Bondware Web Solutions FAQs

Content Management System

Q. What is a content management system and why would I want one?

A. A content management system (CMS) is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating creation of web site content. A content management system is sometimes a web application used for managing websites and web content, though in many cases, content management systems require special client software for editing and constructing articles. However, in the case of Bondware, there is NO CLIENT SOFTWARE TO INSTALL. Your entire website can be created with any browser, such as Internet Explorer, and access to the internet.

Bondware's CMS (Content Management System) empowers people to take control of their websites and their association, small business or self-publication (e.g. online newspapers or online magazines). With our website building software, which is a standard feature of Bondware's content management system, you are always only one-click away from editing a page on your website. No longer do you have to call (and pay for) a web designer to manage your website's content, or to change a word or two on your site.

Q. Is your content management system a web site builder?

A. Yes, although Bondware is a full website publishing system and supports nearly unlimited content management. Strictly speaking, a web site builder is a type of content management system (CMS). Typically, web site builders focus mostly on fancy web design templates to make a few web pages look great and the web pages typically are easy to design, set up and publish to a website.

Q. How is your content management system (CMS) different from a traditional web site builder?

A. Bondware begins with the ability to build your own web site and manage the content, text and images yourself. Therefore, Bondware is a web site builder. However, Bondware's CMS goes well beyond most web site building software.

Traditional web site builder software or free web site builders often are very limited, in custom web design flexibility, web page / news article limitations and business features that your small business, association, organization and non-profit often need. In Bondware, even our cheapest hosted web site solutions offer unlimited web pages and articles. You can also implement many modules, or add-on web tools, such as e-commerce, customer service management, banner ad management, forums, online directory, rss feeds and syndication and much more.

Newsletter Broadcasts - Bulk Email Software

Q. Does your website building software offer Newsletter Broadcast Software?

A. Absolutely. Bondware's Newsletter Pro module allows you to send email newsletters (or eNewsletters) to your web site members / website subscribers. You can send bulk emails and newsletters to unlimited email lists.

Q. Is your email newsletter software hosted and are the newsletter broadcasts sent from my website?

A. Our hosted newsletter broadcast solution, is an affordable, robust and scalable hosting service. We host web sites and we also have hosted bulk email and hosted newsletter broadcast services. Bulk email hosting can be affordable and bulk email can even be free. With Bondware, you get our bulk email software, newsletter broadcast pro for FREE for two weeks. Additionally, you get a free 10,000 bulk emails or 10,000 free electronic newsletters to send to website subscribers with purchase of your website and newsletter software.

We believe websites should have the ability for cheap bulk emails, but have the features of the best bulk email services on the internet! Try Bondware's hosted bulk email services as your eMarketing solution. For professional newsletter broadcasts, hosted for speed and performance you couldn't get with your local internet provider, Bondware finds an affordable solution for your newsletter broadcasts and bulk email needs.

Q. Is it a web site template? Do my newsletter emails have a great looking design that matches my web site?

A. Yes. Your emails and newsletters can look great. Newsletter Broadcast Pro offers the ability for custom email templates to be designed to maintain any branding requirements. If you just want to get started, you can use our free email template which can automatically pull content or news articles directly from your site. Additionally, you have the ability to create/design custom email templates that are based off your website's design. For example, you can easily include your website's logo or header into your newsletter email to give it a professional look and maintain your website's branding in your newsletters and email marketing campaigns.

Custom Web Site Design vs. Template Web Site Design

Q. How are custom web designs different than template web designs?

A. Web site templates are usually pre-built websites with text placeholders. You can implement these templates and change their default content or text to content appropriate for your site. Rarely do these templates offer much web design flexibility nor do they empower you to add links, add pages and essentially manage your web site once it is live and hosted.

Custom web designs can take many flavors. A good strategy for most web sites is to implement a color pallet, navigation, consistent header and footer and generally a common look and feel. With a Bondware system we help you build a custom web design / custom web site template for your web site. We can design and implement nearly anything that can be dreamed up.

Because we can design a web site so quickly and implement your custom web site template in a fraction of the time of typical custom web site designers, our web designs are very affordable and often are very cheap web designs - starting at only $800 for a full web site design and often this can be even less if you just need a custom web site header.

Q. Do I have to be in Nashville, TN to work with your "Nashville web site design team"?

A. No. Our Nashville web design team is based here in Nashville, but we design web sites for sites running outside of Nashville, TN. For example, we have designed sites for people in Atlanta, Tampa, Washington, D.C., California, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and international sites including Sri Lanka and Israel. One website we've designed has over 500,000 members and is represented in over 150 countries.

Q. Can I design my website myself or does your Nashville Web Design team need to be involved?

A. YES. We love to see other web designers get involved with Bondware's CMS and design their own web sites. Even if you are not a web designer and have NO HTML and NO Web design experience, you can still get a good looking web site designed on Bondware. We have several web design themes and templates for you to apply to your site. We also have already designed or }pre-designed" web designs available for purchase, which we call "Skins" that can be applied to your site at any time.

Some of our "skins" were designed by our Nashville web design team and other skins were developed by 3rd party web designers. These web designers then get royalties for each skin that is sold. You'll find that some skin designs are free and others may have a fee associated with them. The fees will depend on the level of effort that the web designer put into designing and developing the skin.

Self-Publishing Web Site Software

Q. What are some of the common features that self-publishers use Bondware

A. Bondware is an excellent choice for self-publishing. Our publishing software is based on a proven content management system, which allows for unlimited pages of content on your website. In addition to our standard CMS (content management system) features, you can add custom PHP modules into your bondware web site with little effort. These modules are add-on web tools that allow you to pay for only what you need and add lots of features.

Some common modules for publishers include: Blogging Software, RSS feed creation software (our content syndication & RSS publisher), banner ad manager (for managing your web site's advertisers, including tracking web site activity for number of impressions and clicks for each ad on your website), file library (securely and easily share large or small files or graphics), classified ad manager, advanced photo gallery, community forums and our ecommerce system for subscription and membership fees as well as to integrate with the classified ad module, community calendar, community discussion forums, photo gallery, online directory listings to help you maximize your web site's revenue potential.

Q. Do I need to know web site programming or HTML/CSS to manage my web site?

A. NO. Read more information on our content management system, but you can let our Nashville web design team build a custom and unique web design for your website or feel free to use one of our website templates, themes or skins to get you going. If you have questions about your CMS website or how to build a web site, please just give us a call and we'll walk you through it.

Q. I'm just getting started, can I afford Bondware's Content Management System?

A. Absolutely. Our unlimited page functionality is very affordable. Our content management system pricing, including web site hosting, starts for as little as $25/month. You can then add our Bondware PHP modules to your site at any time based on your needs and budget. Bondware was designed to be feature rich, but also be ideal for small business owners, non-profits and associations. Our website software and hosting fees are extremely low, especially when comparing features to other content management systems.

HOA (Homeowners Association) Web Site Software & Design

Q. Can Bondware's CMS website building tool help us manage and better communicate with our homeowner assocation?

A. Yes. Bondware has many great web tools for HOAs. Many Homeowner Association websites are static and are hard to keep updated and often are managed by a web designer or web developer that lives in the sub-division. While this can seem like a good option initially, HOA boards quickly find it is not a good long term solution.

With Bondware's CMS, the board members can quickly learn to manage the web site themselves. They can post HOA board member meeting minutes. They can post photos of various houses or yards or members of the community/HOA online. Information can be quickly shared to all the members of the homeowner association via Bondware's newsletter publication feature. You can post community news on your web site, then automatically include all that news in a newsletter broadcast with a single check box.

Keeping good communication your HOA members, friends and neighbors, builds better relationships, makes a safer and more fun neighborhood and helps to promote community attitudes that lead to better property values for all.

Q. Our homeowner assocation board didn't approve any money for a website design or website software. What can I do?

A. While Bondware does not offer it's web site software for free, there are often several options to get you going. For example, since our software licenses and web site hosting starts as low as $25/month, you can often get people in your neighborhood/ sub-division to sponsor the website. Bondware allows for static ad placement anywhere on your website as well as a banner ad manager for web sites that need rotating advertisements.

Often realestate agents will sponsor community or HOA websites to get an ad on the web site. This is a great online marketing opportunity for them and keeps their name and face in front of home owners. Don't be afraid to offer the ability to sponsor your HOA website in your next HOA newsletter, you'll be surprised at the responses, frequently including offers to pay for a custom web site design along with the web hosting.

Q. What if I manage a condominium or apartment complex? Do I need be an HOA or Homeowner association to get value out of a Bondware web site?

A. Of course not. Condominium associations are certainly welcome as well as any other type of community web site. Bondware's community features are a great value to all types of associations and we welcome you looking through our website and these CMS FAQs to see how Bondware might be right for you. Please contact us at any time if you have questions about how your association can get online and start really communicating.

Corporate Intranet / Portal Software - Secure Web Sites

Q. How can Bondware meet my intranet and web portal needs?

A. Bondware is great for corporate intranets. At the core of Bondware is a content management system, which allows users or website members to manage content on the site with a "do it yourself" approach. Bondware has "web site feature toggles" which allow you to turn on/off various features of your website. One such feature is the ability to make your website an intranet site, which will tell the software to force a username/password to view any portion of the website.

You could also allow portions of your intranet site open to the public (access without a userid and password), but they require certain pages or groups of pages on your site to be password protected.

Q. Does all the content on my web site need to be secured?

A. No. Bondware allows you to set security on pages by the web page sections which they are associated. If desired, you could have only 1 web page per section, thus allowing security control at the web page level.

Most of the Bondware modules also allow various levels of security controls to be set so members can have areas of the web site open to all web site visitors and other areas restricted to approved or authorized web site members.

Q. What other intranet services does your software provide?

A. Bondware's CMS software has many features that are ideal for corporate intranets. For example, site administrators can manage the content and images on the web pages easily and quickly. There are web site forums that be secured to the individual web site member, so this works great for having inter-company sections of your website where departments can post questions or comments about particular topics. The nature of forums is such that you can track discussions where one website member posts a comment and other website members reply, then yet others can reply to the reply. The forum search functions are great to allow users to quickly find what they are looking for.

Other features include a photo gallery and a company directory listing, similar to a yellow pages online concept. The file library and secure file PHP modules are great for quick and easy uploading of files to your website. Digital files to upload to your website can be any type that you can store on your computer, such as photos, PDFs, word documents, Excel spreadsheets, zip files and more. You can also use our online community calendar module to keep track of departmental or company events and schedules.

Self-Publishing Software FAQs

Hosted Newspaper Sofware for Publishers wanting to go online

Q. What types of features are available in your newspaper software?

A. Our online newspaper solution has many features. Several are described above, but include memership, paid subscriptions management and premium content access, banner ad management, classified ads, polls, RSS syndication, blogs, easy creation of articles and website content, sell photos online, sell subscriptions online and automatically have subscription dates be set to a future date of your choice. Addional features include our newsletter pro software, which allows you to send emails in bulk to all your subscribers. You can automatically include articles summaries in these newsletters and drive additional traffic to your newspaper website.

Q. What makes your newspaper software different than the competition?

A. Our Newspaper creation software was built from the ground up to focus on publishing customers, whether you have an online newspaper or online magazine. Our software hosting company has been around since 1999 and profitable as of year one. We'll be here when you need us.

Q. Will my online newspaper look like all the other newspaper sites? Can I have a custom newspaper website design or pick from a number of newspaper templates?

A. With our Newspaper Publishing system and content manager, you can apply a website template, build your own design or let our web designers build you a custom site design or banner for your newspaper.

Q. I currently use classified ad software from my print publication. Can I import those classified ads into your online newspaper software?

A. Yes, Bondware's classified ad manager will allow you or your subscribers to place classified ads online. In addition, you can import your classified ads from a text file exported from any print classified ad software.

Q. Does your newspaper software support bilingual websites? For example, I'd like my website content to be in both spanish and english.

A. We have customers that publish their newspaper in spanish, however; the content management system administration is only available in English. If you want to publish your newspaper or magazine in both Spanish and English, you will need two pages for each article or story and a reciprocal link.