HOA website contents

Our current HOA website has all posted information accessable to anyone on the www. Not just common forms but meet. minutes & budget info. too!

What is the "Industry Accepted Practice" as far as making this (private) information available without registration or member login?

I have visited other HOA websites, randomly, on the www and have always found a "members only" or similar section where I ASSUME the private material is available.

Our meetings are not public so why should our private documents be?

Current "webmaster" says: "I really don't see where anything posted thus far would constitute any type of breach in confidentiality or security."

http://www.fostersmill.org

I say he is wrong, naieve (and foolish).

Any comments on what should be posted (freely accessed) and,

what shouldn't be (freely) posted.

PS - Have a look at one of our customer's websites for a great example of what to make public vs. private. Look under documents to see the public documents. Of course you can't see the private pages, but at least the public area will show you what they consider OK to publish to the world.

http://www.cypressgreenshoa.com/

If your community would like a secure website, Community123.com will build you one for free, transfer all your old website's contents to the new one and give you 2 months to try the new site all for free.

I took a look at the documents posted on your website. Keep in mind that Google and others index your pages and the contents of all documents on the public part of your site.

So someone searching for your property manager's name in Google may find this in your JAN 2007 minutes:

"A motion was made to terminate the services of (name removed) Community
Management for cause within a 30 day period from the time our attorney reviews
xxx contract and deems it appropriate. Motion made by (name removed), Secretary
and 2nd by (name removed), Treasurer."

I took out the people and company names, but you can see that your MC may have a problem with his company's name coming up in a Google search with your termination 'for cause' minutes listed there. In other words a prospect of his searches for his company's name in Google and your document appears. The prospect decides not to hire him. Maybe this is no problem unless you have some sort of non-disclosure in your MC contract, but why create the conflict by showing this to the world?

I also noted that individual homeowner names are listed in the minutes too. If these ever tie to a violation I can see some conflict there too. People may not like their names posted on a public site like this and even though you may not be violating any privacy laws, why have the conflict?

In general, it's best to err on the side of privacy when placing documents on the internet. Once a document is indexed by Google, MSN, Yahoo etc. then it's nearly impossible to get it removed from the Internet. Even if you delete it from your site it still lives on as a cached document in the search engines and they will not remove it just because you ask.