Resignation from PREN

Posted on February 27, 2009
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Do in part to potential conflicts of interest, I’ve resigned as the administrator of the Pro Real Estate Network forums. Since the owner of the forums was also one of the officers of The Brokers Edge it may be a conflict of interest for me to maintain a relationship with the company we have broken ties with. To give a little more information without revealing to much about the transition I’ll summarize as follows the motive;

The Brokers Edge was a company started by Mack McMillan and other real estate professionals wanting to help their clients move away from proprietary solutions by creating tools that work with nearly any type of open source application. One of their primary products is called UltimateIDX (UltimateRETS is a variant of the same app) which provides a full blown CRM and MLS solution that can be plugged into any existing website structure with little or not modification. The beautiful thing about UltimateIDX is that it was built based entirely on what web savvy Realtors concluded would be essential in this economic climate for marketing real estate listings more effectively, including REO properties. Since so many Realtors had grown frustrated with proprietary solutions in the past, a steady migration to freely available and substantially easier to customize applications is a rapid trend. But which applications are commonly part of this trend? Applications like OpenRealty, Joomla, WordPress and Drupal among others. TBE wanted to facilitate this transition by giving powerful tools to open source application users in a cost effective way.

Value is an important word here. The original UltimateIDX version 0.9.0 BETA cost in excess of $15k, that’s the part I can reveal. In version 2.0 the original code had been reworked from the ground up to make it flexible enough to be engaged by any type of online sales management not limited to real estate. Such includes automotive, foreclosure, insurance among others which cost a spank of cash to pull off. The officers and original investors saw the value in the application to such a degree that a formal IPO had been pursued, stocks issued, and investment poured in. Now for the sad part.

It could not be agreed upon for fair compensation or payment for services being rendered for any of the applications, hosting or design and development of solutions based on UltimateIDX code. So the development staff, the original founder and myself have moved to UltimateIDX for the furtherance of our services. We still do the same conversions of proprietary sites from nearly all of the proprietary solution providers to the more effective open source solutions and we still actively support integration, bridging and building of Realtor solutions based on these tools.

WP Menu Creator 1.0.6

Posted on February 22, 2009
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Hey we updated the FREE WP Menu Creator today and it now features the correct XHTML Strict method for handling opening links in a new window. Since sites will not validate with XHTML Strict using target=”_blank” we have replaced it with new code that provides both validation and the option for opening in a blank browser window. By using the REL attribute in the URL I have added in the option for either “external” which will open as would the target _blank and I’ve added in the “no follow” option as per many requests.

In addition we have taken advantage of some of the core javascript features in WordPress by implementing the ability to change the order of your links with a simple drag and drop feature. In this new version, once you have created your menu items you can easily drag and drop links into the sort order you desire. We applied this same feature to the core modifications for OpenRealty nearly 8 months ago with great success in which our clients can easily drag and drop the sort order of the “Listing Form Elements” to accommodate their layout objectives. Similar to the Open Realty modification, this WP Menu Creator update was added to simplify the process for changing position or sort order of the elements or in this case menu items. I’ll submit the code to OpenRealty in the next day or so as in that version uses JQuery to achieve the effect. There is a simple JS include required for the new functionality which I’ve updated in the readme.txt file and I’ll update the UltimateIDX documentation as well on their site. http://www.ultimateidx.com/menu-creator/

As with all previous versions of WP Menu Creator, this version has gone under more refinements and will work effectively with most “Suckerfish” based cascading menu systems and naturally there is a variant that supports OpenCube Menus as well. You can download the latest version here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-menu-creator/

J-Realty Going Open Source

Posted on February 16, 2009
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Today Chad announced that his very expensive FREE Joomla plug-in is going to be released Open Source in the next few days. Formerly called EZPro Realty, JRealty consists of a plugin and a component for Joomla 1.5+ that turns the super popular CMS solution into a pretty decent and effective Real Estate Website solution. Having been built after encountering countless issues with Realtors frustrated over proprietary website solutions JRealty sought to solve some of the lengthy session URL issues the first CMS Realty was notorious for.

The motive for releasing this as Open Source is really no secret as we waited for PBFlash to near completion of his product update to CMSRealty. Its worthy of mention that CMSRealty is certainly the only product of its type permitted mention of in the now mega un-popular Open Realty forums as I’ll explain why below. It has been suggested for some time that the key motive in challenging the uniqueness and authenticity of the JRealty code was in part do to a motive to exploit the code for the furtherance of CMSRealty. Although vindicated by a third party code comparison by Joomla staff, we felt that since the militant nature of the Open Realty forums had reduced its attendance and interaction to dismal levels, that a shot in the arm at our expense is what CMSRealty developers were seeking. Now that it appears that Paul is releasing his product very similar in scope and feature to our own that there is little motive to keep our code encrypted. I had mentioned this in other posts around the web that ALL of our free plugins are 100% open source with the only exception being those built for Open Realty. Why? The answer is quite simple. Open Realty has never added or expanded in function or feature by the origination of its own ideas to do so. Open Realty takes from the ideas of others and gives NO credit to the effect in our experience but I’m willing to be corrected if I’ve overlooked something. We could be fully wrong, but in discussion about this very subject just days ago, we could not bring to memory anything new in Open Realty that didn’t start first with one of its forum members or addon developers and that includes CMSRealty.

JRealty vs CMS Realty

Based entirely on demo site comparisons, it appears that both CMS Realty and JRealty are nearly identical in end result with the primary differences between the two being only a few things. CMSRealty has a unique advantage currently in that the user registrations and sessions are in sync and that the meta data appears to be carried over from the OpenRealty integration. JRealty has the unique advantage in that it works quite comfortably with SH404 which is the leading and most popular SEF URL tool being used by Joomla site owners. Our focus has always been the end user as I’ve mentioned time and time again having encountered frustrated Realtors wanting an affordable solution they can easily expand upon. By adding in SH404 support, site owners can build for what we believe to be the very first and only truly SEF Friendly CMS Real Estate solution in existence today. Aside from the above mentioned, it does appear that JRealty is the only solution that currently has two types of modules for quick search forms and featured listings and that JRealty does permit the inclusion of unique pseudo directory structures as we had foreseen the need for this in some instances.

However, the differences between these two applications will be indistinguishable in the near future I’m certain of that as we each purse what I hope to be a friendly competitive venture but only time will tell. As mentioned in the forums for JRealty a month ago, we have planned for our next release to include the ability to add custom title and meta tags carried over from Open Realty and we hope to have the stat tracking feature in place as well.

If I were to do a side by side comparison in the future, it might look that only a few differences in features would distinguish each component and those differences would be; The mentioning of CMS Realty will be the only product allowed in the Open Realty forums ( no surprise there ) and that JRealty will likely be the only component that supports SH404 and Joomla 1.5+ Native.

Turnkey Real Estate Website $99

Posted on February 3, 2009
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Turnkey Real Estate Website

How Realtors can take control of their marketing efforts!

Over the past few years I’ve been routinely asked about what type of solution I could suggest to a Realtor who wanted something turnkey that would not require them to go with proprietary service provider. Unfortunately, I really couldn’t come up with a solution to suggest unanimously that didn’t require them to purchase from one of the many proprietary services available. Realtors have consistently stressed that they are tired of monthly bills, tired of countless service fees and fully annoyed with the limitations of some of the service provider solutions. Realtors want a CMS, they want a Blog, they want support and they want things easy enough to change that they wont be robbed at gun point for simple petty changes, nearly forced to pay hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for such changes. Realtors also want CONTROL, they want to be able to add a feature to their site with little or no effort and certainly with little or no added expense. Lets be realistic for a moment, the vast majority of proprietary solutions available today are extremely effective at getting new, inexperienced and sometimes naive Realtors locked into an attractive entry level agreement for $25, $35 or more for example. The problem with a good many of these solutions is that they are basically “identical clones” from one realtor website to the next. Sure, you might be able to pick from a template or two, you might be able to have a different color scheme, or may even a few added features for extra cash, but by and large most of the turnkey solutions offered by many companies are based largely on a single proprietary package loaded with countless features Realtors are told they need when in fact they dont.

Until recently, nearly all of the turnkey solution providers we examined had site structures that were based on techniques formulated in the mid 90’s and had included things that were not only outdated, but potentially harmful to a Realtors marketing efforts. In today’s market, for a company to try and pimp a package deal to a Realtor any type of tired old method is insane, yet we see this every day as we listen to a Realtors frustrations over the dismal results they are getting for dollars spent. For those who have followed my writing on any number of our blogs, its not difficult to discover my attitude toward the chain and ball solutions Realtors often find themselves involved with. Its also not difficult for you to discover that I tend to suggest tried and tested open source solutions which are supported by not just tens of thousands of people but likely millions of people that are on the cutting edge of web technologies. 90% of the features being offered by most solution providers can be achieved with an open source solution more efficiently, more effectively, more powerfully, and at a fraction of the cost. With the exception of IDX / RETS and some other types of features like mapping, most open source solutions we suggest can provide the results most Realtors are looking for. Thankfully we have built plugins and addons all of which are FREE of charge to bridge areas where there have been limitations. Now, there is NO excuse for a Realtor to bother considering taking part in any proprietary turnkey real estate website solution being offered given the facts.

We came up with the $99 deal not because $99 for two simple reasons. Its an entry level means to get Realtors to explore the power of blogging and it gives us an opportunity to provide additional services to our clients in the future as those services become available. We believe that If a Realtor can start a website for a petty $99 and start blogging the following day to maximize his / her market presence than that is a likely future candidate for hiring us for things like IDX or RETS empowered WordPress blogs or maybe custom design services for example.

Search Engine Optimized IDX RETS MLS Realtor Websites

The Real Estate website we are offering are a WordPress blog configured as a CMS, with an OpenRealty listings manager pre configured with our plugins along with several essential additions necessary to maximize your SEO efforts. The best part of this is that we will configure everything for you to get you started, this includes all the plugins necessary to get your rolling, your chosen theme, the integration for listings management, and even pre configure your template to work with the WordPress Menu Manager plugin developed by The UltimateIDX. With this combination, you will end up with an open source, NON proprietary, easy to manage solution. Our own plugins are just weeks from going open source to make this package deal even sweeter. What if you already have an existing website?

We can convert your EXISTING site to WordPress

On one of my other sites I mention in an article that we do conversions for WordPress for existing sites and I wanted to outline a few designs to articulate the end result. Many times people will have a design in hand or at least in mind that they map out and ask us to quote them on the building a WordPress template for them. In 90% of all of these projects the price is $150 – $250 depending on complexity and we will deliver a fully validating XHTML / CSS based WordPress design they can take pride in knowing its exclusive to them. Although the vast majority of the conversions we do are for WordPress, OpenRealty and Joomla, I always deliver a static XHTML / CSS copy to the client so they can have a master foundation to work from in the future in the event other solutions require a custom theme. Below are several sites that I have built using “Client Submitted Designs” (either from their own designers or purchased templates at Template Monster) which I converted to WordPress, OpenRealty and or Joomla.

Click on the banner above to get started today.

WordPress and OpenRealty Tutorials

Posted on February 1, 2009
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Not a lot of time to post today as I’m wrapping up a California MLS project but I wanted to drop in and just make a quick post that I’ve been approved at WordPress to publish one of our 3 newest WordPress plugins today. One of the plugins I did manage to get uploaded to WordPress.org is our new 100% FREE WP Guides plugin. WP Guides is essentially a tutorial and document interface for the admin panel of WordPress. Developed at the same time for OpenRealty and Joomla, we have also released the OR Guides 100% Free of charge as well with the Joomla version pending release sometime this next month. I’ll briefly describe each below;

WordPress Video Tutorials in WP Guides

WP Guides was developed in part to solve the ever pressing need to provide some sort of easy to follow instructional guides for blogging steps and practices after building WordPress websites for clients. Clients would often be faced with task of learning how to run a WordPress blog effectively in order to make any kind of impact in the search engines given the very competitive nature of the industry. More often than not, when we turn over the keys to a new site, we would receive frequent requests for the so called “How To’s” of blogging. All though I’d love to be able to teach each person individually, the time restraints would be impossible to accommodate. Still faced with the problem, new users to blogging simply didn’t have enough information how to actually blog effectively and many times when they did publish a post it would ultimately break the structure and layout of the site.

The original solution was to put up a set of simple HTML documents in our guide section which basically outlined several common things like the process for adding meta fields or maybe centering an image with CSS as opposed to the WYSIWYG editor tool for centering which doesn’t always work. Clients would ask very common questions over and over again such as, how do I add meta tags, control the title tag, or even how to add inline elements like flash or other types of media files. All of this worked great for the most part but proved confusing over time in part due to the sophistication of many theme designs we delivered. Fully 50% of our templates we build these days for our clients have some sort of custom features and advanced layout characteristics as to necessitate the inclusion of what is called a Style Guide.

Style Guides are tools designers may include with Web Design projects in order to provide administrators and content publishers a means for imposing a type of style publishing standard. These style guides can be considered as a sort of typography and publishing guideline for consistency in the look and feel of a website. WP Guides in part was born from a client project involving the building of a Joomla CMS and WordPress MU site for a school district in Utah. During the development for this Utah school district, it became evident that imposing of a set of “style guides” early on would be essential. Delivering it to the staff as the “guidelines” of publishing standards was absolutely central to the project success if we had any hopes in breaking their old bad habits. Previously, any department could publish content to the school districts website without any baseline standard to speak of. What the district often ended up with were things like the kitchen department featuring a peach colored background or the math department web pages loaded up with countless gif animations or for instance the sports department frequently publishing photos that were way to big for the structure or layout of the site. A style guide would naturally solve about 95% of this mess; if it can be imposed, if it can be readily available, and if the use of such a device could be taught to the staff. Our answer for delivering instruction and guide in an easy interface was the very first version of the WP Guides although not called such at the time.

I’ve mentioned this before that the Guides was expanded in order to accommodate its use by any webmaster or company for the distribution of content, documents and tutorials in an easy to follow and easy to use tool. This version is fully BETA and will be production release by mid February.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-guides/

OpenRealty Video Tutorials in OR Guides

The OpenRealty version came literally out of the same type of need based motive as the school district project did. We build lots and lots of projects with WordPress and we do nearly as many with OpenRealty and again, the problem that surfaces is the need for site owners and administrators to have the kinds of tools, guides, tutorials and even documents available right when they need them during the administration of their site. One of our larger Real Estate Website Clients wanted to find an effective way for logged in Agents to access Real Estate documents from the admin panel of OpenRealty. Distributing documents to logged in agents wasn’t a difficult task per se but giving the end user an easy to understand and super simple means for updating and changing the categories and documents made OR Guides an obvious sister app to WP Guides. This version is also considered BETA since we have not wrapped up adding the other features on my feature list which are due at or about the same time as the video tutorials. More on this below.

Joomla Video Tutorials in Joomla Guides

The Joomla variant was actually a last minute addition and almost didn’t make it as a production worth project only because so many tutorials and document management solutions existed for Joomla. We went ahead and published the project pending the release in February in hopes that we could further the development with the kinds of features that would make it a unique proposition for Joomla users and developers. As a result this is still pending initial release here shortly.

Video Tutorials – High End Production

We contracted two separate companies to assist with the production of the video tutorials for OpenRealty, WordPress and eventually Joomla. We will deliver the raw video tutorials and a professional voice over will be provided by hired talent according to our scripts. Actor, producer and sometimes director Steven Barnes offered to assist with voice over resources he has available after I built their site for his Comcast Television Series called “High Rise The Series“. For those curious, the High Rise site was built using WordPress and 3 custom plugins along with other unique features making it one of my favorite projects of its type to date. I included a custom WP login template to fit the overall theme of the site and we added in some unique features that would allow us to display members in the pending discussion boards using uploaded user photos. You may be saying big deal lots of blogs display members with user photos. Although true, none of them are native WordPress options as most require blogger or some other resource to actually add Gravitars to things like the sidebar. I believe we have come up with the very first WordPress blog that actually provides “logged in” “newest member” or “latest visitor” in the side bar without requiring them to have blogger or similar accounts.

As I’ve revealed in previous posts about this set of plugins, we wanted to offer up three types of tutorials. We would offer a baseline standard set of free ones with the distribution of the WordPress and OpenRealty Guides and then also offer an option to purchase a professional series for $30 which will be published on a media website. The third option is to offer up those same professional tutorials with web designer -slash- developer branding options so professionals who build WordPress and or OpenRealty sites can distribute instructional guides to their clients while retaining an option for their own watermark an or branding. Although the coding to manage this has not been finished it will basically work on a licensed basis wherein we charge a one time developer fee of $149 and the dev can distribute our videos to any and all of his clients. He / She just has to add the registration key to each instance.

I’ve got to get back to work at this moment but I’ll post more on this later in the week.


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