Real Estate Webmasters – New Resource Index

Posted on January 30, 2008
Filed Under Code Snippets | 2 Comments

Real Estate Webmaster Resources

After doing a substantial amount of changes to my 4 main blogs over the weekend I came to discover in my directories that I had about 40 important and very usable code snippets that would be truly beneficial for those who are in the development of Real Estate Websites.

I’ve setup a nice little snippet section on one of my sites and then proceeded to take my licensed copy of Code Warehouse 2007 code snippet application and basically create a web based interface that features many of its features in an attempt to make the new section truly easy to manage code snippets and to provide them in a way that is familiar to those that use code manager applications.

I first started out with Open Realty being the base platform for the design of the online snippet DB only to switch to an old modified version of Joomla where I core hacked the menu section to emulate a desktop application familiar to many Windows applications especially to such snippet managers.

Code Resources for Webmasters IDX / RETS and vieleRETS

Over the years I’ve accumulated literally gigabytes of code that have been either modified, abandoned, semi-discarded and half organized only to just take up and waste space.  A great deal of it is salvageable and over the course of several months I was able to scape enough bits and pieces of time to assemble all of these code elements into my code snippet database.  That’s the good part. The frustrating part is that I can’t share it easily with coders I work with frequently aside from cut-n-past methods.

So, all that IDX / CRON / MLS / RETS and other code snippets will also be going into the new online snippet DB.  I’ll post a link this weekend for those to cruise the code but keep in mind that although the design is done for the snippet DB its very sparse on content as of yet.

Joomla 1.5 Finally Released

Posted on January 23, 2008
Filed Under Products | Leave a Comment

Joomla 1.5 stable enough to call a full release!

Joomla announces that the release of the much anticipated full stable version 1.5 is now available for download. Although planned for by literally tens of thousands of developers and designers, many professionals, including myself have held off on our developments with great anticipation and a little apprehension before forging forward. This release although greatly anticipated as the cutting edge solution for professional web design and development, many experts believe that Joomla 1.5 will take considerable time to propagate throughout the web when compared to previous releases. This is mostly due to two primary factors; The very lofty plug-in component inventory for Joomla 1.0+ which may take time to see transitions to 1.5 and the current level of available documentation and member interaction about Joomla 1.5 in the forums. Although Joomla 1.5 is a hot topic, the general attitude throughout has been “lets see what happens with the stable release first”.

Here in our own camp; comprised mostly of those who use CMS in commerce and Real Estate solutions, have been watching the progress of Joomla very patiently. The much anticipated release now provides us with a viable product in which to examine in depth as we compare it to a long list of promised changes and the even longer list of speculated changes for a more accurate assessment of Joomla. Thats of course great news, and now that this release is finally available we can move forward with the release of the Joomla 1.5 Rapid Template Design Series scheduled for sale February 20th as mentioned in dozens of places throughout the web.

Joomla 1.5 Templates and Joomla Template Design

This release of Joomla will likely set the standard for all other CMS solutions to follow considering the global appeal and adoption of CMS solutions in recent years.  Joomla has been on the forefront of CMS solutions chosen by professionals who depend on a reliable code base for mission critical websites on a global scale.  Since the beginning of the CMS trend, Joomla (and its predecessor Mambo)  have been the #1 choice for designers and developers in part because of the management and publishing structure used by Joomla along with the exhaustive amount of resources produced by third party vendors around the world.

With templates being easily built and readily available, free in most cases, Joomla 1.5 in my professional opinion will experience a higher rate of growth in the area of template  design above all else.  Although it appears that there is exhaustive mention of updating plugin components to work with 1.5 natively, the time frame in which these enhancement products become available may prove to be slow at first as I mentioned the anticipation of a final product has held off many from completing their updates.  Because of the initial anticipated rapid growth of templates and template design tools, I have put my own product into high gear for an early release.  The Rapid Template Design Series will benefit professional as well as students of design greatly in providing solutions for building truly impressive designs in a market that appears to have no end.

Contact me directly for information on early release versions of the Joomla RTDS.


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