For weeks I’ve been working on moving an old community address list to an online version. When we first moved to our retirement community in Delaware residents could contact each other using a directory.
The directory, a Microsoft Excel file, was maintained by the first guy and his wife to buy a home here. Dave Levy maintained this list used by the homeowners association. Residents were emailed announcements from the HOA using the list. The list contained the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of each homeowner.
The list fell out of favor once a local politician gained access to send out campaign literatures. Also, many times the email sent out would show all the recipients in the TO: field. So anyone could send out unauthorized and unsolicited email. That was easily done by either copying/pasting those addresses into a new email to send out. Or even easier would be to REPLY ALL:
All homeowners were included in the list. Any new additions, updates, or deletes were handled by Dave.
The HOA then chose to use something called TownSQ(the developer basically made that decision.) After that a community directory, as we knew it, went south.
The HOA now requests residents to join TownSQ and give the option to put phone numbers and email addresses. Of course, most new residents ignore the options. And I feel that’s a huge mistake part of HOA. They should “encourage” people to enter that information. On two occasions I mentioned this during quarterly HOA meeting with all residents. The HOA’s stance is it’s an option and there are privacy concerns.
So I decided to take action and do what needed to be done. I repurposed an online directory I created while working at The Philadelphia Daily News before retirement in 2005. I decided to name this residents only online directory, Dave’s List, in honor of the guy maintained and maybe created the first one.
Tonight, I finished the mobile friendly version and decided to post what it looks like on a smartphone. It was originally designed for a desktop computer as there were not smartphones. The smartphone version of Dave’s List looks different than desktop version, which has an alphabet bar to simulate a rolodex. Smartphone version has a simpler interface.
Now my next huddle is adoption by newer residents. The HOA isn’t helpful as they want people to be on TownSQ, which is useless as a directory.
Old copies of Levy’s list are cherished by early arrivals here and they continue to use the last updated version from two years ago. One person told me that she uses the version from 15 years ago.
There’s a need and I plan to fulfill it.
Now my parting shot at the HOA: Dave’s List is hosted on my server, faircloth.org. To make it easy to remember internet address to Dave’s List I purchased a new domain name “heritageshores.org” When one enters heritageshores.org as the URL they are redirected to Dave’s List. Don’t let Google find it but enter into actual web address(URL) field in your browser. You should see a box requesting an ID and password.
