Is Your Community Website Helpful and Engaging?

A website is an incredibly valuable tool that helps to connect residents to your community; however, the key to nurturing the connection you build with your residents over time is to keep the website up-to-date. A frequently updated website gives a positive, welcoming impression of the community, and will undoubtedly keep your residents coming back for the latest news and events.  In this month’s edition of Pilera’s Manager Toolkit, we focus on four essential elements that you can easily implement within your community website to make it relevant and appealing to residents.

1) Documents

Displaying important community documents on your website is an important way to educate your residents about the community they live in.  Examples of documents that many communities share include monthly newsletters, maintenance procedures, equipment information, resident responsibilities, financials, emergency preparedness, and more.  In Pilera’s community websites, you can create separate pages for each folder or sub-folder your portal library contains and easily bring them over to the website.

How to bring your folders over:

  1. Make sure that the editing mode is turned on.  Then, create a new page that will display the documents by hovering over Page Settings and clicking on Create New Page.
  2. Click the blue “+” button to add a new element.  Under Pilera Modules, select the new version of the document library.
  3. Once the document library loads, click on the specific folder to display on the page. Click the “Actions” button and select “Mark As Default Folder for Page”.  Refresh the page, and you’re done!
    Document library in the community website.

2) Events

Hosting community events such as potlucks, get-togethers or board meetings are great ways to break the ice among residents and build a solid relationship with them.  Thus, it’s important to have a section or a new page on your website dedicated to upcoming events. You can display events you’ve created within the Pilera portal onto the website quickly.

How to bring your events over:

  1. Make sure that the editing mode is turned on.  Then, click the blue “+” button to add a new element.  Under Pilera Portal Modules, click on “Events”.
  2. All upcoming events will be displayed on the website.
    Events module within the Pilera community website.

3) Marketplace

The marketplace is a tool where residents can display items for sale.  A way to bring more visibility of those items to your community is to exhibit them on the community website.  The steps are simple. Create a new page to display the module and then click on the blue “+” to add the marketplace element.  Similarly to events and documents, you’ll click on the “Pilera Portal Modules” because you are bringing over the data from the portal.  Once you click on “Marketplace” and refresh the page, all the items your residents posted for sale will be shown.

Marketplace within the Pilera community websites.

4) Photo Gallery

Images are a great way to convey exciting stories about your team, the community, and its residents.  Through Pilera’s community websites, you can add photo galleries with multiple images and choose the type of photo display that meets your needs.  

How to add a gallery:

  1.  First, you’ll need to create a group for the photos you want to share in the gallery.  Under Site Settings, click on “Photo Library” and then “Add Group”. Upload all photos to the group.
  2. Once the photos are uploaded, you can select the photo gallery display that best fits your needs. Go to the page that you want to add the photos to and click on the blue “+” icon to add a new element.  Select “Photo Gallery”. Select the photo group from the drop-down menu and then choose a display option that includes sliders.

    Photo Gallery

The key to an excellent community website is relevance

Through adding relevant documents, events, a place for residents to list items for sale, and the photo gallery, your residents will have a central place where they can access all their community information.  The key is to keep adding relevant content to your website that your residents want. You’ll have created a better experience for your residents, and they will feel more connected and gain a more positive perception of the community.