I am taking a break from freelance

Posted on January 27, 2010
Filed Under Announcements, Joomla CMS, WordPress Wisdom | Leave a Comment

I’ve decided that I need a break away from freelance work for a while.  Mounting distractions with my relocation and my parents retirement I’ll be spending a lot of time helping them close their sporting goods shop before spring.  Although my move will be much better for future business when I return, there are those little things that make me dread the move. Packing the U-Haul truck, dealing with mail forwarding and phone number changes as the list goes on.  During this period away I will be maintaining all the writing and service maintenance contracts I’m obligated to.  I will continue to accept writing project for the time being since most of the instruments of the trade will be with me most the time.

Recommended IDX RETS MLS providers for WordPress, OpenRealty, Drupal and Joomla

For anyone interested in having their MLS feed for either IDX or RETS installed in their sites you should contact the following people depending on your needs.

WordPress MLS Integration with IDX or RETS

If you need to have your real estate listings put into WordPress I would suggest contacting WPRealty.org which is fully capable of providing this as a service for an exceptionally affordable price.  Alternatively UltimateIDX has a solution that will marry into almost any solution known including WordPress and how UltimateIDX differs is predominantly in the area of CRM related features for contact and lead management. UltimateIDX is only in 8 primary markets at this point but they map and add new markets with greater frequency now that they have moved the company to Las Vegas Nevada. Currently they are mapping for most southern states and California in addition to their existing markets.

OpenRealty MLS Integration with IDX or RETS

To put MLS listings into OpenRealty 2.5.6 – 2.5.8 you should contact WPRealty.org because they have the widest collection of scripts designed for this purpose that I’m aware of. Since WPRealty frequently builds open source real estate websites they are better suited in my opinion to handle your custom IDX / RETS solution.

Drupal Integration with IDX or RETS

For integrating your Drupal site with the IDX or RETS feed again I’d suggest WPRealty.org if your desire is to have your own stand alone solution where you are not obligated to a proprietary solution.  UltimateIDX is ideal for this. You get integration and full CRM features for sales and lead management.

Joomla Integration with IDX or RETS

Joomla is a great solution for Real Estate Websites and a few people come to mind when it comes to components specifically designed for Joomla 1.5.12+  The first component is our own which is titled JRealty and you can acquire a free copy by contacting the WPRealty group.   If however you require the integrated sales and lead management then again, I suggest UltimateIDX.

Each company has their strong points, two of them I know of intimately because I’ve been on their development team for years.  One thing strange about this business is the underlying loyalties that most people are not even aware exist.  Its the kind of business where everyone knows something about the other guy. Well here is the contact details list of those recommended solution providers I know something about.

UltimateIDX IDX / RETS Solutions
The UltimateIDX literally works with any solution I’ve encountered ideally suited for open source applications including those above mentioned along with Drupal, B2 Evolution and even Type Pad. UltimateIDX has a pretty good position in a niche market that provides MLS empowered type back office integration with most open source solutions. I’ve personally built dozens of sites using UltimateIDX and have yet to find a single client that regretted it. UltimateIDX is a paid solution requiring you to host on either their servers or those they have tested to support real estate type websites. UIDX is a grade 1 option.
http://www.ultimateidx.com

WPRealty WordPress Joomla OpenRealty Solutions
WPRealty is branded and serviced under many different titles and company site headings.  The team has many different product variants and has been building OpenRealty, Joomla and WordPress sites since the birth of each of those applications.  The team members are strong supporters of open source applications and can provide professional grade solutions at a fraction of the cost for similar proprietary ones. WPRealty is a grade 1 option.
http://www.wprealty.org

I’ll be back in full swing sometime in June 2010.

OpenRealty Paid Support

Posted on January 25, 2010
Filed Under General, Real Estate Scripts | 12 Comments

What if OpenRealty Offered Paid Support Services?

What if OpenRealty were to follow a paid support model like we opted for with WPRealty? Would it help or hurt OpenRealty in terms of the product overall? I was in this discussion recently with a friend of mine as we discussed a post made by pbFlash some time ago about the lack of financial support for OpenRealty over the years.  I had mentioned that if it were my decision, I would offer standard community support for OpenRealty in the forums as they now do but would also extend a type of preferred support license in order to finance the development of the application.  Having built WPRealty with a forked variant of OpenRealty, had it not been for support licenses, many bugs and features may not have been fixed so promptly. Here is my logic behind this notion regarding OpenRealty;

I know from experience that when I publish a free GNU/GPL plugin that the support is the one thing that kills us in terms of time and energy.  Although the financial investment in doing so is not without motive the cost to benefit ratio isn’t easily or accurately identified.  Since most the time we are seeking link bait when we publish any our OpenRealty or WordPress extensions we usually try to include basic documentation in hopes that little actual end user support would actually be needed or better expressed as “not required”.  Minimal support requirements do not apply when it comes to products that are more complex and feature rich such as OpenRealty.  The time and energy it takes to deliver support for such products can often tank the development as most energy is spent dealing with the day to day support.  But why pursue a paid support model?

Although a relatively new trend with the GNU/GPL applications, the support model isn’t at all unique.  Having been applied by many WordPress theme developers the idea has begun to catch on with greater frequency among those that develop GNU/GPL products.  Many of the finest GNU/GPL WordPress themes in use today were developed as a result of the financial support that funded the effort.  I’ve been noticing that many products once freely available for download are starting to restrict access in some respects to those who pay a donation or purchase an annual support licenses for preferred service. Following the same recipe that worked so well for theme development would lead someone to logically conclude that applications would experience similar success.

If OpenRealty were to follow this model I would speculate that the following things might take place.

  • The reduction in relying on commercial addons to fund the applications development.
  • More active involvement by those I would deem professional end users.
  • Updates to core code with greater frequency.
  • I would also expect to see more professional end user results with their projects.
  • I think OpenRealty support would improve based on a simple idea that those that pay for support are often (not always) more capable end users.
  • Lastly, I think it would be taken more seriously by real estate professionals.

Anyway these were just ideas and far apart from insinuating that they would follow this model it would none the less be interesting if in fact they did. Facts are facts and OpenRealty is the only stand alone application for listings management of its caliber anywhere on the web.  I’m interested in feedback so don’t be shy.

XML Feed Templates Download

Posted on January 19, 2010
Filed Under General | 2 Comments

XML Templates for 15 different feeds including Zillow, Google, City Cribs, Vast and more.  These were built to help organize the structure of XML output for an OpenRealty addon I created. Since then we have added these into the core build of WPRealty where XML feed export is a core feature.  I figured that since I’ve encountered so many frustrated posts in forums and blog around the web while searching for good map examples, I’d package these up to help someone facing similar challenges with their projects.  Released as GNU/GPL naturally you are free to use them as you so desire.  Here are some basic details about the files included.

If you are building an XML feed export script for Real Estate listings then maybe these 15 XML and PHP Files will help.  What I include in the zip file is this; I created several XML masters I collected, organized and then keyed from various data feed services some of which are not edited at all, just some source formatting applied.  Then the PHP files were going to be used to essentially provide the XML output structure which would be coded to actually generate the XML file with the listings data.  I was about to create a generic generator as an example you  could build from but pressed for time I needed to put that off for a while.  I managed to knock out a single example for use with OpenRealty which is called citycribs-example. The code isn’t very tidy as it was used for testing the export speed against an OpenRealty database.

A quick note too about those XML files.  I will periodically update as the feed XML structure changes since I will be maintaining that feature within WPRealty.  Even though the feature does provide actual HTML files for the feed map quite similar to my WP Featured Listings plugin, the XML files must be updated for CRON update features to work properly so I’ll update this zip file when needed.  Here is the download link for the files.  http://www.jaredritchey.com/available-downloads/snippets/xml-feed-templates.zip

OpenRealty Data Icon Tutorial

Posted on January 18, 2010
Filed Under General, Real Estate Scripts | 2 Comments

How to use images to represent data in Open-Realty®

UPDATED! I tested this with WPRealty recently and the technique works fine.

Here is a quick little snippet that can be used in your Open-Realty® template to display an image rather than a text value for various fields.  I had a project recently that required the display of icons to represent data as opposed to text information.  If for example there was a ski lodge or swimming available for the particular listing the client wanted to display an icon for that feature as he figured the YES/NO wasn’t very appealing aesthetically in his listing details. What I came up with was a simple snippet to display an image or alternate image depending on the value available in the database.

Search Results The demo icons to the left would for instance be displayed as blue in color if the value was a yes and a subdued color if there was a NULL or NO value. When a visitor scans the search results they could quickly spot visual representation of key things of importance such as heated swimming pool, ski lodge or exercise room and so on.

Here is the simple way of handling similar scenarios.  First, you should determine where in your theme the images are to be displayed and make design provisions for that with sample mockup code. Images should always include ALT text so take that into account. Then, simply replace your mockup code with something similar to what I have outlined below.

Listing Details – Search Results – Template Code

Lets say that you want to display an icon for the virtual tour if the virtual tour actually has a value and the name of that field in your Open-Realty® database is “VirtualTour” You simply place the following code in either the listing details template or search results template of your choice where you want the image to be displayed at. By doing so, if the VirtualTour field has a value it will display the image I called vtour.jpg and if no value I have it set to display a space. I could have it display an alternate image or any value per se.

Keep in mind that you do not have to repeat most of this snippet if the results are to appear in the same section of the template.  When adding multiple instances you could add the require_once at the very top of your theme and call it globally.

<?php
$i=2;
require_once("functions.php");
$value = get_field_value('VirtualTour');
if($value){
//echo($value);
    echo("<a href=".$value." title="Virtual Tour"><img src="{baseurl}/template/default/images/vtour.jpg" title="virtual tour" /></a>");
}else{
echo("&nbsp;");
}
?>

Open-Realty® functions.php File

In all Open-Realty® themes I build I now include a functions.php file in the template directory much like we do in WordPress themes. In fact, WordPress is where I took the idea from because some sites need custom features that really do not necessitate the creation of an addon. So in the functions.php file I’ll include code necessary to handle various things such as our custom form kit or even a simple registration bridge or basic menu management features. The example code below is taken from one of the functions.php file for this particular project. Simply copy it and create your own functions.php file for inclusion into the theme folder.

Be sure to pay special attention to the top line for require_once as this should be set as your full root path. If you are not sure of the actual path you could create a path.php file and add the following to it <?php echo __FILE__; ?> By uploading and then navigating to the file you should get the full path printed in the browser.

<?php
// this is the functions.php file
// set the path below before adding to your template directory
require_once("/home/MYDOMAIN/public_html/include/common.php");
function get_field_value($field_name)
{
global $config;
$listingID=-1;
if(isset($_GET['listingID']) && $_GET['action']=='listingview')
{
$listingID=$_GET['listingID'];
$sql="select listingsdbelements_field_value from ".$config['table_prefix']."listingsdbelements where
listingsdbelements_field_name='".$field_name."' and listingsdb_id=".$listingID." LIMIT 1";
$select=mysql_query($sql);
$field_value=mysql_fetch_assoc($select);
if($field_value['listingsdbelements_field_value']){
return $field_value['listingsdbelements_field_value'];
}else{
return false;
}
}
}
?>

Although this tutorial is basic, you could do as I do and make the fields to query an array of field so you do not have to replicate the code over and over within your template. By doing so your results could look like the following for example;
Search Results


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