Civic Communities

Trying to get your civic association members involved? A civic association website is a great way to get the community together.

Static webpages, that is, pages that can be viewed but are not interactive, have difficulty holding the interest of the viewer. Frequent updates of valuable information are one way to keep members returning regularly, but they are also time consuming.

When you give your members an opportunity to interact, they are more likely to visit often and contribute.

• Give your members the option to post items of interest to other neighbors.
• Provide current updates from local government and community organizations, with the option to comment.

We offer both public areas and private ‘member only’ areas. Here are some of the options we offer to enhance your site:

Public Areas

• Posts of interest that the general public may be interested in as well, drawing traffic and exposure to your site
• Links to important informational websites, local vendors, civic associations, police and fire, etc

Members Only

• Members create a profile which then is posted in a directory available only to members who are currently logged in.
• Emails can be sent to individuals from the website, or to group ‘roles’, such as ‘board members’ ‘general members’, ‘advertiser’, etc. No more problems finding the email lists from the last board member.
• Specific login pages can be created that give members limited permissions behind the scenes on the site, so there is no fear of accidental corruption of the site.
• Posts can be designated for ‘members only’ or for only those of a specific role – for example, minutes can be posted with access only by board members.
• Designated roles, ie board members, can send out group messages advising general membership of important issues.
• Attract members to use the site by sending out an email advising that an important post has just gone up.

Design Options 

We use Thesis as the theme for our WordPress civic sites. Thesis is very user friendly and even the most inexperienced user will soon be changing background colors, changing the layout and number of columns, altering the fonts, etc. You won’t be held hostage, waiting for someone else to charge you to make these types of changes to your site.

If you don’t already have a domain, we will purchase one for you.  We’ll install WordPress and a custom theme that allows you to control your page header, your color scheme and the number of columns you want to display.

Next, we’ll install the membership directory (adding the members for you is an additional expense).

You’ll have a login system which directs different user ‘roles’ to different areas of the site, and establishes a default role for general members. Once your members are all added, they can enhance their listing on their own, to include a photo and biographical info.  You have the option of listing individual members or grouping as families.

If you have some special requirements that require custom code, our very experienced staff can work with you to design and implement your needs.

We’ve seen other civic sites that cost five times as much as our basic package, but aren’t interactive and don’t meet your custom needs.

Other Options Include:

• Training for your webmaster/mistress.
• Backup services to protect your data.
• Member Forum
• Posting Ads on Your Site
• Print Manual

To discuss your project, please contact Diane Cox, 404-888-0078 or email info [at] civicommunities.com!