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.

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

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.

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]
<?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;");
}
?>
[/php]

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]
<?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;
}
}
}
?>
[/php]

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;

A true CMS solution would not require you to manipulate the structure of your content in order to alter the structure of your menu or other navigation elements. Yet, nearly all modern themes on the market today require that you alter the position or assignment of your content in order to change the structure of your navigation. WordPress codex outlines the methods and techniques on how to achieve this relatively easily so many theme developers usually employ the codex examples in order to give their theme the appearance of having rich menu management features. Having done this myself many dozens of times its difficult for some to conceive of a simpler way without writing custom functions specific to the theme as an alternative. For this reason and those I’ll cover below were motive in our creation of the fully open source free Menu Creator for WordPress.

After having built almost a hundred themes for WordPress clients and template resellers, the number one of the big challenges we had often faced was turning WordPress into a CMS to replace a system they were migrating (or escaping) from. A good CMS requires good menu management. Publishing a free WordPress menu management tool turned out to be more of a challenge in terms of informing people of its potential than we had expected. After all, the design and styling possibilities of the WP Menu Creator are nearly endless. Since we did not include any example menus with the distribution of the Menu Creator, it ended up hurting us in terms of perception that the Menu Creator was in some way incomplete. So, I’ll first explain our motive in keeping examples out of the distribution then move onto how to make menu management a part of your themes.

When we set out to build all of our free plugins, we knew in advance that in order to get WordPress to behave much like popular CMS solutions we needed to have a few important plugins. The need for menu management was obvious. Then came form generation, member grouping tools, news feeds, lead management, post planning, and in the case of Real Estate CMS sites, important feeds to things like Zillow or Dwellicious. What those CMS requirements gave us was a road map to the ideal WordPress CMS solution powered by for the most part with all of our current FREE GNU/GPL plugins. When I say “our” I’m referring to myself and The UltimateIDX whom of which pretty much finances all of these projects. When it came to our motive in keeping these tools very basic yet open for design possibilities we kept theme developers in mind since we are theme developers and knew what was needed, requested and expected in terms of ease of integration.

How to add Menu Management Support to your WordPress Themes

After having published so many plugins and addons it was planned from the start that we would not only extend the offer to theme developers of every classification but also take the time to assist with the inclusion of our plugins by providing code for the clean and easy implementation. Naturally we keep our tools and plugins as unbranded as can be realistically expected, but do require that the license information remain in the source code unchanged.

To revisit what I started above about the lack of any CSS in our plugins, it was important for us to make sure all theme developers could easily distribute the plugins and faithfully know that the rendered output would adopt their CSS. If the theme developer creates the navigation elements styled as expected, we knew they would want a reliable way of ensuring that our plugins would play along nicely. So, we included NO CSS menu examples within any of our plugins and opted instead to publish examples of code on The UltimateIDX, this blog and our others including some at Pro Real Estate Network.

This has been a pain, so after careful planning and organizing, we decided to setup a repository of sorts that would allow us to publish all code in one convenient place and beginning this weekend (September, 24th 2009) we are doing just that. If you are a theme developer in need of good menu management in your free or commercial efforts, don’t bother writing functions into your theme when you can easily distribute the WordPress Menu Creator. We will even give you the code to make it possible, FREE.

Today we finally got the 2.0 version back for our latest WordPress plugin that ties in full listings management to your WordPress site without the need to install OpenRealty and a bridge. Although we have built several bridging and integration plugins capable of working with OpenRealty, the process for managing those solutions can become challenging to most website owners. What was needed was a full blown solution that didn’t require you to trick, modify or substantially alter the method by which you blog in order to achieve a truly clean MLS IDX or RETS integration solution. Our brand spanking new plug-in does just that. It fully integrates not only standard listing editor features but provides a way for bloggers to add IDX RETS listings to their sites.

The new plugin allows for you to turn your WordPress Real Estate site into a full blown MLS empowered solution unlike anything ever produced before. But its not just for IDX or RETS empowered sites either. Part of our plan in building this new version was to make sure it would work with a few types of sites we have built in the past in particular those not associated with Real Estate. Automotive sites, Virtual Magazines, Online Classifieds, even a sports and gun shop site have been successfully built using the beta version of this new application. Although a precursor to the much more advanced version scheduled for release March of 2010. There is no shortage of features in this release however; A super clean listing integration and unique characteristics guaranteed to make your WordPress site a powerful listings manager.

In the past versions we attempted to provide a rather complex bridging and integration tool for use with your install of OpenRealty. Problems mounted however as each successive update of OpenRealty usually breaks all previous versions to some degree. One bug fix in OpenRealty would present additional bugs that could break the sites structure. We have moved past that in our new plugin.

Free GNU/GPL Real Estate Listings Manager Plugin

Here is a quick summary of the features for your review pending the release this Tuesday.

• Works fine with or without the All In One SEO Plugin, which was a requirement from the start.
• Works with almost any modern WordPress theme including those from StudioPress and iThemes.
• No need to bother with the installation of OpenRealty.
• A more advanced user registration widget is included.
• Powerful featured listings options allowing for you to put featured listings directly in posts throughout your site.
• Designed to work with the WordPress Menu Creator.
• Automatically generates title, meta and meta keywords based on user defined listings fields.
• Full inline documentation
• Contact / Client Tracking
• CSV Export / Import
• Export to Trulia, Google, Yahoo and other XML feeds.
• Easily create contact forms that integrate well with the listings management features of the plugin.
• The ONLY fully CSS/XHTML compliant output for listings data.
• Google maps on search results.
• Google maps on listing details pages.
• Ajax integrated contact forms.
• All features are template driven allowing for endless possibilities in design.
• More to come….

With this plugin and your favorite theme, you will have the only true fully featured easy to manage listings manager available for WordPress. Although there are many real estate WordPress themes that have listings features in them, NONE of them have the potential to integrate IDX or RETS data effectively. Framing is an absolute waste of the effort and alternative methods using modified versions of the NextGen gallery are not only counter productive, but impossible to manage for any number of listings beyond a few dozen. Contact me today for more details!

Ron Goodman provided us an example of the Menu Creator being used in his BFA Atahualpa WP Theme and details his steps to modification of the theme. Its worth the read for anyone considering the same thing. On the UltimateIDX we published 12 of the 16 new tutorials late last night and I’m actively setting up the new categories with links so you can few them. Our client, turned voice over expert, provided the voice overs for the video tutorials that run down the ways in which you can use the Menu Creator to its maximum potential. It also includes examples in converting existing themes to work with the WordPress Menu Creator.

Encouraging Theme Developers to use WP Menu Creator

Its been a busy week in getting theme developers to look at the Menu Creator in hopes they will alter their code to support the Menu Creator. After sending out only 300 emails to many different theme developers, I am pleased to see that 21 have currently responded and will distribute the WP Menu Creator in their next theme updates. The code we provide is super clean and easy to implement and in most cases theme developers can preserve backward compatibility with their existing theme users. The nice thing about the WP Menu Creator is that its free for distribution, is not branded, does not have advertising or other promotion links and is fully compliant with XHTML menu designs.

People question why the version I post is at all important given the updates provided by Anything Digital and I simply want to reiterate that this version is the last version that was available on the Joomla extension downloads for those seeking it.

I personally believe that the $35 fee for the updated version is well worth the money given the support that they provide.  The model they use for the sale as “Support Ware” for this GNU/GPL is actually quite similar to the one we use for WPRealty.  Although the product is open source and in most cases freely available, support takes time and energy and those both equate to expenses.  By supporting a product like sh404SEF you ultimately end up with a better solution than a hit and miss open source project that is sparsely supported.

Some people have not been happy with the $35 membership fee but after careful review of what they offer, I think its a good solution to help maintain and update the component. Because of this, I won’t even bother to maintain any updates on this free download beyond the version below and will leave it here for those seeking the last version published to Joomla.

I highly recommend that if you do download this version, that after you configure and test for evaluation of the component you should ultimately get the latest version from Anything Digital to be sure you have the best possible results.

What about CMSRealty or JRealty Usage of the Component?

Our component JRealty does depend on the sh404SEF component to run effectively and as a result we will provide and install the latest version of sh404SEF for anyone using our plugins. I do actively maintain updates to the component as part of our service but will not provide it as a download. I really don’t want to undermine Anything Digital by providing a free download for versions beyond this one.

Although JRealty took a brief position on the back burner during the development of WPRealty, we do suggest and fully support Paul Bouchard’s CMSRealty as a great solution for Joomla Real Estate sites for those seeking immediate Joomla Real Estate site integration.

For those interested in purchasing a membership see the following URL http://dev.anything-digital.com/sh404SEF/License-and-Terms.html I think its a worthy investment.

At least 4 or 5 times a week I get requests to take any number of the Studio Press themes and alter the code for use with the WordPress Menu Creator. Although I normally do this at no cost, there are times I have been so pressed for time that charging for the service became necessary. Now however even casual time away from client projects is at a premium so earlier this week I decided to get the voice over talent motivated to finish our series of tutorials on the subject. Once the voice over talent wraps up the work they are doing on our tutorials, I’ll publish them free of charge on the UltimateIDX website. What you can expect to learn is as follows;

• How to use WP Menu Creator in Studio Press Themes
• How to widgetize your theme
• How to use WP Menu Creator in Thesis Themes
• Introduction to the unlimited menu styling options of Menu Creator
• The quick guide to using Menu Creator
• How to include and distribute Menu Creator with your themes FREE of charge.
• The quick guide to menu design.
• How to externalize your WordPress sidebar, footer and header.
• Others to follow.

None the less, I’ve decided to make the OLD GNU/GPL Free version available for download for anyone that wants it.  I’m only doing this because some existing clients of mine requested a copy of the version for work on projects related to some of our Joomla plugins. This version is dated 09/02/09  (the date I downloaded it) and is file number and version ID com_sh404SEF-15_1.0.20_Beta_build_237.joomla1.5.x.zip

PLEASE understand that this download is made available in accordance to the license enclosed and I am NOT the developer, nor do I have a place to support sh404SEF.   I strongly suggest however that you invest in the project by purchasing a subscription at the vendors new site.  As I said above, its a worthy investment into the furtherance of this vital component.

Updated Similar Post

THE TO DO LIST

• Adding options for multiple instances of slideshows based on user defined criteria.
• Add more sample templates for slideshows.
• Add the advanced slidewhow feature with our FormKit included.
• Apply the new feature to allow the listings to be displayed externally via CURL.
• Add RSS Support so featured listings will generate their own RSS XML
• Build a video tutorial on some of the examples we have built.

The last feature listed above is actually semi working. You can see an example of this located at a site I put the MLS feed into here http://www.connesteefallshomes.com/ In the upper right hand corner you can see the RSS Links for their predefined search results.