Website

The Estates of Brentwood HOA website was started by Rich Siegmund and you can view an archive of that website by clicking here. In 2012, the original web hosting we used, Windows Live, was phased out by Microsoft causing us to search for a new website host.

In 2012, Chris Jones volunteered to take on webmaster responsibilities. Chris moved to the neighborhood in May 2012 and had previous webmaster experience from his former neighborhood association, North Shoal Creek NA.

Here are some facts about our current website:

The Estates of Brentwood website is hosted by Dreamhost. This costs us $120 per year.

We also pay an annual registration fee of $10 for the estatesofbrentwood.org domain.

The website is powered by WordPress software which is an open source project and free to use.

WordPress has many plugins that give us additional features. We list the current plugins in use and their main purpose below.


Plugin Name


Plugin Description


Akismet

Protects the site from comment spam

All In One SEO Pack

Helps improve our search engine results so our website is found easily

bbPress

This software adds the discussion forum to our website

Comprehensive Google Map Plugin

Allows us to easily add Google maps into pages and posts

Configure SMTP

Gives the ability to configure and send email from within WordPress

Exclude Pages from Navigation

Allows us to exclude pages from the top navigation pulldown menus

Google Analytics Dashboard

Integrates Google Analytics into the WordPress Dashboard for admin use

Google Analytics for WordPress

Adds Google Analytics for website traffic analysis

Google Analytics Top Content Widget

Adds ability to show Google Analytics data on website pages

Google Doc Embedder

Allows us to embed documents into a website page for easy viewing

Google XML Sitemaps

Generates an XML formatted sitemap to improve search engine indexing

Hotfix

Helps keep WordPress software and plugins up to date to improve security

Login LockDown

Adds security to the WordPress login to help keep hackers out

Members

Controls roles and access permissions of WordPress users

Social Media Widget

Adds links to social media and sharing site profiles

Ultimate TinyMCE

Improves the posting editor to make it easier to post messages

User Meta Pro

Adds user management functions including user registration and email account verification

WordPress Backup to Dropbox

Backs up our website to our Dropbox account on a weekly basis

WordPress File Monitor Plus

Monitors all website files and reports any file changes to admins

WP-Polls

Adds a poll system for voting on topics of interest

WP Super Cache

Improves the load speed of the website

WP to Twitter

Automatically posts news items to our twitter feed

WPtouch

Formats site to accommodate mobile device screens

WP Wunderground

Adds ability to add weather forecasts to posts and pages.