The Spin on Vapor-Ware

Posted on April 17, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

It never really phases me anymore when I see the spin doctor of the term "Vapor Ware" running his mouth again as he condemns the work of others.  History has shown that the spin doctor of this term has yet to surface as anything other than a fraud and a person who should NOT be in possession of a firearm or position of responsibility where others could be hurt. 

Exactly what I’m referring to!

What I’m talking about is this silly notion that products developed and or announced in advanced by Joomla developers, WordPress developers and even Open Realty developers getting the bad rap from a very mouthy individual who has the day occupation working for the tax payers and the night occupation of bashing guys like you, the developers of software.  This individual seems to be under the belief that things happen over night and that when a product is announced other factors come into play where endless hours of free time at the tax payers expense is NOT a luxury we all share. Naming this person isn’t necessary because this post is intended for one target audience and that target audience knows exactly what I’m referring to.

I extend my thanks, my respect and my support to all developers of plugins, addons and components for the open source world, you are greatly appreciated even if it takes a bit longer to deliver than planned. We’ve all been there.

No Rivalry! Open Realty EZ Pro Realty

Posted on April 4, 2008
Filed Under Open Realty, Real Estate News | 1 Comment

EZ Pro Realty and Open Realty Same Product yet different.

A visitor to my blog asked me to update the information regarding the options available for Joomla regarding listings managers and as I was informed EZ Realty a Joomla based product is not being developed for Joomla 1.5 due in part to license restrictions related to the product.

As it stands Open Realty is the ONLY game in town for integrated listings managers for Joomla 1.5 and as I was recently informed EZ Pro Realty is NOT going to pursue the day and night difference between the apps as I had originally been told.  Apparently the developers of EZ Pro Realty are going to build the variant (Fork no longer used in the language) Open Realty for a specific market and not as an alternative to the mega popular Open Realty.  What was the motive for the change?

Well in part the change was due to yours truly, ME! I have been working with Mick (one of the Open Realty contributors) by providing some code and suggestions I’m quite happy to see are now being implemented.  Like EZ Pro Realty, Mick has taken a few suggestions that we discussed via email specifically the changes in files and features.  Here is a quick update on the development of both applications as they currently stand.

Open Realty Pending!

  • Better search engine friendly URL’s that includes the use of hyphens as an option.
  • Inclusion of a change in the default common file which has been renamed common.dist.php
  • Possible inclusion of PDF support I had contributed
  • Possible inclusion of a new method for installation process we discussed.
  • Possible inclusion of a globals.php file which I had briefly discussed EZ Pro Realtys idea behind it.

EZ Pro Realty Pending!

  • Search engine URL’s were naturally from the start but like Open Realty the option for hypen or plus sign is an option but EZ Pro Realty has taken it one step further where you have the option of deciding what the extension is as either .php .html or simply a trailing slash / which will result in url’s like /listing-name-example/
  • EZ Pro Realty finished the implementation of three new templates each of them used to introduce the template methods used in building user interfaces based in part on a new CSS foundation provided by again, yours truly.
  • PDF Support is a guaranteed feature. ( I can’t go into the latest details)
  • Do you like vieleRETS, well EZ Pro Realty provides a way for you to LOVE vieleRETS, you will love it.
  • Brand new installer and a brand spanking new admin control panel with a some nifty features.
  • TinyMCE and XHINA editors are not to be included initially.
  • There is a new featured listings manager.
  • There is a new featured agent manager
  • There is a new Google Maps feature
  • And more…

Open Realty Gets Friendly?

Time away is what the doctor ordered according to Mick  one of the main contributors to Open Realty as he visited my blog and made a few comments related to my original post about EZ Pro Realty features.  Mick and I have shared a few ideas which I’m glad to say have been implemented into the 2.5 release of Open Realty.  Mick states in his email the suggestion that will likely be a more friendly environment at the Open Realty forums. Mick, who occupies a profession full of the kinds of stress that make life difficult did say that time away has given him some new perspective.  All I can say in this regard is I’m glad to see Mick returning to an attentive role at Open Realty and wish him and the other moderators well.

So what is the difference?

EZ Pro Realty is pursuing a different path not as a fork of Open Realty as originally planned but as a variant seeking to achieve something all together different with a product that is quite similar for the most part.  As best I can tell the only real major differences between the two developments is the core features most often achieved via add-ons in Open Realty.

EZ Pro Realty Contributor Blogs

Posted on March 15, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | 2 Comments

FREE Project Blogs for EZ Pro Realty contributors

Moments after I made my post live regarding software standards on EZ Pro Realty, I received an email from the developers that the "Contributor Blogs" are already setup and configured.  I had previously quoted that these things were pending when in fact they are live now.

Who benefits from contributor blogs?

The blogs were my suggestion originally which I had made a checklist available to the project developers quite some time ago and after discovering that they would be implemented I was excited to finally see a project take the same quality standard attitude that Joomla, Drupal and others take regarding disclosure of contributions. 

My initial suggestion naturally was to give credit to those who either provide designs, code, financial support or other types of contributions regardless of capacity.  I further suggested that the blogs be given to any members who meet a minimum post requirement so they could promote their sites that are using EZ Pro Realty in a way that a forum really doesn’t quite satisfy. I’m glad to say that this is one of my favorite aspects of the project because users are now provided with the things people find most interesting about these types of solutions.

Designers, coders, and other types of contributors can even use the blogs to promote their services in addition to providing a good internet neighborhood for links back to their relevant sites.  Since SEO and other aspects of Search Engine marketing are concerned I agreed to draft the policy of use for the blogs to prevent spam registrations and or fostering a spammy type neighborhood on the internet.  Stay tuned!

WordPress Featured Listings Scenario

Posted on March 14, 2008
Filed Under Products, Real Estate News, Real Estate Websites | Leave a Comment

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.

REW PREN Hacking Action POST Removed!

Posted on March 4, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | 2 Comments

Updated March, 10th 2008

After reconsidering my post about the potential legal action proposed by attorneys against REW, I’ve decided to remove the post to DRAFT state until I’m handed the URL to the website for the alleged Class Action Investigation.

As posted in a few blogs regarding real estate news, the information about the pending suggestions by the Justice Department are accurate and no fear of libel on my end concerns me.  But the idea of a class action initiation in the works requires me to hold that in limbo until I verify more than I already had.  Although I deem news worthy real estate events a favorite topic for publishing in my blog, I like to be certain that information is reasonably accurate and based solely on either solid facts from trusted information sources or express first hand knowledge.  Both of which keep writers out of hot water in regards to potential libel.

I will re-publish the details regarding the REW investigation later in the month when I get more information I can provide for examination and authentication by readers of my blog. 

I DO NOT HAVE THE URL FOR THE CLASS ACTION DOMAIN RELATED TO REW! Once that URL is verified I’ll republish the information given to me.

Updated:  I’ve discovered that the US Government tends to view companies who practice in ways that are anti competitive more agressively than in previous years largely due to the new anti-trust and anti-fraud laws having been passed since the Microsoft anti trust lawsuit.  I’ll keep you posted as news is given to me.  I make mention of this in response to several emails regarding this information.

Special Thanks: Thanks to those who sent emails regarding yet countless other events potentially facing the above mentioned.  I’ll not publish anything until more details are available.

Are Realtors at risk with Obama’s plan

Posted on March 3, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

Barack Obama’s Proposed STOP FRAUD ACT; The right move?

I rarely if ever write about political issues as you know but some things pop up from time to time that make such writings necessary.  Given the proposed STOP FRAUD ACT by Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, such deems necessary to mention considering the ramifications that could surface. 

Concerns are being discussed all across the internet regarding this matter and serious concerns have been brought up that should make this a big red flag of what NOT to do. Many feel the vagueness in defining who is responsible and who isn’t could result in truly tragic injustices being parlayed against legitimate professionals in the Real Estate industry.   PREN Forums  published a thread now getting a great deal of attention regarding this potentially dangerous move. Although some action should be taken against fraudulent behavior by those who practice with such unethical conduct, this potential act could spell disaster for the industry.  I’ll elaborate in subsequent posts as to why later.

So who is affected by this potential ACT?

  • Real estate appraisers
  • Real estate accountants
  • Real estate attorneys
  • Real estate brokers
  • Mortgage brokers
  • Mortgage underwriters
  • Mortgage processors
  • Mortgage settlement companies
  • Mortgage title companies
  • Mortgage loan originators
  • Any other providers of professional services engaged in the mortgage process

 

Open Realty Fork Pending?

Posted on February 26, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | 3 Comments

Open Realty Listings Manager Apparently Forked

Updated March 10th 2008 with Fork Name.

I received an email this afternoon from a company that has apparently forked the mega popular open source real estate tool, Open Realty.  EZ Pro Realty, seeks to bring several products together in hopes of creating a better off the shelf product for entry level agencies.

Although only sparse details were explained to me, the demo I was able to visit shows great promise.  I was able to notice almost instantly that the same old Open Realty structure was present on the surface, but diving into the demo site revealed some very interesting developments I’ll get to in a moment.

Will Open Realty copy its features?

I had asked the developers of the fork if they felt Open Realty would follow suite and copy features they now offer in the fork.  They boldly answer that they do not care if Open Realty takes every single one of their features and implements them. They further state that they wanted to set precedence for features Open Realty should have had from the beginning and that they had thought of offsetting such potential reversal of implementation in hopes both products would meet industry standards.  The developer states that the decision to offset the potential of reverse implementation of features takes place by creating similar features found in some of the Open Realty commercial add-ons that have been made available.  As some may know, Open Realty members do publish commercial add-ons ranging in price and features that most would agree are useful. 

This does however make perfect sense as the chat session with the developer went on to explain that Open Realty sits as the bare minimum a real estate listing script should be in terms of features and function and that in order to bring Open Realty to the industry standard as expected by Realtors, the inclusion of commercial add-ons was required.   Chad basically said this goes contrary to their belief and commercial add-ons available for Open Realty are features that are standard in his fork.  I have mixed emotions about such a philosophy as I myself use to publish commercial add-ons for Open Realty until I realized that every commercial effort I made for add-ons would be eventually copied or duplicated for use in or by Open Realty anyway so all of mine are now free.

Chad, the developer of the fork states, "commercial products being sold by various members of Open Realty are the kinds of features that should have been core in Open Realty and will be core in this fork".  In the developers notes on the demo, its described that the "forks" shall have features that should rarely be commercial and only in the instances of its use for highly customized solutions will commercial extensions exist. I guess we call that good news from an end users perspective. None the less, after only brief examination of the features I discovered the following complements to the fork;

  • CSV Loader
  • Custom Contact forms with SMS features
  • Google Maps
  • IDX management features
  • Enhanced Template Engine that offers a great deal more control for designers
  • PDF Support native with some clever use of predefined PDF templates.
  • Fully customizable featured listings rotator
  • Compare Listings Feature
  • Similar Listings Feature
  • Menu Management from the addon by embarques
  • Live Chat Monitor

And so much more with much of the changes being hidden from me.  I was unable to log into the admin panel or even visit the /admin directory of the forks demo but it was explained to me that the new admin panel seeks to achieve many things not entirely related to the listing manager. 

Having discovered my blog in a google search regarding my new plugin, the developers of this fork had asked me if they could include some of my specific Open Realty add-ons I have in inventory.  I naturally zipped up the entire inventory I had and send them over.

Open Realty Fork - WordPress Listings Plugin?

Does this information suck! Now I have to start writing for yet another Real Estate application and may need to potentially offer a variant of my WordPress Listings Plug-in for this fork.  Naturally my initial concern was that my pet project the FREE plugin for WordPress.  Even though I’ll be releasing the plug-in this week, I’ll likely have to alter it to work with the fork should it ever come to fruition.  As It was explained to me the fork makes only a half dozen real changes to the database structure and only a few dozen changes to the overall method featured listings and other property details are displayed so pulling the data with my WordPress plugin should be a minor modification.

For those who are not familiar my plug-in basically provides a way to display Open Realty Featured listings in your WordPress posts.   With that in mind, I thought given the super nice features in the fork, my including it as another tool for WordPress Real Estate sites would only strengthen the triplicate solutions in building effective real estate sites I use so frequently, Open Realty, Joomla and WordPress.

I guess we see how the fork goes as they release it in just 10 days with domains and support channels already in place.  All I can say in summary is that its about time.

How to hire an SEO professional

Posted on February 20, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

SEO Service - Things to consider

I had intended on publishing an article in my blog regarding this subject but the exposure would be best served on the forums so feel free to check it out.

How to hire an SEO professional

Matt Cutts on Webmaster Tools

Posted on February 14, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

Matt Cutts - How to optimize your site for google.

Sitting in my bookmarks was a video I had totally forgotten about and upon looking at it again this early morning I realized that this video answers a few questions I’d been asked in one of the forums I’m moderate.  "Does Google crawl password protected areas?" The answer of course is no but this video does the ideal job of articulating why.

For a Realtor seeking to maximize their presence on the web, some of the things Matt discusses in this video are many of the things I have been writing about in the forums.  Some topics related to the proper link methods are always discussed it seems and more often lately are subjects about requiring users to register prior to viewing listings details is growing in the discussion boards as well.  If a user can’t see the data until they log in, then google can’t see it either and its one of those things I tell people to be very conscious of before implementing such requirements on their sites. Here is the video.

Open Realty and Joomla RTDS Available

Posted on November 24, 2007
Filed Under Products, Real Estate News, Template Design Kit | 2 Comments

Joomla Template Design Kit Now Available

I finished the final edits to the Dreamweaver Extension for Joomla template building. Granted this is a bit late considering that version 1.5 is on our heels but this product has sat in limbo for the better part of three years now. My original Mambo Dreamweaver Extension which I released back in 2003 was downloaded about 3,500 times and since that time I’ve seen several variants spring up here and there I’ve been asked to customize for clients. Naturally my template design tools branded under the RTDS simply because that was my intended objective. However today while doing a Google search I was surprised to find that there are in fact two or three other Dreamweaver Extensions on the market for Joomla template building. I’m just surprised I’d never noticed them before. That prompted me to be a bit more motivated in wrapping up version 1.0.12+ so I could quickly update and finalize the 1.5+ version.

Initially, the idea is to release this version which you can download in the Downloads section today, and then release the enhanced version that includes parts and sections of the full blown RTDS which will be available on TemplateDesignKit.com after the first of the year. I’m not going to disclose what is available in the kit at this time. None the less go ahead and download the free version today and tell me what you think

Open Realty Template Design Kit Now Available

I’ve completed the final tests on the Open Realty template design extension, having tested it in Version 9 and CS3 of Dreamweaver. This extension simply wont work in older versions such as DWMX or prior. This extension features all the necessary coding generators “Wizards” necessary to build a standards compliant XHTML / CSS design and was specifically updated to accommodate version 2.4.3 and 2.5 of Open Realty.

As with the other Dreamweaver Extensions, this one had originally been intended for the RTDS as a package item when I came to the conclusion that delays in the project are such that these tools could outlive their usefulness if I don’t make them available. Download this extension as well from the download section and tell me if you encounter any issues.

keep looking »

TEMP CODE: GDHXCDX17249629
Close
E-mail It