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.

US Government Uses WP Guides

Posted on September 30, 2009
Filed Under Announcements, Products | 3 Comments

I’ll admit, part of doing the things we do in design and publishing of plugins and addons has a little to do with ego. Sometimes it has a lot to do with ego and when people use your plugins, or even redistribute them in their themes and templates it confirms that you did something important enough that others found value in even if it is just utility value. But when a government agency uses your plugins, to me, its worth boasting about and making a big deal of even though its not likely anything truly unique. I’m certain that given all the fine plugins and themes produced by WordPress professionals the world over that their works are also found valuable enough to be taken serious by agencies and even companies to use.

In the email I received from this .gov agency, there was a single question along with a suggestion of sorts and a kind request for help.  It seems that WP Guides serves its purpose ideally for distributing documents to the writing staff of this federal office in charge of antiquities and monuments.  The suggestion they sent was to have Guides provide an easy way to upload documents or other materials in order to make using it easier. They ask if WP Guides would ever have this feature and if not could it? In short I answered, yes!

I take feedback serious and It has been part of the plan from the beginning to extend this a great deal but as with all plugin and addon development time is money given the workload we manage.  Planning the updates for WP Guides does fit into the schedule as its second on the list right after WP Realty 2.0 and prior to WP Realty 3.0 with the following planned tasks I’ll list below.  Before however I’ll reiterate the purpose behind the development of this small simple plugin.

Why Did I Create WP Guides?

In many previous posts and forum discussions I have explained that the reason we produced WP Guides initially was two particular types of projects. The first was for a redesign of a school district website and the other was to provide affordable means of distributing documentation to real estate clients in order to teach them how to blog. Support can be expensive and WP Guides is perfect for distributing guides and tutorials to those who have access.  Next, I really wanted guides to be used by web developers, blog masters, theme developers and other professionals who want to distribute documentation with their projects. So here is the list of what is in store in the next release.

WP Guides Features in Next Release.

After wrapping up the WP Realty 2.0 and getting the coders started on the WP Realty 3.0 we will add several new features to WP Guides. As it stands this day, September 29th, 2009 we are only about one or two days from completing WP Realty 2.0 and will begin the update changes to Guides. Here is what we have planned.

  • WP Guides will feature a one click opt in for remotely hosted guides and video tutorials on a tutorial website being built.
  • Folder creation and upload features restricted to the current array of media formats. This will allow admins to upload files from the admin panel.
  • Provide user level access settings for members, administrators, authors. Necessary for WP MU enhancements.
  • Provide user level inclusion of RSS feeds in the guides panel. This is being added because of my own use of Guides. I like to follow various sources on the web for news and other things of interest when working in my WordPress blogs. This feature will allow users to have their own inventory of RSS feeds in their admin panel.
  • It will most certainly have a new interface which will mimic the one we did for WP Realty 2.0.
  • It will likely have more support for private branding in this next release but may not make it until the subsequent release shortly there after.  From the beginning its always been my goal to make sure that guides could be easily included into blog projects for webmasters to distribute and provide their own documentation, style guides and support files.
  • Some additional basic admin configuration settings. Nothing fancy but things that will make it better for use in WP MU projects.

JRealty WP-Realty Gets Bolder

Posted on December 4, 2008
Filed Under Announcements | 2 Comments

Today we were working with the developers to wrap up a new version of WP Realty specifically geared toward WordPress Multi User in order to extend the listings features to all sub blogs. We got the demo done but its still very much in BETA stage as the listings do not always work with the sub domain style blog setup. The early stages of WP Realty for WPMU is here at ASiteAbove.com

After careful consideration and analysis with all of the team members we all pretty much agree that setting up WordPress MU to use the sub-domain method is likely the only method that will help a website owner or brokerage from running into the issue with duplicate content. Although I had installed WPMU using the /directory/ structure for all addon blogs, this proved dangerous to SEO efforts because each blog is considered a directory or extension of the main domain. Not good when you have Realtors adding listings to their individual blog posts.

What the new variant of WP Realty will be called is quite basically WPMU Realty which will take a slight yet important change in the method used to bring listings into the site. What will happen now is the agent blogs or addon blogs will be required to be sub-domains and that the way for inclusion of properties will actually be handled via a secondary plugin that goes into the MU Plugin inventory each agent would then customize. Much like we do with the WP Menu Creator for WordPress MU, the new WP Realty will require an administrator level access to the templates in order to key in some important code required for proper functionality.

Search Engine Optimization has always been our number one reason for building these tools from the very beginning. OpenRealty really isn’t suited well for handling the volume of pages and posts that a modern website should have so WordPress fits the bill better than nearly any other solution. The idea is to take WordPress and WordPress MU for Realtors and possibly the Automotive or Boating industries and give them the CMS power they need while providing a great, clean, easy to manage way of publishing the products or properties they market.

Content is always the name of the game and with WordPress MU a brokerage could offer each of its agents their own blog in a super easy to update, maintain and manage solution. Now when you combine the ability for Realtors to publish content easily with the ability to add listings directly to their posts, it doesn’t take a genius to see the potential here.

Open Source Releases?

After discussing the recent events with many people in chat sessions at 2AM this morning we all agree that after CMS Realty launches its product as production ready we will remove the encryption and release ours as open source as well. All though I can’t reveal our motive at this time, I can say that if our plan plays out as we would like, real estate site owners will be given a brand new feature that puts our product two steps ahead of the game and you as a site owner at least one step ahead of the industry. This new feature is already in the beta stage and working on one of my demo sites but likely wont make a production release until we convert two or three existing sites with MLS integration in them for full testing. The current version of WP Realty and even JRealty are currently running in websites with production level MLS RETS installs in them with no errors or lag what soever.

Its my professional opinion that this solution of ours is the ONLY real solution currently available where MLS listings are added to a Joomla website for either the RETS or IDX method. I can say without a doubt that our Joomla JRealty solution is the only production level product that gives your IDX / RETS data feeds the cleanest and most professional looking URLs anywhere. I’ll keep you posted as things progress.

Paul Bouchard Claims Code Stolen

Posted on December 1, 2008
Filed Under Announcements | 10 Comments

Paul Bouchard’s Accusation: Why is the code encrypted?

Its been discussed and even proposed by Paul Bourchard that the EZPro Realty (now called JRealty) and WP Realty projects have been encrypted to disguise the use of his inherited CMS Realtys code and we would like to say that nothing could be further from the truth.  You are free to examine the only true nature of the URL structure on my demo located at http://joomlarealestate.livedemosite.com

No stranger to reckless claims against others, developers state that he really does behave much like a tattle tale according to his competitors.  Al Smith and Judson Cooper of JNT Computers  allege that Paul went as far as contacting persons known to have contractual relationships with Smith and Cooper apparently not realizing the potential TORT violations he could bring down on his head.

I don’t think Paul is an evil guy or even one that is crazy, maybe it was a little frustration, anger and jumping the gun that prompted the claims. If so, we forgive him.

However, I am happy to say that after Steve at the Joomla.org website asked to examine the code I quickly submitted a copy, documentation and an in depth email detailing the history of the application and the name and phone number of the developers.  Happy with what he examined they re-activated our plugin for download in the components library.  Wow, all that just to respond to a reckless allegation.

Anyway, I’m glad to see that a full day blown to defending ourselves yet again has been victorious.  Its becoming a habit defending ourselves from some of these OR types so all responses in the future regarding his claims are now canned responses. I will simply cite his claim and point you to this very post where you can listen to our response.

Keep in mind that after we consider all he writes, all he says, and all he does, we happily put forth our spokes person in the same age group as the assailant who states the following regarding his efforts.

 

Clear yet?


TEMP CODE: GDHXCDX17249629