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| Do we have to sign a contract? |
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No contracts, no cancellation fees, no hassle. Our service policy outlines what we expect from you as a client and what you can expect from us as a vendor. If you choose to cancel, just give us 30 days notice and we will refund any remaining pre-paid months.
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| Do I need any kind of programming knowledge? |
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Absolutely not - that's our job. If you can send an email, you're all set! When your site launches you'll be given a tour of all the features, and shown how to use them. After that, we're always around to help improve and add content.
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| How do we update the website? |
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We make it as easy as we can for you to make updates to your website. Some updates you can do yourself, as often as you like, through the Community Liaison Control Panel (view a sample). These items include posting newsletters, meeting minutes, important dates and quick messages to the Chalkboard News. The rest we will update for you. Just drop us email once a month with what you want done to the site, and we'll take care of the rest.
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| What kind of support does the community get? |
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In fact we provide periodic fliers and materials to help support you in spreading the word about your website. There are no additional charges for support. If something on the site should break, just let us know and we'll get it fixed at no extra charge. Finally, with our experience in property management and our eye on other communities, we are also a great sounding board for your ideas.
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| Do we get upgrades? |
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Yes, these are included at no additional charge. We constantly get new ideas and feedback, and in turn improve our website concepts and features. Once we have had a chance to refine and test the idea, it will be presented to your community and an update is scheduled if the enhancement is desired. In 2008 our condo communities received a total of six upgrades - all for free.
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| We have paper documents, how do we make them electronic? |
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The easiest thing to do is fax or mail them to us. We will convert them into Adobe PDF documents and run Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software through the documents to make them searchable by your visitors. The PDF (Portable Document Format) by Adobe is the best way to share documents online as it retains the format and look of the original document. PDF's are easy to download, view, use and print.
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| How many people will I have to work with at CondoSites? |
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Just one person who will see to everything from design to support, upgrades, and billing... just like a property manager would. Think of us as your web property manager.
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| Will our community get to choose the domain name? |
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Yes, if it's available of course.
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| What domain suffix (.net, .org, .com) will our site have? |
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We can register any domain suffix that you want, provided it is available. Since your community is a non-profit organization, we suggest first trying to register .org.
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| What if we already have a domain we would like to use? |
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Just re-point the domain to our servers and we'll take care of the rest.
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| If we leave CondoSites, do we get to keep the domain? |
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Yes. Simply let us know and we will release your domain for transfer. Your community would be responsible for any transfer fees charged by the domain registrars. CondoSites does not charge any additional fees for the transfer.
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We use Los Angeles based InMotion Hosting for all our hosting needs. InMotion has won multiple awards, including "Top Business Host Award" by Top-10-Web-Hosting.com, and has earned 3 out of 3 Stars from CNET to become a CNET Certified Service Provider.
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| Our property management company has a website; can we use their server for our pages? |
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We have a strong working relationship with our web host and have tailored our services around their technology. As such, we do not host HOA websites on other servers at this time.
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| Who is CondoSites? |
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Seattle-based CondoSites is a subsidiary of ODYSSEY, a marketing design and desktop publishing firm. Its founder, Jason King, is a former board president and former condo board member in three communities. CondoSites specializes in providing community websites to HOA (Home Owner Associations), POA (Property Owner Associations), Condotel (Condo/Hotel hybrids), Condos, Townhomes, Master Planned Communities, and Co-ops. Jason has over 12 years experience in the design industry and excels in presenting information in an attractive, easy to follow format.
An entire year was spent testing and refining the format and features of the original website for Stonecress Townhomes on Bainbridge Island, where Jason was living at the time. Jason's dedication to Stonecress quickly earned him a position on the board and within a year he was voted in as condo board president.
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| Can we password restrict documents and pages? |
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Yes, we can password protect your entire site, select pages, and/or select documents. We will also include three passwords, which you can change quarterly: one for owners and residents, one for Realtors to access the dedicated Realtor section, and one for your community web liaison. Communities who choose to password protect sometimes distribute the new passwords through their dues statements. We have pre-designed fliers for you to print and include.
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| Can I view statistics about the visitors to the website? |
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Yes. You will have direct access to Google Analytics for powerful reporting on visitors to the website. Google Analytics features an easy to read dashboard with charts and graphs, and even reflects where your visitors are coming from on a map and how long they spent on the website. You can have reports emailed directly to you, or even the whole board with no special downloading required.
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| Can we have email distribution lists? |
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Yes, we can setup small email groups for you or provide solutions for managing larger lists, such as distribution to the entire community. For example, board@yourwebsite.org could forward to all of your board members' email addresses.
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| Will our community email addresses be protected from spam? |
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Yes, we use Spam Assassin, a server-side spam filtering program, to help block spam from reaching your email account.
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| Will my community's website be listed on Google or other search engines? |
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You have the option to choose whether you want search engines to index and list your website or not. If you do want them to index and list your site, it is already optimized for easy search engine crawling. If you do not want your site indexed and listed we will install scripts on the pages informing Google and other search engines not to list your site.
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| I have more questions |
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If you have a question that we didn't answer, please let us know. We would be happy to take the time to answer any questions you might have about our service, or adding a website to your community. We have plenty of references and happy communities you can talk to as well.
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