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Your question still not answered? Either email us at: pcjoffice@gmail.com or phone us at: 802-864-9083.
Not yet a member? Download our PlannersWeb membership information flier.
1. What will we have to pay for membership? Will all of our planning commissioners be able to access your new site?
Please take a look at our membership sign-up page for pricing information.
Basically, we tried to keep it simple, while allowing for some flexibility. First point, everyone who is a member will have access to all the same content. Second, there are four “tiers” of membership based on how many individuals you would like to provide access to the PlannersWeb.
For many communities our “Basic10 plan” ($95/year) will work fine. It will allow up to 10 planning commissioners, staff, or anyone else you select, to have access to the PlannersWeb. We also have membership plans that cost a bit more, but that enable you to give access to more board members (if you have a large planning board), staff, governing body members, and/or others.
2. I’m a group administrator. Can you tell me how to add new members, or change existing members?
In the upper right hand corner of the web site you’ll see a link to “Add to New Members” — click on this link if you want to add, remove, and/or change any of your members
You’ll be taken to the add members page. If you have any unfilled members slots, fill in the add member fields. But if you want to edit emails of existing members or swap members (for example, replacing a retiring planning commissioner with a new commissioner) select “Edit Members.” You’ll find this link on the right hand side of the page.
You’ll also find more detailed information on adding new members — especially useful if this is the first time you’re doing it — on our Instructions for Group Administrators page.
3. Not all of our planning commissioners like to go online and some simply don’t have access. Will we able to print out materials for them?
Yes, you can print out materials as long as they’re counted as a member in terms of the number of member slots you purchased. See also Question 6, where we discuss copyright questions.
4. I’m a librarian at a college. How can we gain access to the PlannersWeb?
Our library rate for colleges and universities is $95/year, giving you full access to our site, including all our archives. We can enter a range of IP addresses, allowing faculty and students access. Please phone us at: 802-864-9083 or email us at: pcjoffice@gmail.com so we can get the information we’ll need to set up your account.
5. Can we print out and distribute Planning Commissioners Journal articles that we download, or new content that will be available on the PlannersWeb?
If it’s for use by other PlannersWeb members, the answer is “yes.” For example, you’ve signed up for our Basic10 membership, and included your seven planning commissioners and three staff. There’s a particular Planning Commissioners Journal article you spotted on our site that you’d like them to take a look at — but you don’t want them to have to go to the trouble of tracking it down on our site. Certainly, you’re free to print it out for them, or to email them the pdf of the article.
But if you have an individual (JustOne) membership, the material is for just for your own use. For other use, please contact us for approval.
6. How will your article archives work? Will we need to pay an additional fee to download any articles?
No. Every PlannersWeb member will have access to past Planning Commissioners Journal articles at no additional cost — this is included in what you’ll be paying for in joining the PlannersWeb.
7. The nearly 500 articles in your archives is a lot of content. It might be overwhelming for a planning commissioner to locate things and get an overview of a topic. Is there any way you can address this?
We received this question from several individuals before we opened the PlannersWeb site on August 1st. And yes, we agree, it’s a lot of content. But we also appreciate this concern, and tried to address it in the design of the site.
We’ve grouped material by topic in our “menu tree” structure on the PlannersWeb. This will give you quick and easy access — when you select a topic from the menu — to a one or two sentence summary of each article we’ve published on that topic. From there, you’ll also links to excerpts from each article, and the ability to immediately download and/or print out the full article.
We also have the more typical “Search” box where you can search the PlannersWeb site and find content by keyword. That’s especially useful if you’re doing research.
8. What if I just want to order a few articles from past issues of the Planning Commissioners Journal, but not become a PlannersWeb member?
Over the years, to be frank, it’s cost us more in time to make available articles for individual purchase and download than we’ve generated in revenue. Given our small staff size, we made the decision to focus our efforts on building the best online resource available for citizen planners. An annual membership approach will be easier to manage — and will allow us use our time where we’d most like to, in developing new content and in updating past articles.
For planning commissions and for individuals interested in a broad range of planning and land use issues, we believe our annual membership approach will work well. There won’t be any hassles (or additional cost) in trying to obtain articles we’ve published in the past — they’ll all be at your fingertips.
9. What’s the best way to keep up-to-date on what you’ll be posting on the PlannersWeb?
When you become a member you’ll automatically be subscribed to our regular email updates. But non-members are also welcome to subscribe to our updates. In each update we’ll be summarizing new content, and providing you with other useful information.
We’ve also set up an email update service for those of you don’t want to wait and would prefer to be notified as soon as new content is posted on the PlannersWeb (it’s Option 2 on the page linked to).
10. Who does the beautiful illustrations on the PlannersWeb? Are they available for purchase?
We’ve been most fortunate that talented illustrator Paul Hoffman has done all 86 of our cover illustrations, plus the illustrations for our Planning ABC’s series. That’s well over 100 illustrations over 20 years (and counting). We’ve used crops from a number of his cover illustrations on the PlannersWeb site. Hoffman also designed the icons we’re using on our site.
A number of Paul Hoffman’s cover illustrations for the Planning Commissioners Journal are available for purchase — as framed illustrations that will look great on your wall, and in other formats. If there’s an illustration you particularly like that you don’t see in our Cafe Press store, let us know and when time permits we’ll add it.
Two other notes: you can see other terrific illustrations Hoffman has done by visiting his own web site. Also, please note that Hoffman’s illustrations on our PlannersWeb site (and in the PCJ) are copyright protected; so please don’t copy them.
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If you have any other questions, please feel free to either email us: pcjoffice@gmail.com or phone us: 802-864-9083.
