Administrator Guide

This page will provide a quick overview of how to use the administration interface for your HOASpace website.
The Admin page
Your website's administration "hub" is the Admin page. This is normally linked from your site's main menu, but if your site's menu has been customized, it may have been moved or removed. Regardless, if you are logged in as an administrator member, you can always reach the Admin page by clicking the "Admin" link in the lower-left corner of any page.

On the Admin page, you will see icons for each of the applications available on your website. Click an icon to enter the administration page for a particular application that you want to work on.
Adding, Updating, and Deleting Content*
You are now ready to begin updating the News, Contacts, Utilities, Documents, Calendar, and other pages of your website with content that the residents of your community will find helpful. Some features like the Classifieds, Pet Registry, and Discussion forums are already configured and residents can begin using them as soon as they have registered a profile on the web site (and their profile has been approved). However, you may want to review the admin settings for these applications to determine if there are any settings (such as notification email addresses) that you would like to customize further.

Adding content to News, Documents, Contacts, and most other applications is easy and the process is essentially the same for most of them. When you go to the Admin page, click the icon of the feature you want to add content to -- Documents, for example. This takes you to the administration page for that application, which will look different than the page regular members see for that application. To add a new item (document, contact, news story, etc.), look for a "New" button near the top of the page. Clicking this button will present a form that you can fill in to add the new item. After completing the form, click the "Save" button at the bottom to add the new item. You will then be returned to the main administration page for that feature and the new item will be listed there.

To edit an existing item, you will normally see an "Edit" button or sometimes a small icon of a paper and pencil to the right of the item. Sometimes the Edit button will simply be a rectangular button with the word "Edit" on it. Clicking the Edit buton/icon will bring up the same form you used earlier to enter a new item, except that the form will already be filled in with the information you previously entered for the selected item. Here you can make any changes and click the Save button at the bottom to update the item.

To delete an item in most applications, you must first select to edit the item from the application's admin page (as described above), then scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the "Delete" link near the lower-right corner of the page. Clicking this link will delete the item that is currently displayed on the edit form.


Customizing Your Website Theme*
If you have signed up for the Extended or Mega plan, you will have access to our Theme Manager, where you configure and customize your site's visual theme. The Theme Manager allows you to customize the built-in visual themes or create new themes to be used on your web site. Visual themes include the graphic images displayed in the header at the top of each page, as well as the background of the navigation menu on the left of each page. You can also specify a large image to use as the background for the entire page (displayed "behind" your website). You can also control several of the colors displayed on the page for both text and background areas. For example, you can control the colors used to display the information tables that are used to display your content in most applications. You can control the fonts and colors of the text used in these tables as well. There are many more options available in the Theme Manager. Click the Admin Help link at the bottom of the page in Theme Manager for more detailed information about these settings.


Customizing Your Website Menu
The Menu Editor allows you to control which menu items appear in the main navigation menu down the left side of each page or across the top of the page, as well as which menu items are available to the public or restricted to logged-in members only. The Menu Editor consists of a list of each menu item as well as blank lines and horizontal lines that may be added to further format the display of the website's menus. Using the menu editor, you can add and delete menu items from your website or customize the menu text that is used as the link to each application. Please see the video tutorials link further down this page for a link to our video tutorial library which contains a tutorial that covers the basics of using our Menu Editor application.


Is there a User Manual?
There are too many options and settings for each application to describe them all here on one page. Rather than create a single (huge) document with every field and every setting for every application, we have added context-sensitive popup help pages to each application. When you are in an application's administration page, scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the "Admin Help" link at the lower-right corner of every page. When you click that link, a help page pops up in a new (smaller) browser window with more detailed help for using that application as well as descriptions of the various settings and options.

While managing an application as the administrator, you may also see small circular question mark icons to the right of certain fields. If you click on these icons, a popup "tip" window will appear with additional information about that particular field's usage.

We also provide a searchable Support Knowledgebase that contains hundreds of articles with answers to common questions, some with links to video tutorials to walk you through the various steps to accomplish the task.

If you have any questions or encounter any problems with your HOASpace web site, please don't hestiate to contact our support staff at support@hoaspace.com.

We hope you and the residents of your community will find your HOASpace community web site helpful and enjoyable. Your HOASpace web site can enhance communication among the residents of your community and make them more productive by reducing the amount of time they need to spend finding valuable community-related information.

*Included features vary per plan.