Online Plan Guide

Have you ever wished you could setup a website efficiently on a tight budget? Perhaps you need to enable people to subscribe to updated content as well. You might have video and presentations you want to share but it seems like social media creates more work rather than streamlines it. Now, there is a website tool that makes it easy for you to engage students, citizens, business owners, stakeholders, and plan commissioners in as many ways possible. No programming or technical skill is required to get content on the site and streamed to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and email.

Imagine having a system at your disposal that loads the software on a reliable server for you. All you have to do is login, choose a color scheme, and upload your logo. Click a button and it’s linked to Facebook. Every page you create and all news is sent to the site and your social networks rather than doing it by hand. You don’t have to program HTML or learn how to get files from your computer to the internet. It should be as simple as creating a Word document.

Online Plan Guide is the solution to create and manage a website for each of your projects, your firm’s marketing site, and even TIF and historic district surveys. You can now utilize web technology for each of your projects affordably without hiring a web expert. If you know HTML and Style Sheets, you can tweak the design without having to create one page at a time or fumble with Dreamweaver templates.

Here are some of the things you can do without technical skill:

Content Management

• Create and modify an unlimited number of pages
• Customize the navigation
• Upload PDF and Word documents
• Create an image gallery
• Add a Google map to the page with pushpins
• Highlight key pages in an image slider on the home page
• Set preferences for the home page

Media

• Add Slideshare presentations to a page
• Embed YouTube videos into a page
• Add Flickr photo sets or an entire gallery
• Create an Event Calendar
• Create a document library
• Add Flash video to a page
• Create a podcast library

Search and Communication

• Enable visitors to search and subscribe
• Enable visitors to register and comment on content
• Allow visitors to login with their Facebook account
• Optimize your content for search engines
• Add keywords and tags to pages
• Allow people to receive updates via email or RSS

Advanced (Requires moderate technical skill)

• Tweak the style sheet and layout
• Add a custom banner to the top of the pages
• Customize Queries in template pages
• Change sidebar functionality

There is no reason you can’t start deploying rich media websites. Transparency is an increasingly hot topic because citizens expect government to reach out to them beyond community meetings. You can exceed their expectations and even engage youth in a discussion on Facebook in just a few clicks. Now is the time to make planning fun by utilizing free and low-cost tools to overcome budget obstacles.

Spice up your site with our custom visualization tools to make streetscape revitalization plans interactive. We have a variety of solutions to integrate into your site if you want to:

• Map properties in a district
• Create an easy-to-use GIS to classify parcels and attach photos, notes, and 3D models
• Put your zoning ordinance and graphics online
• Visualize commercial and residential streetscapes
• Solicit community feedback and map it
• Build an interactive vision board

How much does it cost and what is included in the price?
We are a small business and really wish we could provide the secure and reliable platform for free to our government and non-profit friends. It isn’t completely free, but I think you will find it is very affordable. Each website is $12/month. This fee comes with the following on our dedicated Rackspace Server:

• Community Forum Access
• Technical Support
• Automatic Backups
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• Web Hosting: Up to 2 GB of disk space with some bandwidth limitations

Additional Features that can be purchased are:

• Custom Domain Name
• Domain Name pointed to our server
• Custom Design and Layout
• Expanded Bandwidth and Disk Space
• Design Support (Moderate and Advanced)
• Support for the Plugins in your account and adding additional Plugins
• Capability to add custom Php files to the server
• Unlimited Private (non-forum based) Technical Support
• SSL certificates
• Dedicated IP addresses