CRE Loaded Design - e-Commerce

Posted on August 24, 2007
Filed Under Design | 2 Comments

I love it when a plan comes together. I managed to go through late last night and salvage exactly 12 nice designs 4 of which I’ll give away on this site.

Working with the Dreamweaver Extension for CRE Loaded / osCommerce I discovered several little bugs that would make life difficult if the designs were built using it. It seems that CRE Loaded Pro and CRE Loaded Standard have a yet to be discovered difference in the rendering of boxes that I’m still not able to locate.

I’ll have it by weeks end figured out and then I’ll convert all my osCommerce designs to CRE Loaded so I can offer up a wider selection of free resources.

Website Facelift - Website Redesign

Posted on August 24, 2007
Filed Under Design | 2 Comments

One of my favorite books I’ve recently read and re read is one titled “Web ReDesign | Workflow that Works” by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler. Packed with practical design and re design procedural methods, the dynamic redesign duo did a great job on this book. A great study but even a better tool if its actually used. The techniques get a practical evaluation this weekend as I wrap up several projects.

This weekend is my wrap up ALL MY SITES weekend. For months and I don’t mean one or two I mean MONTHS I’ve had a dozen projects literally in limbo as I worked on client projects and this weekend some are getting completed beginning with ReDesigns.

I’ve redesigned JaredRitchey.com again and again finally time to make it a reality with the final render. Some of the features my new site will have include;

  • An assortment of clever web based web design related tools (many for sale for $3 - $5)
  • Cost analysis calculators for web design price comparison
  • More effective and open user / visitor features. Taking comments and membership a new direction.
  • Categories for CRELoaded, Tutorials, OpenRealty, Joomla, WordPress added
  • New file management feature added for the dozens and dozens of resources
  • http://www.jaredritchey.com/articles the Joomla install that will be the central location to all the larger posts and articles.
  • Snippet DB with Forum for the products and free solutions I have on the site.
  • All those templates with previews, online documentation and downloads. Many going to The Brokers Edge as well.
  • Better advertising management as I’ve installed OpenADS with some integration done to make it work in flash. Advertising doesn’t index in the SE’s so why not use it to its fullest potential.
  • A section entirely dedicated to building commerce solutions that actually turn a buck.
  • Portfolio. I’ve avoided it for years, but I’m posting a limited dozen or so designs and concepts for review.
  • New online client questionnaire for web design projects using my new friend jQuery.js
  • Photoshop Tutorials - Plenty of them
  • Dreamweaver Extensions, once I got started I got addicted so I’ll be writing about and dedicating a section herein to their use.
  • Professionals In Review - I’m starting to write about industry professionals more often so I’m going to have a category for each of the people I write about. Why? Because I think blogroll is great but this is better.
  • http://www.jaredritchey.com/articles/creloaded/ being added to accommodate everything CRE Loaded
  • much more ….

UPDATED: 08/28/07
I’ve found a small error in the new design you may have seen Saturday that conflicted with the WordPress Shopping Cart. I’ll repost the new design today or tomorrow. Commenting is fixed and still available.

Marketing Your Real Estate Listings

Posted on August 22, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Listings with One Way links back to your site

Chatting today with an associate who does a great deal of SEO sparked an idea I’m going to entertain. For months we have been following all the blogs we own and write in for SEO performance and although reciprocal linking is likely dead we have noticed that some listing links are getting good results. I’ll show you what I mean.

It seems that when a Realtor has the opportunity to publish some of their listings off domain as we have been tracking, its certainly noticeable to see a marked increase in listing recognition as opposed to those listings that reside on domain. Before you conclude the obvious assumption I’ll elaborate a bit;

Realtors are essentially in the business of doing what? Selling homes? Part of being a valuable service to your client is to demonstrate that you can effectively market a home by employing the resources you have available. Realtors we have been tracking based on their market conditions, SEO and general lead generation seem to have more frequent visits and responses from qualified buyers by simply posting select or featured listings on remote services or domains. Before you say “duh” note that it doesn’t work consistently where certain factors are not present.

What I noticed or should I say noticed after it was tossed in my lap a dozen times was that listings with a combination of features out performed offsite listings that didn’t have them. These features are entirely search engine bias because in all the listings that I can get to come up in google or msn for instance, only those that don’t look like a big fat inventory perform better. Why? Well I’m not 100% but I can guestimate that like some online e-commerce sites, real estate listings or “inventory” may get kicked to the curb by search engines if the listings appear to be a bulk repetitive catalog of similar items. I’ve tested this with commerce sites before and noticed that even with the aid of site maps, search engines will stop at some point from indexing entire catalogs of products or in this case listings.

What I’m going to do is put up an external listing manager on a blog with real estate related news and content and allow Realtors to publish “DETAILED” listings free of charge. In fact I think I’ll do it on this very blog. I could have fully mis read the data and be barking up the wrong tree but if I’m write the results should be as we expect.

If you have a few featured listings you would like to try out with this then let me know.

Bryan Ruby’s CMSReport.com

Posted on August 21, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 2 Comments

If you have ever wanted to just snag some good information on Content Management Systems then I’ll suggest a blog for you. I was doing my routine searching for some reliable information sources for ideas to write new posts in my college blog and my real estate blog among others when I stumbled upon a truly impressive resource. I love well rounded and informative information. Bryan Ruby, the author, publisher, webmaster for CMSReport.com has a SPANK of good information and resources regarding many of todays top CMS solutions on the web.

What is a CMS and why should I care?

A CMS is a content management system and a content management system is used to manage content. What content? Articles, downloads, images, files, folders, navigation elements, images, media elements like video, podcasts, flash animations and the list goes on and on. Some of my top favorites are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal for obvious reasons; I design for them. But that really doesn’t articulate what a CMS is until you look at from the perspective of a publisher of content. Take this example;

Your morning news paper is organized in such a way to present information according to a criteria or format that applies an age old principle for presenting information. A way that is familiar and comfortable to the readers which lends to its appeal and credibility. In a newspaper writers express ideas and thoughts in the articles they write without altering the structure even though the newspapers articles change frequently. Essential for readability, the familiar structure helps readers quickly locate material and information relevant to their interests. Beautiful, familiar and standard, right? People tend to gravitate towards the familiar. Hence the birth of the CMS formula. Now granted, the newspaper isn’t a CMS but a CMS certainly has the features of a good newspaper.

A CMS does with the web what newspapers do in print. They provide a familiar relatively unchanging structure with intelligent guided navigation (hopefully) and informative content. When it comes time to pick a flavor, needs are assessed and objectives analyzed but fundamentals never change. The idea behind a CMS as mentioned above is the creation of a fundamental look and feel wherein the content changes. So which ones should you choose? Well you should visit Bryan’s site for that answer. For Real Estate I suggest only one as mentioned for my own personal bias. I’m a true fan of Joomla and you can’t stop me with WordPress because WordPress is unique in ways that can make it function as both a CMS and a blog. Check out this article from the Adobe Edge: July 2006 Edition.

Its important to note that CMS’s are not just the future of professional websites; they are in my professional opinion absolutely essential for delivering current and competitive content to your viewers. Lets face it, static HTML is as dead my old Atari Game System and if you are not a publisher for lack of a better term, you risk passing into the realms of other types of dying technology. Some proprietary systems are also on their way out as these age old web based scripts are falling off left and right. Consumers, end users and publishers of web content demand features that are friendly. Yes, “Friendly”, because it applies to every aspect of your site, friendly to customers, visitors, search engines and hopefully every other entertainer of your invested interest being your website. A CMS empowers you with this ability.

CRE Thumbnail Generator

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Frustrating to see templates I design break because end users upload an image that just blows the sides out of a design. With all CRE Loaded templates I deliver I always include the user guide on standards and formats to administer the site with efficiency. The problem with the CRE Loaded feature for managing image sizes is that it can distort the clarity and quality of your image while doing NOTHING to optimize the images.

One thing that always frustrates end users and store owners is the inconsistent sizes of image that they use in CRE Loaded makes their store look cheap and un professional. CRE Loaded does have an automatic sizing feature but most store owners that maintain commercial sites do editing of images offline. Why, because people gravitate and expect patterns they can gain comfort in. Nothing says crappy site more than one with many things in disarray that it confuses users.

So why not just have an image thumbnail generator that simply takes your image file, and generates the three sizes necessary for product listings? Well this generator does just that; the user can define the width or height variables, the prefix for the file, ie “small_”, “medium_” “large_” and maintain consistency in image sizes for all product listings.

The nice thing about using this method for custom prefixes is that when a person has a product image for say, a Dell Laptop Computer — dell_laptop.jpg the prefixes will generate sized images that are easily identified for size format. The images become small_dell_laptop.jpg, medium_dell_laptop.jpg, large_dell_laptop.jpg or any prefix user defined of course. I mean you could easily make your prefix im_a_tumble_weed_ resulting in an image with the name im_a_tumble_weed_dell_laptop.jpg

This script is NOT a contribution that goes into CRE Loaded primarily because I wanted to keep it external for use with ZendCart, osCommerce and other applications that require such things. Specifically for store and cart systems that do not have sizing options like CRE Loaded does.

FREE for use on my site and a mere $5 to have the feature on yours creates a valuable time saver.

WordPress Real Estate Listing Manager

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 9 Comments

Remember this one. My programmer had built and we beta tested the WordPress 2.2 Listing Manager for Real Estate sites and Brokerages but never released it. Well today its back on the project block of things to do in September even though our new code makes WordPress work beautifully with listings in a way I’ll reveal later.

I charged my coder to do three things before we call it a “Real Estate” plugin for WordPress. I told him that I wanted the new modifications to feature custom fields and to have it so I can have three versions on my site for FREE download under three different names. Minor changes will naturally justify the three names as I want to approach three types of blog genera with this script.

I’m going to call the three versions; “Real Estate Listing Plugin” , “Automotive Listing Plugin” and “Photo Classifieds Gallery” since this plugin is really only a gallery plugin to begin with. The main difference is the fact that it is a gallery script that the display of gallery items are fully customizable and additional details and elements can be added by the blog owner. Search abilities are naturally a key feature as are PERMALINKS for SEO friendly links.

I hate delays more than anything but sometimes priorities shift and I’m forced to make drastic changes to keep up with obligations. I certainly hope I can get this to you before I grow old.

Until then, happy blogging.

CRE Loaded Template Design Dreamweaver Extension

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products | 2 Comments

One of the more ambitious products I design for is also one of the most frustrating for new or inexperienced designers. CRE Loaded is a forked variant of osCommerce that was modified to feature some pre installed contributions and then made commercial.

CRE Loaded shares with its parent a rather standard old school early PHP 3 method of templating for presentation. osCommerce as many will note, has been the most downloaded and widely used shopping cart on the internet second to none. As template options like BTS and STS came available, forked versions started to popup beginning with Zen Cart then others that have come and gone. BTS and STS adds a degree of design control that is easier understood and quicker to implement template changes lending a great deal to the continuing growth of each solution.

Why on earth then would a person need to create a Dreamweaver Extension for CRE Loaded? A few minor but relative routine reasons; template design for CRE Loaded is anything but exciting and most if not all the designs people take notice of are as indifferent as the next. Take any 100 or 200 designs you like, stack them on top of one another and peer down into them and you will see that almost all of the stock inventory available are essentially the same. The same features, the same menus, the same navigation types, the same everything but design elements and graphics.

The Dreamweaver Extension includes a few pre defined features that will hopefully change all that. Of all the designs I get contracted to do for osCommerce or CRE Loaded, most if not all of them request the same old run of the mills look and layout that they could easily go to Template Monster and purchase. 90% of all templates I design for either solution are for template houses and template resellers. In recent months I’ve spent a great deal of $$$ redoing my code base and snippet inventory to make some rather proprietary, detailed and fully unique features for future templates. This extension is the result of that.

If a person truly wants to be able to design a template for CRE Loaded or osCommerce and has only basic entry level skills than this extension is the answer. I had planned to release it free of charge and just charge for the tutorials and support elements but after looking more at my design inventory I realized I could be cutting my own thought. When the extension is released it will feature some additional packaged elements along with a few dozen unique feature sets that will likely sell for $40.

I’ll present more details later on some of the elements of the extension.

Bashers, Haters and Cry Babies - Don’t Hire Them!

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

Before you hire a web designer!

Jealousy is an interesting animal. It causes people to lose their mind, bash or make false claims and even seek to damage the very object of their jealousy.

Today, after spending nearly an hour on the phone with one of my clients I was amazed to find that people acting in jealous desperation have such little contact with reality or the element of consequence that I’d almost safely assume them to be sociopaths for lack of a better term.

What happens when emails contain such violent, profane and threatening content as to make one stand back in utter shock and amazement? What happens when jealous or confused competitors seek to publicly defame or disparage the competition? The answer! The pursuit and propagation of FRAUD.

If you are a prospect looking for web design professionals, one of the things you must always do is LISTEN to the attitude, the voice, the arguments and the possibilities presented to you before you ever lay down a single dollar in hiring a designer. Bashing is nothing new, but such personalities should be actively avoided.

I remember just 18 months ago the attitudes I encountered by executives and other industry professionals regarding open source products. Listening to them in developer groups put down Andrew Eddie or Ryan Bonham for their product visions has yet to yield a single valid claim. I sit in and listen patiently as I outwardly agree with them long enough to fully weigh their ignorance. Tragic really.

Today we see guys like Andrew Eddie, Louis Landry, Johan Janssens, Scott Isaacs, Ryan Bonham (and the list goes on) are now icons in the industry with open source products so successful that the US Government uses some of these products. Corporations who once considered spending tens of thousands of dollars come to the realization that Joomla will do the task. Open Realty alone can compete with some commercial solutions I still maintain and suggest to clients and its fully FREE!

I’m ashamed at myself for falling into bashing rhetoric from the influence of a person that has nothing good to say about anyone or anything for that matter. I’ve been guilty of giving open realty its fair share of critique and criticism as well as other products. Although brief and a bit distracting, today, I have no problems suggesting with bias the use of many of these products.

Today it just didn’t settle well with me to hear someone out there spending so much energy bashing my work only to discover that the very template he is using is one I was contracted to design for a large template house. Naturally claiming it as his own. I laugh at such things and make a note of it. My personality is such that when I think about it, the annoyance gets me motivated to give some response which you see herein.

Real Estate Web Designers and Moral Ethics

I truly despise seeing a person get ripped off and I hate it even more when a designer or design company bashes other designers in an attempt to justify their own faults.

I’ve been in this business long enough to see some interesting things and although I rarely do work for individuals I do hear about individuals suffering at the hands of unethical self proclaimed professionals. Nothing is more frustrating then having to tell a person that I can come up with no logical reason why some internet professionals say the things they do but can usually point out that money would likely be the greatest motivator.

When a web designer or developer makes you feel guilty for hiring them, I’d say its a problem. Therefore my quick suggestion for the day is this;

What to look for before hiring a web designer - web professional

Here is a few of my off the cuff top tips of types to avoid. Naturally they are in no particular order.

A Negative Bashing Attitude: If they have nothing good to say about anyone but themselves you will never succeed with them. PERIOD!
Its always a bad idea: When I encounter designers that tell clients their ideas are stupid or can’t be done it annoys me. I can write paragraphs about this but I’ll just summarize by saying this. Unless the opposition is well founded, then its not likely true. Its just a cheap way for the unskilled to make excuses why they cant do something. (SOMETIMES)
Open Source Sucks: I’ll just say that these people are deliberately indifferent to the truth. Some open source is bad but a qualified expert would know what to suggest and what not to. Custom solutions may very well be the answer but they are not the ONLY answer.
Demonic Possession: Yeah, its a bit funny but articulates the point well. People who hold your domain hostage along with all the work and or things you hired them for are just people to avoid. I encounter web designers who will register a domain, design or develop a site and somehow believe they own it. Didn’t you pay them to do a job for you? If you hire me to build a house, pay me for it, shouldn’t you own it? Its tragic many feel justified in by never delivering passwords, never give you access and then maintains an attitude of full possessive control. Naturally you feel guilty requesting any changes because this person has you as his residual meal ticket for every request you make. Avoid these people at all costs, because it will be AT ALL COSTS if you don’t.

On a final note, bias would have made my list but bias really isn’t always bad. I have a bias for many of the products I suggest but I’m not close minded toward other options. Bias can be a great way to evaluate your designer and his / her attention to details regarding proficiency with the solution.

I’ll cover more on this in subsequent posts as my annoyance level falls back a tier or two.

Page Turn vs Page Peel Flash Effects

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Products, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

If you have ever wanted to have a nice high quality page turn effect for your site then look no further. In recent months I’ve invested heavily into the completion of our Page Turn effect which essentially emulates the effects of a turning page.

The difference between a Flash PageTurn (page turn effect) and a Flash PagePeel (page peel effect) is really not a great deal. The underlying code for nearly all page turn and or page peel type snippets stem from a single source. A woman in China named URNAMI was likely the first to publish the solution in the actionscript forums about 4 years ago. Its the source I’ve used and its the source most others use in their projects. Page Flip or Page Turn is the emulation of actual pages as the final rendering looks more like a booklet or magazine for instance. PagePeel or Flash Page Peeling is an effect that emulates the peeling back of the web page to reveal an advertisement or link as you can see in the upper right corner of my site.

Commercial client projects helped fund the development as I have used it successfully on two domains to date and I’m finalizing its introduction into a Real Estate site for online housing and condo guides. Its a truly nice effect given the limited resources for the project.

Two years ago I had actually planned to release a version that would pull its page data into a set of flash files via XML / PHP for use in Open Realty. The idea was briefly abandoned as version changes to Open Realty opened up a few barriers that proved to be a coding challenge. My initial concern at the time was the lofty amount of code that was currently weighing down the addon to make it void of any real practical use.

Well the worm has turned and I’ll be converting this page turn effect to work with database driven applications like Open Realty. I’m not saying database controlled image management or something as trivial as that, I’m saying pulling of listing data and all listing details to be displayed in a turn page document.

The Female Modeling Magazine Site, The CRE Loaded Cart and soon the Real Estate site will be pretty clean examples of how effective this tool can be used. Commercial sites like JC Penny, Victoria’s Secret and IBM have been using such effects on their web sites for two years. People tend to gravitate to the familiar and books and magazines are familiar. This would explain the attraction to its use I’m sure.

I’ll get a demo up this week for you to examine. Chances are most people would want to see the models so I’ll likely publish that one. I’ll then provide a link to the Real Estate site that has the feature effectively employed.

Flash Page Turn Corner Effect

Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 8 Comments

Flash Page Peel / Page Flip Effect Script:

Our advertising script is the most effective type of page peel or page flip flash effect on the market. Modified to work with a select few open source applications, the page peel advertising rotator is effective in bringing to life advertising options on your domain.

Page Peel Effect


Dont settle for out dated and greatly annoying popup ads and why settle for banner advertising on your site taking up precious real estate that could be used for more productive site features when you can randomize multiple client advertising campaigns with a system that puts the rest to shame.

80% of your ads success depends on one thing.

Its been said by advertising experts that the 80 / 20 rule applies to advertising in a clearly difinitive way that articulates the effectiveness of an advertisement. For each dollar spent, 80% of that dollar is in the headline and 20% in the content body of an ad. Headlines serve one purpose, to draw attention. That being said; can you honestly think of a more effective headline than this Page Peel Flash Effect Script? The answer should be obvious.

Affordable isn’t even the best way to articulate this. How about Dirt cheap pound for pound more effective than solutions costing hundreds of dollars. If $80.00 out of every $100.00 is spent trying to CATCH YOUR PROSPECTS ATTENTION RIGHT NOW with effective CALLS TO ACTION then this tool is as cost effective any can be. My 80% would be to bet on a sure thing rather than throwing darts at a dart board in hopes someone would click my banner.

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