vBulletin Template Design Kit

Posted on March 29, 2007
Filed Under Products | 8 Comments

Anyone experienced in template (theme) design for vBulletin forums knows all to well the frustrations that surface when designs become involved or complex with visually compelling design characteristics.

vBulletin for the most part is straight forward and simple when it comes to changing and editing the default theme. Color changes and minimal graphics changes can usually be done in just a few short hours working from master foundations as I’ve done for the past two years. However! when you start moving menus around or adding right, left and variable columns among other things then the madness really begins. Watching the vBulletin support forums certainly confirms this as we read time and time again the frustrations licensed owners experience with what would generally appear to be simple objectives.

vBulletin themes are such that there are literally hundreds of free entry level or minimal modification types on the web but as many well know these themes are often quite generic and usually feature only color pallet changes. Without adding insult to injury many of those same themes are renamed duplicates of other themes which in my opinion only compounds the frustrations with new board owners.

Working on a particularly complex and modern design for a client of a Real Estate forum led me to the conclusion that its time to put this nonsense to rest and assemble all my design elements currently in inventory and formulate a nice clean design foundations for release in yet another segment of the template design kit.

Naturally this does sound like another potentially LENGTHY promise that takes forever to come to fruition but…. since the anticipated main template design kit that we have been discussing for nearly 18 months is quite honestly in its final stages and as promised will feature things I’m not willing to reveal that will make the wait worth while.

Sound off and email me if you have any questions to this point on it.

Real Estate Plugin for WordPress updated!

Posted on March 29, 2007
Filed Under Products | 10 Comments

UPDATED January 30th 2008

Real Estate Listings in WordPress Updated Jan 30th 2008

Well its been some time since I had a chance to dig this out of the Live Demo Site and finally get it re tasked for release.  My programmer just finished up the WordPress theme generator and my Open Realty Theme generator which I’ll now apply the templates to for publishing. This has taken us a great deal of time to get all the generated output to be as XHTML and CSS compliant as we could while still maintaining modern browser support.  Because of this the Real Estate Listings in WordPress Plugin took a back burner status for a brief moment.

Not to be confused with the methods I discuss on The Brokers Edge regarding the display of Open Realty listings in WordPress, this plugin essentially works like a gallery script with some additional edit and description field features that make it relatively easy to pub listings by listing number in specific posts and then present a template for randomizing and rotating featured listings.  Naturally this can already be done using our hack for the Open Realty integration method ( The better solution in my opinion for large databases ) the plugin makes such a feature available with native appearances in WordPress.

I’ll be working to wrap up a few projects on The Brokers Edge including the new WordPress SEO Theme Generator then I’ll return to this product and get it wrapped up.

Special thanks to ALL THOSE BETA TESTERS and your feedback.  I think this plugin will solve the mid range demand for such a product and the fact that I’m keeping it free should make it an ideal solution.  The addition of IDX and RETS import ability will also be supported via a tutorial and set of CRON scripts using the VieleRETS script along with a pair of custom apps we will instruct on its use. 

Assorted Related Links for the WordPress Real Estate Listings Editor IDX / MLS

www.jaredritchey.com/wordpress-real-estate-plugin-update-2.html
www.jaredritchey.com/real-estate-listing-plugin.html
www.jaredritchey.com/wordpress-real-estate-integration.html
www.jaredritchey.com/wordpress-real-estate-listing-manager.html
www.jaredritchey.com/real-estate-listing-editor-wordpress-22.html

OLD POST PART
Well its been a very very busy three weeks as I have had my time literally taxed between a new master commerce setup for TBE and the final stages of vBulletin Template Design Kit getting wrapped up I’ve had literally NO time to mess with this much needed plugin. The good news is that I’ve got my programmer onto final "Beta Release" edits of the WordPress Real Estate plugin which will be featured FREE for all registered members both here on my personal blog and over at The Brokers Edge main site once that design is completed. I’ve added a few critical features including fixing the multi part and CC email feature of the phpmailer class that so many projects on the internet use today. I’ll of course post the fixed or should I say micro edited version of this very popular php e-mail class this week as I’ve purchased a commercial license of SEF Advanced for my server and the moment I have a free time I’ll be building a Joomla site. If anyone is at all interested in getting this php mail class before I post then please send me an email to jared – a t – thebrokersedge.com


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