WordPress Menu Manager Guide

Posted on December 17, 2008
Filed Under General, Open Realty | 1 Comment

Quick Guide to the Menu Manager

In response to some frustrations by end users regarding the configuration of the Menu Manager, I quickly knocked out a short guide to assist them with the use of the WP Menu Creator plugin. This short guide is not the final draft so I’ll have to revisit it and edit it based on feedback I receive.

It is important to note that the next release of the WP Menu Creator will have features that allow users to add the link TARGET and also the link TITLE for better control over how links in your menu is handled. I’ll also be adding in a feature that would allow you to create a menu item that would open a sized popup window in response to feature requests we received in the forums. This feature would allow a WordPress blog site owner to add not only the standard link types but also provide a popup window link for situations were such things are needed.

The demo menu in the guide is a pretty standard suckerfish style menu which you are free to emulate or copy. Simply save the page to your computer and examine the code to get an idea how the WP Menu Creator works. I’ve been up to my neck with tons of RETS and IDX work so I have not had time to get the instructional videos together yet. To visit the short guide please visit this link http://www.jaredritchey.com/tutorials/menucreator/ Also for anyone willing to link to the project on WordPress or to this site, I’ll setup and configure your Menu Manager FREE of charge. Just write a post about its use and or its features and point a link here or to WordPress http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-menu-creator/ and I’ll setup the menu for you.

A quick side note for those following this project. We have a variant of the WP Menu Creator ready for OpenRealty but will likely not release until the features I mention above are included. As it stands, I’ll have version 1.0.4 ready by the end of December and at that time I’ll publish both, the update for WP and the new addon for OpenRealty. The reason behind this is that with OpenRealty’s use in the very competitive Real Estate market, It really does require me to be sure we have options in place for OpenRealty users to manage their links with the best possible options. Link Target and certainly Title are important in SEO efforts. Naturally this Addon will also be free and Open Source.

EZPro Realty Renamed JRealty

Posted on December 2, 2008
Filed Under General | 6 Comments

Well some pointless attacks and accusations of stolen code has been verified as NOT true by a professional agency and even after we were De-Included or removed from the Joomla Extensions directory as a result of these unwarranted attacks we have struck a compromise with Joomla today.

We submitted a FULL OPEN SOURCE copy after they agreed in writing they would not disclose the code for their examination and after all their worries were put to rest they asked us one thing and that is to change our name to something other than EZPro Realty. This is a fair request by Steve at Joomla, whom of which was exceptionally helpful and very professional. It has been known for sometime that EZPro Realty was being confused with EZRealty even though we registered the domain name nearly a year prior to EZRealty being launched. The confusion is such that it is a just request from Joomla that we change the name so we have, its now called JRealty!

After $140 to hire a third party to examine the code and compare it to CMS Realty and hours of wasted time dealing with the false accusations that we jacked CMS Realty code we can finally put this thing to rest. Here is a screen shot I submitted to Joomla for comparison of the two projects I use to demonstrate file size differences and the amazing file NUMBER differences. CMS Realty has 39 files and 8 folders compared to the 9 files in EZPro Realty now titled JRealty. BTW the J in JRealty doesn’t stand for Jared, it stands for Joomla. So its a more fitting name actually, we now have WP Realty, JRealty, and WP Featured with DRealty already in the works for our pals over at Drupal.

Oh and it was pointed out to me that my screen shot below shows files like controlpanel.inc-2.5.5.zip and sh404-plugin-unencrypted.zip and in actuality these files are NOT ultimately encrypted as the controlpanel file is simply the standard ole OpenRealty file with the one line hack already added in. That line makes it so user and admin powers can be accessed via the Joomla admin panel. We use CURL as our method so its a bit different than an iFrame like we use with WP Realty.

JRealty

EZPro Realty Joomla Component 1.0.4

Posted on December 1, 2008
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

Well the updated version finally works as it should. We build in support for users who have the SH404SEF component in their site by building a second plugin specifically for such an event.

As of today the newest version of the EZPro Realty Joomla component comes with 4 separate options to make it as flexible as it can possibly be. We have added in a new feature that allows you to “Patch” for lack of a better term the Joomla .htaccess file from within the admin panel and you can alternatively enable 4 different types of URL structure. We added in a new OpenRealty patch file that allows for easier management of the OpenRealty admin features within your Joomla site and we have added in a new feature that allows you to specify the actual PSEUDO directory of your listings. For instance you could now have http://www.yourdomain.com/mlslistings/listing-property-name-1.html quite easily.

We furthered the development to REMOVE /ezprorealty/ from the URL structure if you so desire giving Joomla Real Estate site owners a more complete inventory of features to better control the URL for search engine optimization. Naturally we didn’t leave WP Realty out of the mix by adding a similar feature so you are not required to have /wprealty/ in your URL structure.

Both of these fine components are 100% FREE but remain encrypted only because of the financial resources we have put in to each but may not remain so in the near future.

We were smart enough to provide people a way out and still offer an fully UN-BRANDED and partially Un-Encrypted version depending on your needs for each of these two products. $19 for a single site, $50 for a server, $150 for developers and with that we remove all branding so there are no courtesy links back to us.

Where is the documentation for EZPro Realty Joomla Component?

People rightfully beat the hell out of us for several weeks because our products had almost no documentation and although it was against my better judgment to release these early on prior to final testing we are actually now glad we did. Having had the component in the hands of about 1100 users we have taken a serious barrage of assaults over the poor documentation to such a degree that we know how better to provide it when its complete.

Today, the writers at Pro IDX Solutions are at this very moment assembling the documentation which should be published today on the EZPro Realty website. For those interested, you can see a quick demo I put up HERE(http://joomlarealestate.livedemosite.com/) late last night so you can examine the URL Features.

EZPro Realty OpenRealty Fork

Posted on November 12, 2008
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

Hammered by a few emails I wanted to drop in and just make a brief blog post about the status and pending feature in the newly released EZPro Realty fork. Its done! But not fully released as of yet and two key features are yet to be added which is happening as I understand right now.

I’d like to show you the EZPro Realty installation Interface in this video and I promised NOT to reveal the admin interface as of yet but its nice.

Here is the newly designed admin interface which follows pretty much the same path as the OpenRealty one but its dressed up a bit and a new step will be added for IDX type sites.

The osCommerce Templates - NOPE

Posted on November 10, 2008
Filed Under General | 2 Comments

Switching people from osCommerce to ZenCart

Hey I’ve had several people ask me why I dumped all the free templates I had over on template trader and the reason is I’m not doing osCommerce templates anymore in part because osCommerce is not the ideal shopping cart for today’s market. osCommerce was written at a time when PHP3 and PHP4 was still around quite heavily and search engine optimization was a buzzword among only very few web professionals. Because of this I’ve decided to support ZenCart.

ZenCart better handles the compliance issues with design and is much easier to build SEO friendly shopping carts. There are many open source shopping cart solutions but ZenCart seems to be one of the most actively supported. If you need custom, then contact me, otherwise it will be a while until I can publish the oscommerce templates for zencart.

EZPro Auto and WP Auto

Posted on October 19, 2008
Filed Under General | 5 Comments

WordPress Automotive Blogs

Now that EZPro Realty and WP Realty are available in the first release (technically first RC release) we decided to expand this a bit by providing customized versions for use in several other industries. Automotive, Boating, Furniture, Antiques along with any type of gallery required listings site will benefit from these new developments by turning WordPress into truly powerful marketing tools for such sites.

What does this mean? Many car dealerships and boating dealerships usually have to resort to common shopping cart solutions to display their inventory if they don’t flip the bill for a commercial solution. We felt that we could do justice to those industries by providing a simple core modification to OpenRealty along with our special versions of the EZProRealty component and WP Realty plugin to build truly impressive sites.

The method requires a site owner to simply replace the default OpenRealty language file with a new one we build which changes the site wide wording from real estate terms to automotive or boating terms. What we came up with in our first beta test was to simply underscore the language file as so, __lang.inc.php and upload ours. Then install either WP Realty or EZProRealty and the project is now set to be developed as an automotive listings or boat and yacht listings site.

Initially during the planning stages we had a few hold outs who could not escape their FSBO mentality for a moment to look at a few simple facts. The market we are approaching is not primarily FSBO. Next; Car, Truck, Boat and Yachting dealerships don’t sell these items via a PayPal Buy Now link. These items are costly enough to warrant the same type of site a real estate listings site would offer and that is a place to put all listings of cars, boats, trucks or whatever the case may be and then combine it with the power of WordPress or Joomla to build a truly turnkey solution that doesn’t cost a great deal to entertain. Last, there is no solution available for such dealerships anywhere on the web that is as efficient in URL structure and SEO friendliness as our two new products. I’d like to stress yet again that they are 100% FREE!

WP Realty Ready Download

Posted on October 15, 2008
Filed Under General | 5 Comments

Short post right now, things here changing substantially in the next two days so the project for WP Realty and WP Featured has been moved to EZProRealty.com and IS Available right now in the download section. Sorry about documentation, I’ve been slammed with client work and that takes precedence.

2008 Election Coverage

Posted on October 8, 2008
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

Jared Ritchey Runs For President



I’m Jared Ritchey and I approve this message. Why not? Look at the jokers running now. A one armed monkey could lead the nation better than these characters.

WP Realty and EZProRealty

Posted on October 8, 2008
Filed Under General, Real Estate News | 2 Comments

How to really piss people off!

I have this unusual method of operation with my blog in that I use it 95% of the time to announce a product “IN DEVELOPMENT” long before we actually start the project. Many times our plugins and addons are born out of some specific task related to a site development. So I’ll announce an idea as if its being developed for public free release usually to determine if the plugin or addon could be worth the efforts to produce. Granted its a bit unusual and can frustrate the hell out of people when they search for something only to find a site with potential product releases, does in fact have no actual product releases at all. I’ll explain why.

Who can boldly say they have an original thought anyway? Both WP Featured and WP Realty were both born of ideas and products for Joomla that take OpenRealty and bridge and in some ways integrate its features into the CMS for a more complete method of real estate website building. But WordPress had been overlooked for about two years as a viable target for an OpenRealty bridge because very few people know it can be made to operate as a full CMS solution. I work with WordPress, Joomla and OpenRealty easily for no less than 8 out of 14 hours in a given day. Merging, bridging and sometimes integrating them to work together is always on my mind.

Although people get a bit angry with my announcing products long before their actual release, I have to cautiously approach the development of such plugins and addons because I’m the guy flipping the bill. I’m not a programmer, I’m an interface designer and photoshop instructor with a strong background in RETS and IDX databases. So when it comes time to produce a FREE plugin I have to flip the bill to the coders to deliver a plugin that will actually be of some utility value to the end users. If its of no value then why bother producing it? I’m not into plugins for commercial gain and some have beat me up quite extensively by making comments in my blog that essentially accuse me of deliberately trying render their plugins and addons commercial value moot by giving away free alternatives to their efforts. That’s not entirely true for the most part as many times the plugins and addons we have built are for a specific project which is then later developed further to make it something worthy for a broad market. Usually in the absence or knowledge that a commercial alternative exists.

So I stress that although my blog posts about plugin and addon announcements in absence of a few actual plugins does in fact really annoy people; its important to note that I release all of my plugins as free items. I really love the open source market and need to be careful to see if my plans are worth a damn or not so I test the waters. After all I am the guy paying the bill to give away free products and some times I get an angel offering to fund the development to speed up the process which really helps. During this time people are certain to copy the ideas and even take our base code and complete it. I’ve said this in a previous post that such things are almost a guarantee;

Only the arrogant would call this exclusive. Other competing services are likely to copy this plug-in feature for their own solutions I can almost guarantee it.

WP Realty vs WP Featured

After dozens of emails It seems there is a bit of confusion between which plugin is which and what its purpose is. WP Realty is our (”our” meaning mine and the person financing the project) newest plugin for WordPress that goes beyond what WP Featured was to do. WP Realty is essentially a bridging solution that does for WordPress what EZProRealty does for Joomla. For those who don’t know, the EZProRealty component is a fully working bridging solution for Joomla that brings OpenRealty into the CMS. WP Realty does exactly the same thing for WordPress and although it works as it should there is a pending feature its lacking that has kept it in BETA. By Friday it will be published on EZProRealty.com and in part here as this is our chief concern this week. Yes its 100% FREE! Its not like WP Featured;

WP Featured is an entry level plugin that basically takes your OpenRealty listings and puts them into your WordPress blog which you can define by listing ID, zip code, city or any other type of field to better provide relevant content for individual or categorized listings. The existing download is fully RC 1 or more specific RC 1.0.1 and does not have all the features that many of my other posts have illuminated. The next release is simply going to jump in numbers (following the rules of version numbering) to version 2.0 since its a complete overhaul of the existing petty features 1.0.1 has.

Are these just more bullshit announcements for plugins that take forever to surface? Nope and there is financial motive this time around since an angel has offered to flip the bill. Although I’ve managed to talk them out of duplicating some commercial OpenRealty addons for free release, WP Realty and WP Featured are as active in development and release as is the XML export utility and the IDX Import Utility for OpenRealty. The latter two are available elsewhere as commercial products that my new found friend with cash wants to see become FREE and “open source”

Update Itronix IX-250 and IX-260 GPS

Posted on September 16, 2008
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

I get a ton of emails and alot of responses to the original article about my Itronix laptops so today I went in and did a new comment to address the most common questions I get asked.

I found the rest of the drivers in my archive and uploaded those as well so if anyone still needs them please do not hesitate to ask.

In my post located here Itronix Laptop I outline some important “basic” stuff regarding the GPS configuration and Hard Drive updates for the Itronix laptops. Its important to note that the Itronix IX-260 will take any standard 2.5 HD providing you are not attempting to keep the rugged nature of the machine. If however you are then its best to get the IBM rugged drives which can be spendy but have sizes up to 120GB last time I checked.

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