WPRealty Features Short Code

Posted on January 31, 2010
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The WP Realty latest release now features short code for much easier implementation of featured listings and listings in general based on some user definable settings. After many weeks of testing the new feature even provides short code options to be published in text widgets. Here is a little summary of the features currently available and or pending further development.

With the new WPRealty WordPress Short Code features, you can publish listings into your pages, posts and text widgets as follows;

Display listings based on agent.
Display listings for a subdivision or other similar criteria.
Display listings based on city or county if such data is available in your listing inventory.
You can even display listings relevant to your content for true SEO empowered features.
Even display listings based on semi complex search criteria. Here is a little taste.

[wp-realty-listings fields='Subdivision' values="replace with subdivision name" orderby="price" orderdir="DESC" count="5"]

WordPress Approves ORPRESS

Posted on January 31, 2010
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

I just heard back from WordPress that our new product ORPress has been approved. We have long planned to release a variant of our WPRealty titled ORPress and now that I got the email back three days ago we will publish ORPRess on WordPress.org this week. I’m happy to say that after months of planning we decided to redraft WPRealty on WordPress and rename it more consistently with its intended purpose. You can view the current landing page here http://www.jaredritchey.com/orpress/

The plugin will still be a full integration of Open-Realty® with WP, not just a simple bridge. We will be using CURL unlike our previous iFrame method. It will have full admin and front end integration, full user integration, and SEF url’s.

Other benefits of our plugin:

It’s free. There will be no license fees, subscriptions, etc. Fully GNU/GPL
Two of the developers are experts at OpenRealty projects having built OpenRealty sites for the past 4 years.
The project will use a clean, unmodified version of Open-Realty, you will still have the support of the Open-Realty community for any problems or questions you have with Open-Realty.
We will provide instructions for Open-Realty addon developers so they know of any requirements for their addon to work with the plugin and we will provide a free demo theme you are free to edit.
Most important, you will be given every single addon in our inventory as a core feature which includes XML Import, CSV Import, Google Maps, Contact forms and even all of our slideshow scripts.
Oh and something very very special sure to put a smile on every Realtors face.

I am taking a break from freelance

Posted on January 27, 2010
Filed Under Announcements, Joomla CMS, Open Realty, 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
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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
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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 | 2 Comments

How to use images to represent data in OpenRealty

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

Here is a quick little snippet that can be used in your OpenRealty 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.

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 OpenRealty 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;");
}
?>

OpenRealty functions.php File

In all OpenRealty 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

OpenRealty 2.5.8 Is Serious Competition

Posted on January 16, 2010
Filed Under General | 11 Comments

Professionally, I’d say that OpenRealty 2.5.8 is the best release they have ever had. I’ve always been a fan of OpenRealty and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. I’ve often said to others that OpenRealty is not only well thought in terms of how it handles the listings management but the code is well thought out making the application substantially flexible and end user friendly. The Devs at OpenRealty have gone the extra mile recently with the inclusion of a feature that surfaced in the last version and is fully realized in this version which prompted my motivation to post today. That new feature is the update notification by CRON. I’m going to go all over the map in this post to articulate some finer points regarding OpenRealty and why I think it’s gotten a great deal more MLS friendly as a result.

Listing Update Notifications

For years I have been using a custom addon we built to automate the updates of MLS listings into an OpenRealty site even though there were at times an unfortunate and sometimes troubling shortcoming of the process. Giving someone the ability to bookmark and or save to favorites for types of notifications is a nice feature in OpenRealty which has been there many versions hence. The problems we encountered centered around how listings actually get added to OpenRealty via the MLS IDX and RETS integration tools we often employ. Now rather than go into great detail in how MLS data is handled I’ll quickly summarize by saying this; no two MLS’s are ever alike regardless of RETS, IDX or any other method including SQL connects. That being said, the way data is imported into OpenRealty literally varies from project to project. How does the new feature in OpenRealty solve this issue with update notifications? Why is this feature so worthy of notice? Why does it put OpenRealty into a different category per se?

Consider this to answer all three questions I present; Since some IDX / RETS inclusion methods do not always use the actual OpenRealty code or the actual OpenRealty listing generation process, MLS updates would bypass features that made update notifications possible. I wont go into how we addressed this when using previous versions but will say that it was a memory intense process we are happy to avoid. Today, by taking advantage of the time stamp in most listings data we could reduce process and get much better results with our own CRON script. Now that OpenRealty has this excellent CRON notification feature in 2.5.8 the process can be easily implemented by developers. This solves a lot of requests by Realtors that want such a feature previously not possible by default with the prior builds of OpenRealty. My professional opinion is that this puts OpenRealty into a more competitive realm with commercial solutions. I give the OpenRealty team the HIGH-5. Great Job! OpenRealty is more competitive with other solutions.

Now I want to change gears and be a bit sinister for a moment. In fact I’m getting side tracked on purpose to demonstrate a little something about OpenRealty then I’ll get back on track in conclusion.

The Competition is Afraid of OpenRealty

More needs to be said or I wouldn’t be “Retarded and Reckless Blogger” that I’ve been called in recent days by a competitor of mine. I was going to answer this guy and maybe even send him an email with the standard pre-formatted threat to sue along with THIS IMPORTANT LINK ABOUT LIBEL LAWS but realized I wasn’t dealing with just a competitor shooting his mouth off. All my associates say worry less about your competition and more about your own work because such people are unavoidable. PURE BULL! Setting the facts straight is exactly what is needed.

Everyone in the Real Estate Website business suffers from the cut-throat lies of their competitors. Its been said by a blogger in a certain forum I wont mention that the Real Estate Website business is the nastiest most underhanded business on the web. I tend to believe its true because there are more underlying loyalties in this business than in government or even organized crime. Since I was dealing with a person that has a serious medical condition (FEAR is a mental illness in some cases) I knew I must tread lightly. Being a responsible blogger I should not taunt him to the point he could suffer a heart attack or some other medical ailment. God forbid he passed away because of Fear I helped induce regarding his business future could make me legally responsible. OpenRealty renders all his proprietary solutions moot and could force him to live on welfare if the bashing campaign about me for using OpenRealty wasn’t working. What pisses me off is that some naive Realtors were starting to believe his long list of assaults and bullshit claims about OpenRealty and our alleged hatred for OpenRealty. Here are the only true facts!

We bolster OpenRealty because of reasons within this post along with its pretty robust list of features. We use a forked variant in WPRealty 2.0 only to solve specific requirements for certain types of projects. Our inclusion and fork has nothing to do with hatred of OR and in fact it bolsters OpenRealty in my opinion.

OpenRealty is Professional Solution

Although very early in our testing, I’ve yet to find a bug in the process with the NEW OpenRealty release. After careful examination I’d say this release from OpenRealty is one of their more aggressive ones at keeping the application current with features necessary to make it competitive with more costly solutions. OpenRealty has been a well thought out product from the early stages of its development and even though there were unusual setbacks, it still remains as the ONLY truly open source freely available listings manager of its type any where.

If someone were to ask me today what I thought they should use for a stand alone listings manager, I would not go beyond one word. OpenRealty! Its one word I promise, or is it two? Anyway, I would make that statement or suggestion even though I am directly affiliated with the UltimateIDX team and the WPRealty team and PMG for IDX / RETS. Someone may ask why I would suggest OpenRealty in light of my ventures and the answer is painfully simple. Each of those fill a special niche market not really in competition with other types of solutions. Quite frankly not technically in competition with any proprietary solution. WPRealty is simply a software tool more so than a solution for WordPress real estate websites and UltimateIDX is quite literally a global IDX/RETS integration tool with clever back office features such as sales and lead management.

Picking the right real estate website solution

Under this sub title it should be an entire post all of its own. I’ll get to that later but before you consider the competition, specifically a proprietary one that happens to be in the practice of bashing OpenRealty and WPRealty with regular efforts to defame them; ask youself why so much effort to debunk OpenRealty and WPRealty is even being spent.

What I think I’m going to do is this. I’m going to make a chart comparing OpenRealty with other solutions, WPRealty with other solutions and UltimateIDX with other solutions and then you decide for yourself. I only affiliate myself with solutions that “SOLVE” what clients are seeking solutions too. I’d like to put emphasis on “solutions” because OpenRealty SOLVES!

OpenRealty Theme Options Addon

Posted on January 16, 2010
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Building an OpenRealty 2.5.8 website recently we had a unique request from a client in that he wanted to replicate the theme for use by all of his agents but did not want them to modify the theme files in areas of importance. Given the requirements we summarized the task for the feature like this;

How can we give the OpenRealty site owner the ability to change the logo, agent photo, social network settings and other elements without modifying the actual theme?

The answer for us was to replicate a feature in some WordPress themes by providing a sort of Options Panel. The addon called OR Template Options uses some simple IF Then php code that would look to the DB Table created by the addon. When the settings are entered, if the setting is available, it would display the setting in the appropriate or should I say defined area of the actual OpenRealty theme. This would provide each agent the ability to simply type in the URL to their photo or simply the name of the photo along with things like contact details, social networking links and so on. Then they become instantly active.

My initial plan was to wait until OpenRealty releases its new update so I can configure in settings for the OpenRealty blog solution but I think I’m going to just release this demo theme (sorry its not beautiful) for those interested in its use.

This really should be considered an “OpenRealty Theme Developers Tool” rather than a turnkey addon because it does take someone briefly knowledgeable in PHP to make it work. The idea is that OpenRealty theme developers can use this addon free of charge and fully distribute it without cost or obligation with their works. I think it would be a nice way to provide clever features for their themes.

Again its fully GNU/GPL, no link backs, no call backs, no footer code, not encrypted, do as you please with it but just leave the copyright in the two source files as normal.

SCREENSHOTS of the OpenRealty Options Panel Addon

General Template Settings

Used primarily for features in the template where the render elements exist. In this example screen I had hard coded in the basic stuff like logo, realtor photo, about us summary which would have appeared in the upper right of the header and even to allow for custom styles to be added in the head area of the source.

Social Networking Settings

Social networking has long since been expanded to include about 6 primary and 6 alternate link solutions. This version was the first but it serves to demonstrate what I was after.

Theme Integration Settings

Again, we work with WordPress and Joomla a great deal and sometimes we want to display latest posts in OpenRealty themes. The way we did this was by a php include in the actual OpenRealty theme that was dependant on a setting in the options addon. It worked perfectly for connecting to remote blogs that were not hosted on the same server as the OpenRealty install. Its not perfect but today its also not really required since OpenRealty has a blog solution. I suppose you could use it to connect to a WP blog in addition to what you do in OR.