I took a quick peek and the site is great! It appears to have a great deal of information and easy accesses to forms and such. Wonderful Q&A section!

Can I ask two more questions….

- You say that the board maintains the site. Does it require an excessive amount of time? Our board (being newer) is trying to learn how to juggle things and they are a bit overwhelmed.

- Does your site allow for Shareholders to communicate back and forth? It does not seem to be the case and I wonder if there was a reason this was done.

Again, great site. Thanks for sharing it.

> Join the conversation Comments (1)

Thanks, Pam.

The only thing that's time-consuming is the Events page. Take it away, and I probably spend 5-10 minutes a day on it, 5 days a week. That's just updating the Residents' notes or changing a photo to match the season (i.e. snow in the winter).

The Board discussed allowing responses, but decided that we didn't want to be in the position of moderating posts (which could lead to charges of favoritism or censorship), and the alternative, letting anyone post anything, didn't sit well with us either.

As it happens, no one in our building has asked to make his or her own post. They have asked that we post various neighborhood events, however, which we're happy to do.

> Join the conversation Comments (1)

While I completely sympathize with your Board's decision not to make possible any online Shareholder free-for-all, did you consider offering anyone who wants one, a blog? I'd be very surprised if the Shareholders who are most involved and most creative turned down THAT offer; several organizations find that it also fosters involvement, especially if the bloggers are artistic types, like painters, writers, photographers (and NYC certainly has more than its share!) and somewhat interesting to read. The Pinehurst seems to encourage its residents to be involved, judging from the events page in particular... it could certainly be a selling point to potential buyers if their residency included a free blog. : )

I find that Apple's iWeb is very easy-to-use and comfortable, once you get past the brief learning curve and your own tech-hesitancy factor. It's a piece of cake to add a blog to your website using this application, too. (And the format is EXCELLENT for updating events... you have an archive, so people don't have to scroll down 15 pages to find something that happened awhile back... they just click on the archived entry, and voila! You can also have a number of active events on the landing page. [Disclaimer: I do not own a penny of Apple stock. Wish I did, though. ha]

If co-ops out there - especially small ones - want to start their own website, I highly recommend giving it a shot yourself. I haven't had a chance to do one for my own business yet (too busy!), but I've been doing one for a community organization with multiple committees, multiple minutes, etc. and it's quite doable even if you've never done a website yourself before. I'd done planning or creative work on some, but never touched the actual structure until iWeb. If you can think in a straight line from A to B, and imagine what responses or questions a design or issue might raise, planning ahead before you do any real work - you can make a dynamite website without paying someone else to do it. You can even video your Annual Meeting and put it online for those who missed it... if you want to, of course.

I mean no offense or denigration, to professional web designers out there - after working on this first one, my hat is off to them BIG-TIME for the work they do for corporations, etc. But if you're strictly bells, and don't need too many whistles, I say: give it a shot.

Feel free to write me off-line if you want to learn more about a "do-it-yourself" project.

> Join the conversation