain their vote. The administrator can edit and delete comments.
- Have one or multiple surveys/questions open for voting at one time. There's no limit on the number of surveys you have active, on hold or archived.
- Ability to have surveys located in more than one area on your website running a different group of survey questions. Perfect if you need to ask different survey questions to special groups of users which you restrict their access based on their login access level.
- Up to 10 fields are available for each survey that you define as possible responses for your survey.
- Closed surveys are archived for view only. Option to automatically archive each survey based on end date or once a specified number of votes is reached.
- Surveys can be put on hold to temporarily suspend them from resident view.
- See graphical results in real time.
- To block double voting there are two available options based on your preference. For public surveys, the voter's IP address will be logged. For private surveys, only logged in users will be able to vote and their unique user ID number will be logged.
- You can reset the votes for a survey at any time to open it up for everybody to vote again.
Official Voting
- Official Voting works in conjunction with our Surveys feature detailed above.
- Allow residents to vote online for official association matters such as rule changes and elections.
- Post unlimited questions with up to 10 available choices per question. Each question can be given an automatic end date.
- Registered users will only be allowed to cast their vote to each question once.
- The administrator will be able to export the details to Excel for documentation. The export file will contain: unique user ID, vote date and time, name, address, question and vote.
Message Board
- Message boards allow residents to share thoughts and post questions for other residents to respond.
- Posts are organized into categories and are searchable.
- Utilize categories to create more interaction between residents such as recipe exchange and vendor reviews.
- The newest topic(s) and/or newest comment(s) can be listed on any page of your website such as the home page. This helps show Message Board activity and encourage participation.
- Categories can be set for residents to both create topics and reply to topics or only for the assigned editor to create topics which residents can only reply.
- The assigned editor is automatically notified via email of new posts so that they can monitor and edit/delete inappropriate posts. Users can be banned and unbanned from posting to the Message Board.
- Editor can create new categories and move posts between categories.
- The Message Board requires the unique resident login method.
Classified Ads
- Residents can submit items and services they would like to sell. Up to 5 photos, which will be displayed as a slideshow, can also be submitted along with each ad. Large photo files will be automatically resized to be web friendly.
- Optionally allow residents to edit their own ads.
- New submissions can either be immediately added to the website or first require an administrator's approval. The administrator receives an email with the details of every new and updated classified ad.
- The resident receives an automatic email when their ad has been approved. The message can also be customized prior to sending. Future notifications can also be emailed to the resident through the website at any time.
- Configurable automatic expiration date based on number of days the ad has been displayed on the website. Residents can indicate an end date for their ad if it is not beyond the expiration date rule. The administrator can edit and override the expiration date for individual ads.
- Expired ads are saved in an archived area so that they are easily reactivated or permanently deleted.
- Optionally create unlimited categories to further group similar ads.
- A new indicator will appear next to newly submitted ads. The administrator can disable or set the number of days the indicator will appear.
- Private administrator's notes for each ad.
Collect Association Dues Online
- Receive dues/fines quicker and with less hassle by allowing your residents to pay online with a credit card or check via PayPal.
- Using the email publisher and a custom field in each resident's profile to store their dues amount, you can quickly mass email personalized invoices to each resident.
- With PayPal's recurring payments feature, monthly dues can be automatically charged to the resident's credit card each month.
- An automatic email is sent to your HOA notifying you of a new payment. A receipt is also emailed to the resident.
- PayPal keeps a historical record of who paid, how much they paid and when they paid.
- PayPal charges 30 cents plus 2.9% per transaction and no setup or monthly fees. This means more money in your budget. We do not collect an administrative fee on your collections. Check the PayPal website for current rates and details.
- If you choose to not use PayPal, we can link to your existing credit card merchant's website to handle your online payments.
Language Translation
- Visitors can easily translate the text of any page into a variety of available languages.
- Choose which languages to make available including: Chinese, Dutch, Spanish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.
User Friendly Admin Panel
Administer Your Functionality Options
- The Admin Panel is designed to be a user friendly, self-service portal for non-technical people. It uses a familiar Microsoft Windows style layout. If you're comfortable using programs such as Microsoft Word and checking email you'll find the Admin Panel very easy to use. No HTML or technical knowledge needed.
- Manage functionality options you choose for your website through the Admin Panel.
- Share admin access with your fellow board members so they can also help keep the website up-to-date and useful. You can grant unlimited users access to your website's Admin Panel.
- You can have unlimited sub-admins that are given restricted access to manage the content on specific pages and manage the functionality you specify in the Admin Panel. Each sub-admin can have their own access profile independent of other sub-admins or use sub-admin groups that share the same access profile.
Control Your Own Content
- Keep your content fresh by editing the text on your website through the Content Editor.
- The Content Editor uses a familiar Microsoft Word interface for changes such as styles, bold text, bullets and link to documents/other pages. Fill out the text box with your new content, click save and your changes are live on your website.
- Choose automatic text formatting "styles" that match your website's design for a consistent and professional look.
- Spell check features including suggestions for misspelled words.
- You can also upload, rename and delete both documents and images through the File Manager.
Ongoing Support
- Get online help by browsing our Knowledgebase or Helpful Tips that are located throughout the Admin Panel.
- Our hands-on support is always just an email or phone call away.
Managed Hosting
Your Own Domain Name
- All websites include their own unique domain name which we purchase and manage for you.
- If you already own a domain name you can either transfer it over to us or keep it with your current provider.
- Your website will be hosted directly on your domain name. We do not redirect or park your domain name back to www.ouraddress.com/yourname.
- Your primary domain name is included in the annual hosting fee. Additional domain names are $15 per year. For example, if you wanted to purchase both .com and .org, then you would only pay an additional $15 each year.
- Free private domain registration for all domain names. This hides your contact information from spammers and marketing companies.
- When you signup we will suggest some available domain names.
Private Email for Board and Committee Members
- Separate work from pleasure with your own branded email addresses such as sally@yourwebaddress.com or president@yourwebaddress.com.
- Emails can be easily accessed anywhere via the internet or through email software such as Microsoft Outlook.
- Ability to automatically forward emails to the person's regular email account and/or to multiple people.
- Create email groups such as board@yourwebaddress.com which will automatically forward all incoming emails to each board member's email address.
- Each email account gets their own online calendar, address book and ability to create folders to help organize neighborhood emails.
- 35MB of online storage space for each email account. This is separate from your website's storage space.
- Active virus and spam filters for every email account.
- Includes 20 email accounts. Additional email accounts are available if needed.
Visitor Statistics
- Shows how your website is being utilized.
- Data is displayed in tables and in graphical charts.
- Maintains and compares data from historical months.
- Tracks statistics such as: how many visitors view the website each day/month, how many pages are viewed and which areas are most popular.
Full Managed Hosting
- We take care of everything related to hosting your website.
- Both our servers and our functionality are easily scalable to support websites of any size.
- 300MB of storage space allocated for your website. If the situation arises where you need more space we can certainly accommodate your needs.
- Nightly backups of your website files, documents and database.
- Physical hosting is handled at a world class datacenter in Dallas, Texas. Datacenters are huge, secure warehouses for computer equipment. They have their own power generators, security force, air/water supply and many levels of redundancy to help ensure websites are available to the internet. Support technicians monitor the web servers 24 hours a day to ensure they're operating at peak performance.
Search Engine Submission
- Your website will be submitted to the top search engines. Plus, we will ensure they stop by for a visit periodically to get to know your online neighborhood.
- Search engine optimization for your neighborhood's keywords for search engine result placement.
- Visitor statistics will show you the most recent day each search engine visited your website plus the number of pages they have viewed.
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