Joomla WordPress OpenRealty Bridge Available!

Posted on October 19, 2008
Filed Under Real Estate News | 5 Comments

We finally released the Joomla OpenRealty bridge on EZProRealty yesterday along with our long awaited WP Realty plugin for WordPress and downloads have already exceeded what we initially had expected. Exceptionally well built and effective as these new plugins are, we feel we have achieved a new type of integration that keeps the designer, the SEO, and the site user in mind during its development. The idea behind each of these items was to build something that would be cleverly designed to be customized by designers, effective enough for search engine optimization and easy enough for end users to use.

I’ve been working on the WP Realty along with the developers of EZProRealty for more than 6 months off and on between client projects and I’m elated to see these come to fruition. These plugins are truly easy to administer solutions for turning the worlds most powerful blogging / CMS solutions into powerful real estate tools

I’ve written about my plans and ideas I’ve have had over the course of many months for these new items and I’m happy to say that this is only the beginning. With more than 250 downloads in under 24 hours, the developers and contributors take that as a sign to move forward with our initial plans of building a series of FREE addons and plugins you may find commercially elsewhere. Wanting to stay friendly with the developers at OpenRealty Addons, we will likely NOT compete with them. However, I’m not a programmer and I don’t have the final say for some things as I know for sure that tools for integrating new slide shows, google maps, XML data feed tools among others were planned long ago. Even our coveted IDX import scripts may actually end up as 100% FREE items for OpenRealty users.

Adding News Articles To OpenRealty

There are secondary benefits to the WordPress plugin called WP Realty in that you can build pre defined search results and then control the content that shows within the results. The idea of adding news articles to OpenRealty has long been an idea of mine after building a few rather complex Realtor sites. By adding random or even category specific articles at the bottom of pre defined search results pages you can increase your indexing success in search engines largely due to the unique content for the actual search result.

As you may very well know search results by and large are not unique enough to ever index in search engines, but a few of our clients have benefited from the technique of adding WordPress blog snippets at the bottom of pre defined search results to achieve this very difficult task. Now, when you create your predefined search results, you can add content relative to the result. But it does not end there.

One of the unique features with WP Realty and EZProRealty is the addition of a clever little javascript snippet that makes listing searches super efficient by NOT passing empty or null field values in the search string. OpenRealty as some may know passes all field values regardless of actual value in a GET string for the query. In instances where you have a search form that has maybe 15 fields, all fields get passed into the search string which can crash the OpenRealty MySQL database. By adding a little javascript we have been able to only pass fields that actually have a value. Now when build lengthy search forms with multiple fields the search submit will not pass fields which have a NULL value.

Pay special attention to what I just said above as I bring this together for you. With the new WP Realty and EZProRealty you can finally build a truly integrated solution between the CMS and your listings manager in a way that actually out performs stand alone alternatives. OpenRealty is a great listings manager but not a great content manager so the marriage of Joomla, WordPress or both together with OpenRealty provides the agent with the kind of website tool that most commercial entities are charging several thousand dollars a year to develop. Realtors are gravitating away from proprietary solutions at an alarming rate in part due to the economy and the need to find a cheaper solution to reduce their costs. This is the solution. You can build an impressive site, add in news articles, manage search forms with a greater degree of efficiency and build a site that will dance around the competition all for FREE!

WordPress CSS Drop-Down Menu

Posted on October 9, 2008
Filed Under Products in Review, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

CSS Cascading Menus for WordPress

Although WordPress is a blog (journal) solution with a lofty inventory of features, more and more designers and developers are starting to employ WordPress as a micro CMS solution. CMS solutions like Joomla and Drupal (pronounced Dru-Paul) for instance are very robust and capable enough to easily handle large corporate level websites but is essentially overkill for the average website. The main advantage in using a CMS solution is the ability to manage the interface and individual content elements without the need to alter the core structure or template of the site. One particular CMS feature lacking in a WordPress blog is the ability to effectively manage navigation elements, the ordering and the structure of the links.

For the most part menu links are generated in WordPress dynamically each time a page or post is published usually in the default ordering according to post date. Menu management in WordPress is certainly possible for a skilled coder who can understand and manipulate WordPress template tags as I had demonstrated on the Las Vegas Real Estate blog in a previous post. But this technique is not easily applied for novice site designers and rarely an option for the end user without a lot of trial and error. The solution many seek is to use the drop in code snippets from WordPress’s own codex library which can provide a quasi solution to provide reasonably easy to manage menus. Most of the time the technique employed is to use the built in feature for category links where the sort order is known before the links are added.

What if there was a solution that could provide full menu management for WordPress? Maybe one that would include link ordering, link names and even link destination more like a CMS solution? Would WordPress developers and designers be more inclined to take advantage of WordPress features they have come to love and apply it to their CMS projects? I would boldly venture to say yes.

WordPress CSS suckerfish drop down menu

The Brokers Edge faced the same frustration with menu management on sites requiring CMS features but none so lofty as to suggest a solution like Joomla or Drupal. So, we put our heads together and came up with what we believed would be the best possible all round menu management solution called WP Menu Creator During our initial planning, the developers at The Brokers Edge kept in mind that the menus it would generate need to be as SEO friendly as they can be and must not have any real significant limitations in the structure and layout of the menu once it renders. We all essentially agreed that the menu structure should follow the XHTML / CSS standard unordered list method for producing link lists. This would provide endless possibilities for styling the aesthetic appearance of menus.

What the plugin does is quite simple on the surface. It simply provides an administrators interface for blog owners to manage their menus and links in an easy to understand format. Then by simple inclusion of a template tag into the sidebar or other areas of the template files, it renders the menu in that location. The output is plain old unordered lists which can even include nested lists if you require a suckerfish type cascading drop down multi level menu. Unique CSS ID and Class Selectors are added to the menu for endless styling options and control. Although the CSS and XHTML part of the menu can be complex for some users, it is none the less easily adapted for most navigation structures on many popular themes. To find out more about this FREE WordPress Plugin please feel free to visit The Brokers Edge

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

 

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.

Morgan Carey – REW PREN Hacking – Timely Apology

Posted on November 2, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 12 Comments

Well articulated apology given by Morgan Carey

Morgan Carey, the owner and co founder of Real Estate Webmasters provided a rather lengthy and well articulated apology today regarding the disparaging events that victimized the PREN forums earlier this week.

Informative, clear, and certainly well presented, Morgan Carey stated that upon careful examination of the evidence being presented by PREN administrators and technical staff, he was able to successfully ascertain that the hacking could very well have been a rogue employee. After Morgan Carey conducted his own exhaustive internal investigation, Carey appears confident in his findings as he expressed his apology directly to PREN by stating;

“… PREN although I will never agree with your practices of allowing anonymous users to post defamatory statements regarding REW, I do think this staff member crossed the line.”

Mr. Carey continues on with the apology by stating his concerns regarding the apparent rivalry between his forums at Real Estate Webmasters and the forums for the Pro Real Estate Network. The 1,000+ word post went into lengthy detail regarding what Morgan believes to be the true nature of the unfortunate disruption regarding the PREN forums and states that similar although unrelated attacks on his own forums have taken place over the span of Real Estate Webmasters lofty presence on the internet. Webmasters and forum administrators would certainly agree that sites that are on the top in stature and presence do in fact become targets of malicious attacks and defamation which is simply a painful reality we all face.

Morgan Carey, more apologetic than sympathetic in his post made several references to the rivalry between his forum and forum(s) in a less than direct way which could leave some to conclude that the motive was entirely predatory. Predatory attacks do take place as we see headlines of such behavior between rivals all the time. Morgan Carey was careful to disclaim such motives outwardly but the voice of his message leaves an impression that such a motive may have been the case. When one considers that no fewer than 7 (seven) forums did surface as a result of rivalry or differences in authority and opinion by former long standing members and co-founders of REW; rivalry seems to be an appropriate conclusion in the hidden suggestion of such.

Rogue REW Employee Hacks PREN forums?

As it appears, the most informative and important facet of this event is the revealing of Morgan Carey’s internal investigation. The investigation apparently netted REW staff the conclusion that it may likely be the fact that REW’s own employee perpetrated the malice against the PREN forums. Interestingly enough, each of the forums, REW and PREN, do in fact use the popular vBulletin forum software to power their growing communities. An employee with knowledge and familiarity of vBulletin could in fact compromise passwords.

However, a question sits on the tongues of the curious; Was this event by direct command or was it fully without express knowledge of Morgan Carey that the compromised password and act of violating the PREN’s forums was ensue (ensue not always clear). Either way, from a legal stand point we discover that REW could very well be fully liable for the acts of its employees rendering express knowledge moot in the eyes of the law.

Since Morgan Carey is not known for his technical ability but rather his SEO prowess, does lend a level of credibility regarding his denial of involvement. The mining of vBulletin passwords is a lofty task for the non technical as the software does not divvy up such information easily. Compromised passwords take the kind of knowledge only the very skilled would possess.

Alternatively, a plugin could have been installed allowing vBulletin administrators (or assigned powers to be) to see and or edit passwords on a whim. Morgan states that such an ability is not in their means and not part of their administrative practices. It is known however that vBulletin third party developers have made available many expanding additions to the software that give more control and power over their forums. Some are less than ethical in my biased opinion. Some of these plugins provides forum owners casual access to information perceived to be private as in private messaging between members as well as monitoring of other member interactions. Interestingly, such features would not likely be installed without the express knowledge of a forums owner.

Bench warmers on the sidelines still express opinion regarding these events as clearly drawn lines of bias or should I say indifference riddle the forums and blogs around the web. One thing is for certain, should the investigation conducted by the US Justice Department net contradicting evidence to this latest explanation, many may conclude the outer most extremes of webmaster ethics in ways that could harm the entire industry. Webmasters have been coming under increasing fire in recent months as an apparent trend in forum moderation seems to also include censorship, deception and outright policing of member interaction in what is perceived to be a community or publicly accessible forums. Fallout and swift changes in pledge of allegiance may surface.

PREN administrators oppose the notion in Morgan’s apology that they participate in the practices of allowing anonymous or guest users to make posts. PREN policy is “policy” not “police” and albeit more open to the freedoms not afforded elsewhere with opinions, guests and the anonymous are not permitted persons to make posts.

Morgan Carey’s apology, although clearly sided and albeit carefully written with disclaimer verbiage, does seem genuine rather than damage control motivated on the surface. Conclusions I’m sure will meet with disagreement, Morgan’s timely apology presents some logical answers that will be the subject of many forums and blogs today I’m sure. The rogue employee findings does answer some very interesting questions which will be discussed abroad. Such a finding would not be impossible or even out of the question as you may very well agree.

Regardless of differences between those pro or contra, Morgan Carey’s apology was timely and appropriate as was foreseen just 24hours prior. We eagerly await the feedback we are sure to see across the web. As an active member of Real Estate Webmasters forums myself I’ve been hesitant to visit and make posts because of perceived rivalry between the forums even though I’ve found interaction with REW members rewarding in the past. As the Administrator or Moderator of many forums across the web, situations like this leave me in a state of empathy and concern for those determined to undermine one another. Lets hope this isn’t the case!

PREN Recovered Hacked Posts

Posted on November 1, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 2 Comments

Hacked posts in PREN potentially recovered

Alleged hacking by Real Estate Webmasters – Morgan Carey – May have done little damage.

After careful examination of the backup inventory it was discovered today that it may be possible to recover many of the deleted posts perpetrated by the user of the compromised moderator account.

Today, after being notified that the FBI will be looking at the server logs, I was expressly instructed to stand down on any updates, repairs and modifications in my attempts to recover the missing posts in Pro Real Estate Network Forums. Luckily, the vBulletin software features many essential characteristics beneficial to commercial forums that forever secure it in my preference as the ideal commercial tool for building large well managed communities. Had it not been for some of the applications features for backup and recovery the data that had PREN owners so very concerned, could have been lost forever. Essential to the government during its investigation into the allegations of Morgan Carey’s alleged intrusion, PREN owners and administrators vowed to cooperate with the investigation by providing critical historical data archived as a procedural practice since the forums inception.

PREN administrators, eager to assist in the investigation, express appreciation and gratitude for the absolutely stellar cooperation received by RackSpace, the company that manages the many servers used for PRENs business ventures. Gladly we can adequately defend and boldly protest that vBulletin itself was not compromised by a flaw or security threat present in the application as once considered.

Jared Ritchey Blog – Gets a Facelift!

Posted on October 31, 2007
Filed Under Design, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

New Integrated Joomla – Open Realty – WordPress 2.3.1 Template

Yep design is done, ported, integrated and applied this week. I wrapped up projects outstanding and I’m in full preparation to complete a long overdue and greatly demanded set of WordPress and Joomla tools for Real Estate professionals.

Having worked round the clock since my 4 week absence, I’ve managed to take all the many notes, code snippets and features and build a design that will likely be here for a long time. Coining on WordPress’s new Tag Cloud feature among others the new blog will include a feature I’ve wanted since the day I decided to go online. Recognition as an online publication. Now that I’ve been granted an actual ISBN # from the government, I’m more motivated than ever to revamp my writing procedure and publish blog posts in a way that compliments and informs in the areas of my true passions, design and teaching.

This site will go offline for about 10 hours this weekend and periodically may toss a JavaScript error now and again but I’m looking forward to the blogs new interface and the MOOTOOLS features I’ve added.

Morgan Carey – Real Estate Webmasters Accused of Hacking

Posted on October 31, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 7 Comments

The self titled master of real estate marketing accused of hacking competitor

According to a post on the Pro Real Estate Network Forums, Morgan Carey the owner and chief administrator of Real Estate Webmasters has employed unethical and potentially criminal actions by hacking the PREN forum.

Apparently a simple compromise in the password used by a PREN forum moderator after it was concluded that the same identical password had once been used by the would be victim in the REW forums. The moderator, banned from REW for reasons unknown, appears to be specifically targeted when once considers that the PREN forum membership consists of many would be refugee’s from Morgan Carey’s militant banning rampage he is commonly known for. Carey, who is no stranger to allegations of unethical practices in his business ventures, was apparently tracked down through the use of the PREN forum IP trace feature indicating that the compromised account did in fact indicate numerous edits to the moderators posts all of which were designed to flatter and praise Real Estate Webmasters. It was then later discovered that not only were the moderators posts edited but moderator powers were abused to possibly remove back links and other unfavorable content to REW.

Morgan Carey – Illegal Hacking and Deception?

Call me always late, call me always slow, even call me ugly, but never call me presumptuous. This latest bout with Morgan Carey really comes as no surprise as prior encounters with his unethical webmaster practices have netted him a grand total 7 competing forums and services that seek to demonstrate ethics in a business many feel are tainted by the likes of Morgan Carey. It is not by presumption that Morgan Carey or his affiliations were singled out for the allegations when one considers a long checkered history of alleged deceptive and downright unethical practices in the design and marketing of real estate websites. Pro Real Estate Network founders discovered the offense by tracking a series of logins among other things via known IP’s associated with Morgans and his associates who were once active members in PREN. Very interesting!

It should be noted that Morgan has been the target of allegations in the past by members of PREN in yet another lengthy heated debate over his ethics, practices and almost Teflon ability to escape unscathed when fault appears to be his own.

Carey, a residence in beautiful Nanaimo, BC has escaped multiple attempts to sue largely because of his geographical location and the mounting difficulties that would be presented with any attempts to collect debts. This time however its not civil its potentially criminal and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has allegedly been notified but not verified at the time of this post.

After witnessing the unethical practices of Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters over the past 3 years I’m surprised that so few have caught on to the devises used after being so widely published across the internet in public forums. As far back as 2004 Morgan Carey had altered the flash header files of Wyoming Realtor Jim Messengers main site stemming largely from claims that Jim’s well documented ownership of his impressive design was being laid claim to in the portfolio of Real Estate Webmasters. Apparently Morgan was not about to let go of Jim as a client and felt it necessary to give him a going away present by altering his flash header by the inclusion of bogus information and an altered contact phone number. To this day in DVD archive I still possess the offended original file provided by Morgan Carey as I had been ultimately hired to migrate and finish the transfer of Jim Messenger’s site to his new server. Had it not been pointed out to me by Jim Messenger, who is NOT a flash programmer, I would have overlooked the alteration and continued as normal working on the Jackson Hole Real Estate Website Project. Benefit of the doubt is my first conclusion I consider had confirmation not been presented so quickly after the discovery of yet another vindictive modification to Jim Messengers core files.

Shortly thereafter while working on yet another site once hosted with Real Estate Webmasters, PHP programmer Mike Morris had discovered during the repair and migration of Jim’s source code that a small hidden php snippets was inserted to literally send a CC or carbon copy of every contact form submission to a person named Aaron, a known employee of Real Estate Webmasters at the time. Shocking as it may be, I can’t even imagine why a person would want to have a carbon copy of someone else’s email submissions, but then it hit me like a hammer; Many pointed out, “some speculating” that one may easily conclude that Morgans objective was to fulfill in part his obligation to provide leads to other clients having been contracted to do so. Clever technique really but none the less just as unethical as a webmaster can be.

In defense however of Morgan Carey one could argue that Morgan is simply the target of vindictive behavior having risen in stature and status in the Real Estate Webmaster community as to foster such strife. All webmasters during their careers (especially freelance) will experience forum posts, angry emails, and bold yet offensive outright lies in blogs about them. Its par for the course and should be of little deterrence to a steady professional in this business. Quite honestly, its those that don’t suffer some objection that have me concerned more often than not. No press is bad press, right? Maybe!

Rather than continue to rant on this very shocking issue involving a person many consider colleague, associate and even friend, I conclude that to follow the events its best to just visit the Pro Real Estate Network forums today at the following URL.

keep looking »

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