Wednesday, January 28, 2009

January 2009 Newsletter

Table of Contents

  1. Spread The Word
  2. You Have A Voice
  3. Life Just Got A Little Richer
  4. New Groups & Committees
  5. Site Sponsors
  6. Calendar Archives
  7. Upcoming Changes

Spread The Word

As a small, self-funded internet start-up we don’t have much of an advertising budget so we truly rely on our customers to help get the word out. If you find HOAInTouch.com useful please tell a friend (or ten!). They will appreciate being more connected to their neighborhood and we will love you for it! If you have a blog please consider giving us a quick shout out or if you are into Twitter toss us a tweet.

Speaking of blogs and Twitter, if you want to stay up to date on what we have going on you can subscribe to our product blog via email or RSS updates or follow us on twitter at @hoaintouch.

You Have A Voice

We are very excited to let you know that we have partnered with UserVoice, a company providing a new twist on user feedback, to provide a forum for our customers to request new features, submit bug reports and help control the overall direction of the service. To get started simply click the blue feedback button aligned vertically on the left side of the window.

To get the ball rolling we have seeded the feedback forum with some of our most requested features. Feel free to vote up the ones you would most like to see or to add entirely new ones. We hope you enjoy this new feature and we look forward to hearing from you!

[Read More]

Life Just Got A Little Richer

One of our most requested features has been the ability for users to richly format the content posted to their community. In December we released enhancements to our Community News and Community Events modules that allows residents to format the content of these items and their comments.

The new rich text/html editor enables content authors to change the font face, size and color of the text as well as providing the ability to make the text bold, italic or underlined. The new editor also allows for the creation of ordered and unordered list and hyperlinks.

As we have all heard at least a few times, a picture is worth a thousand words so check out our product blog for some screenshots showcasing the new feature using the Community News module.

[Read More]

Groups and Committees

I must confess that I have never been super happy with the Groups & Committee feature, so we decided to throw it out and rebuild it - nearly from the ground up. I am very pleased to let you know that earlier this month we released a new Groups and Committees module of HOAInTouch.

This release contains several new features – namely public groups and group member titles - as well as enhancing existing features by improving ease of administration and usability.

[Read More]

Site Sponsors

The mission of HOAInTouch has always been to improve the level and quality of communication in your homeowner association. To that end, we are constantly striving to find ways to improve and create a better experience for your residents.

Based on a combination of customer feedback and an evaluation of the current and future market conditions for local online advertising we have greatly reduced the amount of advertising present on each page. This makes for a much cleaner design with dramatically less “noise” and the site loads much faster. Certainly a better experience for our customers.

[Read More]

Calendar Archives

In December we also released a small update to the Community Events module that allows residents to browse prior community events.

On each Community Events page there is a new Archives tile on the right of the page that provides links for each Month / Year and indicates the number of events for that month - i.e. December 2008 (2). Clicking the link will display all of the events that occurred in the given month.

[Read More]

Upcoming Changes

We are extremely excited about a number of changes we have coming in February. We will be providing enhanced moderation for our Community News and Events modules as well as greater control over system notifications. We have also started work on a new classified ads module that will provide residents with a great place to advertise their goods and services.

Lastly, due to the current economics conditions and general softness in the online advertising environment we are going to be making a handful of changes to our Free plan. Namely, we will be removing the document library feature and email notifications of news posts and calendar events. Additionally, a number of upcoming features will only be available to paid subscriptions.

We really struggled with this decision but feel it is necessary in order to ensure that we remain a viable service for our existing and future customers. If you are affected by this change, you are more than welcome to continue to use the free service. We have also provided a special coupon code below to save 50% off the first month should you choose to upgrade. However, if you feel that our service isn't a good fit for your community right now we certainly understand and hope you will keep us in mind if your needs change.

Upgrade and Save

Use coupon code UPGHOA01 to save 50% off your first month of any upgrade!  This code is good through the end of February 2009.

Thanks for your business and we will see you ‘round the neighborhood!

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