TOPS Home: TOPS Home E-Zine

December has been a busy month for us while we wrap up 2003 and get ready for our busiest season of the year, year end. Our web team has been working hard on a few things that will be coming out in the very early part of 2004, including an online A/P approval system, and a completely redesigned upload interface for TOPS! We will talk more about what is coming up next month. For right now, we have all sorts of information we want to share with you.

Susan sanders brings us another look at methods you can use to draw in web site visitors, and increase the income your web site is making. We have a New Years flier that has been updated with all of the new information since last year, and we have a proper link to the monthly download from last month which was inadvertently left off the web site.

We have a number of changes that have been made to your web site, and an announcement about a new mail server we are in the process of implementing. Brandon talks to us about the Requests and Questions feature of the web sites, and explains the upload process, and Andrea discusses a new web site that TOPS Software has implemented to keep employees and affiliates informed.

For the first time ever, TOPS brings you a guest writer to let us know about an important new development regarding AOL 9.0. Alexandria K Brown (a.k.a. The E-zine Queen) is a professional e-zine marketer, who often speaks at conferences and is published extensively on the subject of e-zines.

We have so much to share with you this holiday season, we're going to go ahead and jump right in! Have a safe and happy holiday season and, as always, enjoy your reading. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us. We look forward to speaking with you!

TOPS Web Sales: (800) 556-7852 WebSales@topssoft.com.
TOPS Web Support (800) 899-5689 WebSupport@topssoft.com.

Andrea Drennen

Web Site Sales

Promote Your Web Site from within the association

Many of our association clients are looking for ways to promote their web site within the association. By far the most successful way of doing this is to put a small sign up at the entrance, "visit us online at www.communityname.com" You'll be absolutely amazed at the results. Where I live we have 611 homes and we went from 3,000 hits a month to well over 9,000 hits and it has stayed that popular ever since. A sign reminds residents every single day that there is a source of information about their association's happenings right at their fingertips. A sign leads Realtors to a resource about the homes for sale in your neighborhood and who to call for Resale Packets. We spent $35 on our sign and have recouped the cost over and over again as local vendors found out about our site and pay us to advertise on it.

If you have any associations that are contemplating a web site for 2004, we encourage you to budget for web site INCOME as well as for the expense. The web sites have the ability, if just a little effort is put forth within the community, to be a profit center for the association. These additional funds can be used to pay for landscaping, special projects and so much more. All it takes is letting local vendors know about your site, the ads will in effect "sell themselves". Think of all those vendors driving through your neighborhoods putting flyers on mailboxes even though there is a "No Soliciting" sign at the entrance. We simply call each of the vendors that do this and give them our standard pitch:

"I'm sure you didn't see the sign at the entrance, but we don't allow this in our neighborhood. We understand that you want access to our residents so please fill out this advertisement form and we'll put your ad on our web site. We charge $25 per month per ad and other vendors have found this to be very reasonable!"

TOPS offers a sample flyer for distribution to vendors as well as a sample ad form. Please contact us at websales@topshome.com or websupport@topshome.com for a copy. We're looking forward to working closely with you throughout the coming year.

The entire Web Team wishes you and your family a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Susan Sanders

Download of the Month

Start the New Year Off Right

This month, we have revamped our 'Start the New Year Off Right' handout to include some of the many new features available in a community web site today. The handout is in MS Word, so you can customize it, print it out, and distribute it to community officers at board meetings. It is located in the downloads section of our web site:
www.TOPSHome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm.

To customize the handout, simply download and save the MS Word document, find and replace the words "Your Management Company" with your company's name, and VIOLA! Instant marketing materials to hand out at this month's round of board meetings.

ERRATTA: Last month, we told you about our new flier, "Building Stronger Connections for a Healthy Community", but we forgot to load it in the downloads page! It is there now, so please take a look.
(www.TOPSHome.com/topshome/Administrators/downloads.htm)

We apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused you.

Andrea Drennen

News Worthy

Web Sites for your Communities... as simple as 1, 2, 3!

Want to introduce the web site service to ALL your community clients but you're not sure how to get the word out? Now, your association management company can order a supply of complete Community Web Site Kits for every association manager to distribute to their HOA boards. Each packet comes with everything needed to explain the advantages of a community web site service to your clients - helpful brochures explaining the features and how they work, pointers on how to use the classified ads feature to reap revenue from the web site, plus pricing information and everything the association needs to know to get stared with the community web site service.

Each packet also comes with a CD presentation that walks the board through a virtual tour of the service. We'll even customize the enclosures with your company logo and contact information. Just contact us at websales@topshome.com and let us know how many packets you'd like to receive!

Susan Sanders

New Mail Server for Premium and Professional Customers

We have recently joined with a new mail server to provide email hosting services for those customers with Premium or Professional plans that use us to host their company email accounts. The new server offers two key benefits to users:

Improved Performance: The server has high-end, dual processors with an ample amount of memory, and is fully dedicated to just running email. The clients we have switched to it thus far have been very happy with the performance improvements they have seen.
Spam Filtering: The new mail server software we are running has a number of built-in anti-spam mechanisms and, while nothing is fool proof, they appear to be pretty effective. Some of our Beta testers experienced a considerable decrease in spam the first day we switched over.

We will be performing a slow transition from our existing mail server to our new mail server for existing customers. (Some customers will remain indefinitely under the existing mail server - following the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' rule.) All new customers will automatically be set up on the new server. If your email is scheduled to be transitioned, we will contact you with further information on this development

Web Support Department

What's New

New Features on Your Community Web Sites

Added the ability to send email bulletins in either plain text or rich text.
Added the community name in the subject line of email bulletins in order to keep the recipient from deleting them as possible spam.
Modified the wording of the message at the bottom of email bulletins to include a link back to the community web site name so as to eliminate confusion.
Added ability to change the feature text description using the WYSIWYG Text Editor for the "Task Manager" and "Board Message Board" features.
Added "Date Submitted" category to appear on export of eForm Submissions.
Added ability to edit an existing hotlink from the hotlink feature when a resident adds their own links.
Corrected an issue with "Show Most Frequently Used Features" in the statistics menu to filter on last 30 days.
Modified the "List Address Book By Street" feature to only include residents from the currently selected category (residents, etc.). Also added "List By Street Name" option to some additional screens in address book feature.
Corrected an issue that caused the web site to send two copies of an RSVP email

Programming Department

Do you have a suggestion for a feature enhancement that you would like to have added to the web site service? Send an email to websupport@topssoft.com with your enhancement suggestions.

Feature Teacher

Requests / Questions

One feature of TOPS community web sites - as well as TOPS management web sites - that administrators should setup early is the Requests/Questions feature. For residents who are new to the site, this will be their primary way of asking for help from the community web site administrator. Because of this, it is important to make sure that the information in the Requests/Questions options is accurate and up-to-date.

Requests/Questions is a free-form layout that allows people to ask any question they want, then choose to whom to submit the question. The e-mail address of the recipient does not appear in the list that a viewer sees, but you can give a name and description of the recipient to give the resident a better idea of where the eForm is going.

At first glance, requests/questions might appear to function in a similar manner to eForms. Indeed, you can setup an eForm to serve the same purpose as Requests/Questions. However, there are a few differences that give the Requests/Questions feature a few advantages in certain situations. For one, eForms must always send the submitted forms to the main e-mail address of someone in the address book. Requests/Questions lets you specify the e-mail address of the recipient, so it may be a secondary e-mail address or possibly the e-mail of someone who is not even in the address book.

In addition, the Requests/Questions is easier for users to find than a specific eForm question. It has its own link on the left-hand menu frame that goes directly to the form. On the other hand, users may not understand what eForms are right away, and even if they do go there, they have to find the correct eForm from a list. Based on the use of TOPS web sites that we've seen, residents almost always go to Requests/Questions first before eForms.

The free-form structure of Requests/Questions makes it quite a bit different from the rigid structure of an eForm, in which the eForm asks the user specific questions and recipients are pre-determined by the administrator. The Requests/Questions feature is often the best way for residents to ask their own questions about how to use the community web site.

To set up the available options for the pull down list in the Requests/Questions feature:

Log in to the web site as administrator.
Click Requests/Questions.
Click add, edit, delete request options.
Click Add.
Enter the name, description and email address for the request form.
Click Save New.
Click here to continue.

Brandon Kelley

Is there a feature that you would like to learn more about? Send an email to websupport@topssoft.com with your suggestions for our next Feature Teacher.

Customer Spotlight

TOPS Insider

TOPS Software recently rolled out a new web site for our employees and affiliates to keep everyone in the figurative 'loop'. I wanted to share that site with you this month as an example of how you can customize our community web site service to create just about any kind of site. Because the information contained within is private to TOPS Employees, I cannot share the private side of the site with you, but you can take a look at the public side at www.topsinsider.com.

TOPS employees are scattered across 3 states, and our affiliates (dealers and trainers) are even more widespread. So we needed one central location where we could all come together and communicate with one another. To facilitate this need, we customized the security settings of the web site to best fit our needs. Company officers were assigned a security level of 15, employees were assigned level 25, and affiliates were assigned level 50. We were then able to dictate which features were visible to each security level. By setting up the site this way, we were able to combine what was formerly 2 completely separate web sites (one for employees and one for affiliates) into one cohesive site.

We created a number of custom modules, such as Insurance Information and Company Handbook, that would only be visible to employees. By copying the text for these into the WYSIWYG text editor for the module pages, we were able to assign an edit security level to our company officers. Therefore, if a change is made in our insurance or employee handbook, a company officer can log in and make the change live, online. This solves so many problems with multiple versions of certain documents floating around the company. We also use the documents section extensively to share important marketing materials, guidelines, and graphics with our affiliates. Once again this provides one central location where materials are stored, rather than having these materials decentralized all over the country.

Since we want the Insider to be a 'dynamic' site instead of a 'static' site, we utilize a number of features to make that happen. First, we encourage employees and affiliates to communicate via the message board, and schedule training chats to discuss new products, features, or announcements. Next, we make extensive use of the announcements and email bulletin features. Members can subscribe to a number of categories to learn when updates or publications are released. In addition to the subscription categories, we made a series of mandatory categories that are only visible to the administrator. This allows us to send an email to all employees in a single office, for example. At the bottom of every email bulletin, we make sure to include the login name and password of each member. By taking these steps, we have enjoyed a 51% log in rate during the two months since the site was released.

The TOPS Insider Web Site is located at www.topsinsider.com.

Andrea Drennen

Would you like your web site to be spotlighted in the TOPS Home E-Zine? Send us a two or three paragraph email. Be sure to include a description of your community, tell us what led you to getting a Community Web Site, and let us know what features you like best. Send your spotlight to websupport@topssoft.com.

Tutorial

the TOPS 2000™ Upload Process

This month we will cover the process that uploads Owner data from TOPS 2000™ to your community web sites. While the process itself is very straightforward, knowing how the process works may help you to understand why certain things happen in the upload process. Let's start out by going over the pre-requisites for uploading:

Before you upload any data, there are some settings that must be set first. Using the Web Wizard will take you through each of these necessary steps, or you can set them up manually by going to the Internet menu in TOPS 2000™ and selecting Setup Options. This menu contains the options that you must set. Let's go over each of these options.

Schedule - This option is not necessary to do an upload unless you want to set your system to perform automatic scheduled uploads. See the October edition of the TOPS Home e-zine for more information on using the Scheduler utility to perform automatic uploads.
Communities - Use this menu to select which communities are going to be uploaded. The list of selected communities to upload is on the right. To add a community, select the community from the list on the left, and click 'Add Selected'.
- You can also perform a manual upload of all of your selected communities from this menu.
- Regarding the communities that you select, only communities that have a TOPS web site should be added to the selected communities menu. While adding additional communities causes no problems with your data, it does cause the upload process to take much longer than necessary.
- Also, do not remove communities from the selected communities list if they still have a TOPS community web site. Doing so may result in inconsistencies of the login name and password between the web site and your TOPS data.
- There are 3 options with checkmark boxes in the center of the screen. Please do NOT select any of these options unless instructed to do so by a technical support representative. They are for troubleshooting and resolving problems.
Upload Options - This allows you to choose what data is to be uploaded for each community. You may also select the password scheme that will be used on each web site. To set the options, select the community from the top part of the window, then set the options in the bottom half. A 'Y' will appear under each column that is to be uploaded for a community. If a column has an 'N', that item will not be uploaded.
Server - The best way to set the server settings is through the Web Wizard. In the wizard, you can use the Get Server Information button to automatically retrieve your company's server settings from our server on the Internet. One thing you should verify, however, is the port number. No matter what, the port number should be 21. If it is blank, 0, or something else, change it to 21. Once set, you will likely not have to ever change any settings in the Server window.

Once all of these settings have been defined, you will be ready to upload data. You can either go through the Internet->Update Site Now menu or through the Internet->Setup Options->Communities menu to get the Update Now button. Once you click on Update Now, the data upload process will begin. This process is divided into three phases:

File generation - when you first click the Update Now button, it may look like nothing's happening, but in the background TOPS is generating the files to be uploaded. You will occasionally see an hourglass flash on and off next to the cursor. This indicates that the files are being generated.
File upload - when a window pops up that says Community Data Upload Has Begun, this means that it is now uploading the generated files via FTP to the server. There will be 3 columns: filename, file size, and status. Filename is the name of the file being uploaded. File size is the size (in bytes) of the file. Finally, status is how much (in bytes) of that file has been uploaded so far. When the Status column matches the File Size column, that file has been uploaded. When all of the files have been uploaded, the top of the window will say, "Community Data Upload Complete"
File processing - When you see the 'Community Data Upload Complete' message, the upload process is done, but the files have not yet been processed. An Internet Explorer window should pop up that says 'Loading TOPS Data, Please Wait...'. You must let this page complete or the upload will not take effect. Here are a few other things to look for during this stage:
1. If you do not see the browser window pop up after stage 2 is done, check the task bar. Sometimes the window will be in the Task Bar minimized so you may not see it at first.
2. If you receive an error message in red regarding some of the files, do not worry. These are simply files that you are not uploading. (For example, You will know that it is completed when it says Data Load Complete at the bottom of the page (sometimes you have to scroll down to see this).

Once completed, you can close the page or go to the community web site to verify the data. If it appears as if the data has not been uploaded or the file processing has not completed, e-mail websupport@topshome.com and we will analyze the issue.

Brandon Kelley

Support Tips

Alexandria K. Brown, also known as the E-zine Queen, is a respected member of the Internet marketing community, and she often speaks at Internet marketing seminars and in various trade publications. As a subscriber to her e-zines, I often use her advice to improve the quality of the e-zines TOPS Software publishes.

The article below spoke to me as an e-zine publisher, but also as a user of a TOPS Interactive Web Site. Whenever you send an email bulletin or announcement email to the owners in your community, you will almost certainly be sending the email to some owners with an AOL 9.0 account. So I requested permission to reprint the article for your benefit. Without further ado, here is Alexandria K. Brown with three things you must know about AOL 9.0:

3 Things You NEED to Know About AOL 9.0

By Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"

A few months ago, America Online (AOL) released its brand new AOL Version 9. (Have you noticed all the TV ads?) AOL expects that up to 50% of their users will be using the new version by the end of December 2003.

The biggest new feature with AOL 9 is its aggressive method of reducing unsolicited e-mail (spam) for its users. Basically, AOL wants users to customize their own in boxes and view or receive only the messages that they choose.

While the crackdown is a noble endeavor, it puts legitimate e-mail publishers in the crossfire. To make sure that AOL users are receiving YOUR e-mails, here are a few things you should know.

1. All Your Graphics Are Blocked by Default

AOL has taken the drastic measure of blocking all graphics from being displayed in HTML e-mails, as well as deactivating the links for any new messages sent to an AOL 9 in box. The system is also designed to "learn" what messages are repeatedly marked as spam, and they will eventually be sent to the junk folder automatically, once it maps the user's behavior.

When an e-mail is received in AOL 9, users have to click a link at the top of each message to view any graphics within your e-mail ("Show Images & Enable Links"). If this action is not taken, images (e.g. pictures, logos) and links will not be displayed or enabled.

2. Ask Recipients to Add You To Their Address Book

At the top of each issue you send, remind those AOL folks to put you in their AOL address book. For example, "Attention AOL 9 users: Please add Alexandria@EzineQueen.com to your address book so you'll be sure to receive every issue of our e-zine".

Once a user puts you in her address book, all your future e-mails will automatically show images and functioning links. This will also allow the e-mail to be tracked properly as "opened" on your end.

3. Bottom Line: Never Rely on Images to Convey Your Message

You can be sure that not all your AOL users will bother to put you in their address book, or understand how easy it is to do.

So here's the bottom line: Have fun with graphics and images in your HTML emails, but never rely on them to get your message across. Once each issue is complete and ready to send, look at it and pretend all the graphics are gone. Can your readers still instantly recognize it's a publication? Do they see it's from you? If not, be sure to add text at the top to make things crystal clear.

I also recommend that if you don't have AOL yourself, get an account and put that e-mail address on your subscriber list. This will allow you to see how the new AOL 9 works and how your e-zine appears.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Online marketing coach Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is author of the award-winning tutorial package, 'Boost Business With Your Own E-zine.' To learn more about this step-by-step program, and to sign up for FREE how-to articles and FREE teleclasses, visit http://www.EzineQueen.com/

Did you know that TOPS Software will provide you with a free
community web site CD demo? Follow this link to apply for your free demo today!

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About the Authors

Susan Sanders is your Community Web Site Sales Representative
Brandon Kelley is your TOPS Community Web Site Support Representative
Andrea Master-Drennen is the Internet Services Manager at TOPS Software

TOPS Home E-Zine

Issue #22 - December 2003

Experience TOPS Interactive Web Sites for Yourself!