Joomla and AWBS Bridge
Posted on April 3, 2008
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Joomla - AWBS Template and User Bridge
AWBS Template Designers Resource Kit
- AWBS master layout template kit (of sorts) that is XHTML and CSS compliant for the most part.
- Dreamweaver snippets I use for the drop in template tags
- The JS Library
- The Joomla External Modules code and video on how to use
- The WordPress inclusion functions called wpglobal.php This allows you to put snippets from your blog in AWBS.
- swfobject.js version 2.0 for the flash jpg slide show I have included
- 3 videos outlining the use of the master layout for building templates.
Released as AWBS Template Kit - version 1.0 - the price is $39.95 and is available now.
WordPress Featured Listings Plugin UPDATE!
Posted on March 26, 2008
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IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING EMAIL REQUESTS and DOWNLOADS
I PROMISE I’VE GOTTEN EVERY ONE OF THE REQUESTS AND I’M NOT IGNORING YOU. We had to change a very important feature and overlooked potential issue with duplicate listings issues in Open Realty as one of the beta testers discovered. I PROMISE EVERY PERSON THAT SENT ME AN EMAIL; I’ll send you an email this evening with download link and the URL to the brief video instruction guide because I still do not have PDF or printable documentation completed.
I’ve been up to my neck with updating my css-grids system and the Open Realty Dreamweaver Extension update pending the release of Open Realty 2.5 and it has kept me round the clock busy with that and catching up on client projects specifically a shopping cart AWBS project now almost complete.
Side note: I hate using a blog as a thread for notices like this so I’ve finished my new site design and matched the design to BB Press so you I can provide support instead of using this blog and comments for such things. I did finish the final stages of the flash presentation feature in the WP Featured Listings Plugin so you can have an animated flash slide show directly in the featured. I’m sure it will break on some sites because the inclusion of SWFObject.js has proven not to work on two blogs which to this day I’m fully baffled as to why. Anyway thats from beta testers so maybe they should update their blog theme.
THANK YOU SINCERELY FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
WordPress OpenRealty vTiger Bridge
Posted on March 24, 2008
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Open Realty adds Sales Leads to vTiger
Open Realty is a great tool for a listings manager but when it comes to managing clients and or leads no listings manager should venture into that realm. My attitude has always been the same when it comes to integration and the thing I suggest over and over again is BRIDGE, BRIDGE AND BRIDGE DONT INTEGRATE. Integration is rarely a good idea largely because forcing applications to occupy one another can cause all kinds of potential issues and limitations.
Take for example the Open Realty Joomla integration tool known as CMSRealty; Although a good product this tool would not be the ideal method in my professional opinion for making the two applications work together. The greatest reason for such is the very unusable URL structure it produces. However I must also be fair in noting that one of my clients who builds integrated website solutions for his customers recently took #1 place in google and is even showing up as an authority in google and the package they use is Joomla, OpenRealty and WordPress all of which are integrated. To take #1 position in that market for the primary search term lends tons of credibility to CMSRealty, Open Realty and Joomla as a viable Real Estate website solution. WordPress naturally has its contributing role. But lets move on to the vTiger Bridge.
A few weeks ago, Mike ( my programmer ) was working on a project for a person in Great Brittan where they want to manage contacts in vTiger for each of those that register via Open Realty and have those leads automatically added to vTiger which they could then assign to agents and or managers. This project was a rather lofty one in which they wanted to sell properties via estate agents world wide in sort of a world wide property network.
The issue for a project of such caliber using Open Realty is the very limited features in user management that are present and the need for additional features like groups, group ids and group members to be added. Once that hurdle was surpassed the project evolved and surfaced as the ideal Open Realty real estate listings manager / (slash) CRM or client resource manager.
Depending on the final outcome of the project, this could be made available free at some point for those interested in adding sales leads to vTiger. Commercially it’s available now on a per install basis.
WordPress Auto Sales Plug-in
Posted on March 21, 2008
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Promoting automotive sales with your WordPress Blog
Now that we have the plugin complete for the Real Estate Featured Listings, I tasked and received back from Mike my coder the optional variant titled WP Auto Sales now in final edits. I’ve managed to receive offers (most of them free) from people willing to translate the plug-ins language files and wrapping up the automotive variant keeps things running a bit cleaner since the difference between the two plug-ins is largely wording, the templates included and setup instructions along with some general cosmetics.
So now, the Featured Listings plug-in as it stands has been ported and tested to work with the following applications; Open Realty 2.4+, EZ Pro Realty 2.0, Hot Properties (some bugs related to Joomla), EZ Realty (some bugs related to Joomla) and a raw IDX feed. Plans to make it work with UltimateIDX is right now in the works. What is released as of a few days back is the version that works with Open Realty and EZ Pro Realty.
The new automotive version will include a database dump file for either of the applications and will replace the default wording and language files with those words specific to the automotive industry. Since any and all catalogs (for the most part) are really galleries or gallery related, the option to use pre configured database dumps makes perfect sense considering alternatives.
Open Realty is an excellent product with great potential and with forked variants like EZ Pro Realty which address more specific requirements of the industry, these two applications are always going to be favored in the development of these plug-ins for now.
WordPress Real Estate Featured Listings Plugin
Posted on March 20, 2008
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AVAILABLE BY REQUEST!
Okay this is the very last pre release post I’ll make on this I promise. The plug-in is 100% available to anyone who sends me an email via my contact form. Since my site has been re designed I’ve not had time to update all my posts with the new typography features and get the downloads manager installed so by request you can have the plug-in.
New tested features work in WordPress 2.5 for this plug-in
What we added as a feature I know will be beneficial is the use of Open Realty tags directly in the WordPress Featured Listings plug-in. So for example any Open Realty template tag you can use in a normal Open Realty featured listings template you can use in this plug-in. What this provides is this, you can take a featured listings template tag and create a template specific to your objective and have that template with parsed code included directly into WordPress and more so Open Realty and WordPress do NOT need to reside in the same database.
Eager to get some more real site users as opposed to beta testers, each of whom I thank for your valued feedback, support and suggestions. I’d like to see the plug-in on some live sites so I can provide some links as a courtesy to you. Please contact me today and over the weekend to get a copy of this FREE plug-in
Plug-in Translators Needed
Posted on March 17, 2008
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The Featured Listings WP Plug-in Translation
We have added a new file and folder in the plug-in for languages and would like to hire translators for 5 paragraphs of documentation. and 22 specific words in the language file. For anyone interested we are looking for the following languages and need to know what your FEE will be for the translation. German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian and any other languages of interest are welcome. Please use the contact form on my site if you are interested. Although this plug-in is available by request I’d like to make it available with multi-lingual support.
WordPress Real Estate Plugin
Posted on March 15, 2008
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WP Real Estate PLUGIN - WHERE IS IT AT? HOW CAN I DOWNLOAD IT?
A ton of emails and questions led me to make this post rather than answer all the emails. The plugin was completed 10 days ago and beta testing has passed so this is available now. I took it offline to rework the interface and I’ll get it posted with details on the new page specifically assembled for this plugin and the others.
~ Jared
How to remotely backup your domain FTP
Posted on March 15, 2008
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Remotely backup your domain to our FTP backup service
Shane, my partner in hosting and I have about a half dozen servers across the web with various providers we market as Click Once Hosting. A few days ago after considering our expenses and each servers usage had come up with the idea that one server we have gets literally no traffic and that rather than try to fill it with websites and site hosting maybe we could use it to provide a way for people to remotely backup their sites on a scheduled bases.
Now the idea behind remote backups is to provide a secure way for people to backup their data from their existing domain by providing only ftp accounts and blocking all other IP’s from connecting as to avoid any unwanted traffic. Since cPanel or Plesk will not be needed we decided to start offering this feature to people interested in keeping backups of their data and set a pricing schedule based on bandwidth.
But is there a benefit for using this type of method for backing up data? I think so, one thing I’ve always been lucky enough to do is regularly backup my domains once a week and the database once a day to my local Linux box that sits right here next to my work station. Facts are facts and servers don’t last forever. Hard drive failure, viruses, hosting company loses power or doesn’t pay their bills and goes out of business among other hosting hazards are ever present. So this solution to me seems like one people would be interested in having and I’ll be promoting it openly even though we generally do not provide open hosting this is a service we will make available to anyone interested. That leads us to yet another service we now offer.
Hosting your site on a mirror hosting server.
Shane and I had discussed taking our largest server with Rack Space in Texas and using it for mirror hosting for companies that need to have a backup solution for directing traffic in the event of high usage and or failure on the primary domain. The facts are, many small companies that suffer from a virus or other tragic event regarding their domain NEVER come back. Statistics show that most companies who lose their website having put time, energy and countless types of resources into never make a second attempt if all is lost. Although many products and or site solutions do provide database backup utilities, some things are only salvageable by having an offsite backup or archive that may include the actual software running the site or simple things like media elements and documents.
Since the name of the game is rapid recovery, most companies that can afford mirror hosting use mirror hosting in having some redundancy to their products and services websites. We wanted a way for the small entrepreneur or blogger to have a similar feature without breaking him in half. Now many would argue another server or hosting provider will work just fine, why bother with a solution that is specifically setup for mirrors. The simple fact is the risk factor involved in hosting mirrors on shared hosting servers that are not specifically setup for this service. Many potential hazards can present itself causing sites to index incorrectly or even worse. I personally maintain a mirror of all my blogs and all my sites on a server elsewhere that I update changes to daily in the event of an issue. I simply go and switch my DNS to the new location should something happen to this server. Here is the current pricing structure we have setup.
Remote FTP Backup (NOT HTTP WEB ACCESSIBLE)
- Basic plan up to 3500 meg per month $5 per /mo
- Silver plan up to 10 gb per month $7 per /mo
- Bronse plan up to 25 gb per month $8 per /mo
- Gold plan up to 50 gb per moth $9 per /mo
- Corporate level packages and Realtor solutions where there are large databases are quoted on a per client basis.
DNS Domain Mirror Solution
- Mirror 1 plan up to 30 GB space per month $6 per /mo
- Mirror 2 plan up to 50 GB space per month $6 per /mo
- Mirror 3 plan up to 75 GB space per month $10 per /mo
- Mirror 4 plan up to 100 GB space per moth $12 per /mo
- Corporate level packages and Realtor solutions where there are large databases are quoted on a per client basis.
I’ve not written sales material on this yet or even tried to promote it but I will get to that later in the week. So please, if you need this service please do not hesitate to contact us.
WordPress Featured Listings Plugin Change
Posted on March 14, 2008
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Version changes for the Featured Listings Plugin
Okay today my coder sent me some very significant changes to the plug-in so it would work with sub-domains and this plug-in was removed temporarily from the download section until Saturday or Sunday. We discovered a nasty little bug that would render some fields in WP useless as a result.
Version Numbering Method
Rather than call this release 0.98 or 1.0 RC2 (release candidate 2) we have tested it enough to start our version number to start at 1.2.1 Here is why; keeping with the standard version numbering criteria, 1.0 was considered stable and tested by dozens of people for the past two months and is even functioning live on a few dozen sites now but a minor or major-minor rewrite of the methods were changed to such a degree that we call the version 1.2. This morning my coder made a few important changes that we will now follow the sub versioning criteria with small changes and bug fixes. As it stands for this release Starting TODAY (download-able tomorrow morning) we are at 1.2.1
New method employed to increase usability, Search Engine Support, and features.
Some of the things we ran into with the previous version that was tested by so many beta testers (I thank each of you) was the issue with making different templates show up on different pages and the issue of locking people into only one field. As we have encountered in the past month, sites that have an IDX or RETS installation in them, the fields are often dynamically created with each refresh of the database. This of course poses a serious problem with flexibility. As many of you know some MLS providers can be real sticklers for things like the listing of brokerage, office, or even MLS logos. Couple that with proprietary needs of each Realtor or real estate office and we compound the problem making this plug-in of little or trivial use. Well we could not stand for that naturally.
Our solution to those problems was to rewrite the plug-in to allow at bare minimum, 80% user defined search criteria in the search results while allowing for ways to include one or more per post. This way the WordPress Featured Listings Plug-in can operate as a mini listings detail plug-in or a featured listings plug-in randomizer as it was intended for. Now an agent blog can have listings displayed by literally hundreds of variables that can be organized with three simple fields and each instance will be a completely separate instance. What does that mean? Well lets have you look at the next post to see how it will work.
WordPress Featured Listings Scenario
Posted on March 14, 2008
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Featured Real Estate Listings for SEO advantages
Lets look at a scenario for building SEF and SEO presentable content for your blog with real estate listings. In the previous post I outlined some of the basic issues we encountered with the beta versions and then went on to briefly explain some of those changes for this version 1.2.1 release. One way to articulate the details for those changes would be to simply present a scenario for better understanding of why this method is so very important and beneficial. First lets do a little history about writing effective real estate blog marketing posts, and then examine the scenario
Marketing Real Estate Listings With Your Blog - Search Engine strategy proven to work.
One thing I’ve been telling many of my Realtor clients is that when using a blog, should they discover that they have little time to contribute to the blog on a regular bases, they could consider extending an opportunity to their clients to write content for them. How and why you might ask? The reasons and benefits may surprise you.
Back in October 2006 when I began using WordPress regularly on Realtor sites, I came up with the notion that no one really knows their home better than the owner of the home (as most agree) and the home owner would be better positioned for writing informative content. MLS and many times website inclusion of an mls type feed present very little useful information to a prospective buyer as much of it is rote bland summary points. As such I came up with a solution that we decided to test out on a few real estate sites. As said, mls data can be rote, boring and mundane and it stood to reason that if a Realtor could present better information about a property he / she would be in a better position to sell that property. Right?
So by extending an opportunity to home owners to write detailed information about their homes and provide photos, among other things, a Realtor could publish valuable details to their blogs therein providing a link back to the listing details for that property in a way that better markets the property. Hence one of the motivating factors in building the WordPress Featured Listings plug-in.
Since testing this idea over the span of just over a year now, we discovered that everyone who employs this method reports back extremely favorable results. Some devices being employed in addition to the home owner’s submitted content is the inclusion of things like charts and or maintenance schedules that have been logged over time by the home owner which can include remodel expenses, roofing, lawn care, patching the driveway and other things readers would be interested in. I know that if I were shopping for a home, I’d be interested in knowing how often someone had performed home owner maintenance and I’m sure others would be too when shopping for a home. A blog presents a way to achieve this with home owner submitted content. As most of my Realtor clients use a format schedule I assembled for them, they can set the criteria of the types of things a home owner can or should cover in describing their home. More on this later in the post but for now, just keep the premise in mind as we look at this scenario.
Marking My Featured Real Estate Listing (scenario)
New listing by Realtor: Some Luxury Home In Some Town, Some State
Following a common standard operating procedure the Realtor tasks his staff to add the listing to the local MLS, orders a yard sign, and sets about adding the property to their prescribed marketing efforts (website, printed magazines, news paper and other rag sheets etc…)
The Realtor decides that he is way to busy to write a blog post about the property and may opt instead to task an employee to write the post following some checklists and procedures for writing such content or the Realtor may outsource the content writing to a copywriter. All said and done, the copy complete, property listed, now time will tell how effective those efforts are. But, why leave it at that?
This same Realtor is an educated Realtor with lots of marketing and psychology studies in his background so this Realtor knows that a more personable and heart felt the informative description is in the blogs copy, the longer a person will stay on the site and the more likely they contact the Realtor would be. But who is to write about this property in such a way and wouldn’t it cost a great deal to have it professionally written with all the checks and balances of keyword density and link relevance? This two part questions is one we can answer in two sentences.
The Realtor extends the opportunity to his client home owner to share as much detail as their heart desires and they can include video tours, photos and other media elements to be published on the world wide web. Next the Realtor visits a site like The Brokers Edge and uses the online tools for checking the material for link relevance, keyword density, and other facets prior to publishing, which the Realtor does by using a pre-formatted method like the one included in our Professional WP Editor Plug-in. Now the post is ready for the next step.
The Realtor uses the WordPress Featured Listings plug-in and includes a single instance of this particular properties listing that rotates random images from those available with each refresh of the page. Then the Realtor adds a second featured listing inclusion using the WordPress Featured Listings plug-in showing an additional 3, 5, or say 10 listings from that very neighborhood which he / she includes just below the blog post. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Who stands to know more, write more and inform more about a particular home than a home owner? Who can write how they "feel" about their home, the neighborhood, the schools, and other facets of a home so effectively? Any Realtor would be hard pressed to provide such information in a cost effective way and even more hard pressed to justify such an expense of conducting research the home owner already knows. write from their perspective for inclusion into the Real Estate blog for greater potential ranking and buyer interaction.
Now you might just say why not include hard coded links in the post to the listings details from photos you add to the post? Why use the Featured Listings WordPress plug-in for such a mundane task.? The answer is simple. Speed and flexibility. With this plug-in we have been able to create custom variants for clients that allow them to use it with products like the UltimateIDX, IDX Web Pro, vieleRETS and others. It has been recently tested with not only Open Realty 2.4.4 but the variant version called EZ Pro Realty and we have plans to port a version to EZRealty for Joomla this next week.
Please read the latest posts on this today.
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