WordPress Maintenance Update

Posted on September 28, 2007
Filed Under Design, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

WordPress 2.3 Released – Tags and Tag Clouds SEO Feature

WordPress has released the much anticipated version 2.3 which features one of the latest trends in search engine optimization known simply as tags and tag clouds.

Having used the Ultimate Tag Warrior which in my opinion is by far, the best solution to date for tagging, the new WordPress features the ability to import from about a half dozen popular tagging plugins. Albeit the UTW is rather sophisticated and can be difficult to install, configure and implement the UTW has been fundamental in many sites success when it comes to getting yourself out of supplemental status in google for your pages. Now that google has removed or “made secret” which pages in your blog are in supplemental, the release of the new WordPress 2.3 seems to arrive with a new tagging feature right when we need one.

WordPress 2.3 Themes and Templates with Tagging Options

Cross developing themes to include the options for the new feature for tagging is a breeze and now that WordPress steps further toward the CMS class of applications in this latest release it stands to reason that it will fast become a websites single cms solution. Joomla and others similar in this genera can be overkill for some types of websites that require less than full blown portal or corporate level sites which is where Joomla shines. Now that WordPress 2.3 is released, it stands as one of the best overall instant website solutions on the market pound for pound. With WordPress the ease in which an instant, seo friendly, intuitive, easy to manage website solution can be implemented in well under a day in most instances.

With growing popularity WordPress has become the second fastest growing application on the web second only to Joomla and with the implementation of the new tools and codex could surpass Joomla as the application of choice for websites not requiring such robust and lofty features. Joomla is certainly an excellent application, but in situations where you need something a bit less lofty, WordPress fits the bill for many site requirements we encounter today.

Some additional features of the new WordPress 2.3 include Update Notification, better post and draft management and certainly the long overdue but greatly appreciated updates to the blogroll, wysiwyg editor and url management. Each of the latter three most of the time required some finesse and patience in getting them to behave properly. Well almost, the blogroll has just been annoying so I tossed that in as one of the long overdue feature changes. You can read about the latest updates to version WordPress 2.3 on the WordPress Site Here.

“Now we put it in practice what we eagerly preach”

WordPress Experiments for Design – Site going offline for a day

Now that I’ve managed to update dozens of clients blogs with the new WordPress 2.3 and their themes to accommodate the new features, I’ll be doing the same here shortly. This site has actually been redesigned and my new template is an integrated one unlike any other I’ve built or designed. I’ve created it to function with some features I’ve never applied to anyones site before. Things like the Real Estate Listings Plugin which will be used in this very site as a template gallery to demonstrate its flexibility in hopes that we can release it FREE here very shortly. And I’m a super fan of of jQuery tools over MooTools so I’ll certainly have a nice collection of cool features in this site that use the codex (js library) from jQuery.

Its very strange but many times I set out to work on my own stuff and get my own plugins, addons, extensions ready for publication, a project comes out of no where that just challenges me in a way that I can’t say no. Well I’ve put off way to many very necessary projects too long so I’m taking this site offline to wrap up the design either this weekend or the next and completing other outstanding product developments in addition to finalizing several pending small projects.

Template design by and large is not at all complex and in fact is quite easy if fundamental steps are followed. But steps and procedures can stymie or hinder creativity which had been a major concern in my pet project the “rapid template design series”. With WordPress 2.3 now available, its clear that the approach to design following the fundamentals can help us quickly produce some readily available themes for free download that I’ve procrastinated on releasing. I’ve had hundreds of concepts that I’ve abandoned where only a small percentage became a working example on some clients site that I’ve been itching to dig out, complete, and release for free as many as I can.

I’ll keep you posted as things go on the WordPress 2.3 integration feature as well. Sitting in my WordPress drafts is the post about all of the plugins I most animately suggest to clients for SEO which I’ll publish shortly. I’ve revised my list in recent days as the release of version 2.3 changes the approach but never the goal. My list has grown to become the top 10 suggested instead of the top 5 suggested as many plugins are simply not avoidable if SEO is your objective.

Until then, happy blogging.

Turnkey SEO Content Writing – Keyword Density

Posted on September 5, 2007
Filed Under Design, Real Estate News | 2 Comments

Search Engine Optimized Content Writing

It never fails, every time I build a website, certain requests from clients seem to be as consistently mentioned as the color scheme; Content.

In the years I’ve been building sites one thing that has crept up more and more is the ever present importance of good quality, keyword dense, relevant and original content for websites. Over these same years I’ve found only a handful that can pull it off willing to work for hire and one of them I’m soon to be married to. But time is a valuable commodity and the quality of content is directly influenced by a conscious timely approach to writing with voice and deliberate attention to the target audience.

I’ve seen the price for content writers fall from the average of $25 per 450 – 550 word pages all the way down to an average price of $5 – $7 for the same expected results. Is it because technology makes the job easier? Or maybe its because content writing isn’t really that hard! Possibly, but an important trend I’ve noticed is the consistent letdowns I hear about from clients because they chased after the $2.50 per article writers that do little more than cleverly and masterfully operate a system of plagiarism that allows them to use technology like script builders and content generators that gets pimped off as original materials. Its tragic to see industry in general fall prey to those that first drive down prices by flooding the legitimate business world with reams of junk, then abruptly leave everyone else holding the bag.

True professionals are not just good writers as the internet, like every other form of written media seeks to achieve purpose in the messages they write by keeping audience and idea in mind as the “voice” the written word. Internet writing is substantially more dynamic than the printed word and with technologies that can vary the content according to user preferences, a single article can quite deliberately mean different things to different people. Keywords and keyword density are paramount as is structure, titles, sub titles and all the underlying code that makes up a well formed page worthy of indexing by search engines.

Professional Content Writers Starting at $5 per article

I’ve watched Jamie as she writes researched content for large companies that don’t even flinch at the $250 – $500 minimum she requests for researched documents and its interesting to note how effective and well thought out her content is. Not many people can afford spending so much money on content writing even though a website without it is dead in the water. An affordable solution is needed and affordable must not be confused with cheap.

Inundated with nearly a dozen emails this weekend from those seeking content writers, I decided that I’d take the time to email the professionals I know and add a new aspect to my business model to accommodate this growing need for good content. Calling in the troops, most of them college students I know, required only a quick decision to be made into a reality since each of these writers I solicited can write with all of the earmark characteristics of a good web content writer. I’d simply offer them an opportunity earn some extra money doing what they do for those A+ grades they brandish so happily. Writing essays, term papers and technical analysis papers differs in web writing only in a few key areas particularly in the area of relevance and keyword density. Once grasped, then fully understood, the birth of a new service was born.

Professional content writers who understand the importance keeping their audience involved in the writing with a clear voice and well articulated words cleverly drafted with keyword density in mind. Three of them, one of them clever, another a relentless researcher, and one too smart for his own good, deliver more unique ability to the prospect of writing internet content than anyone I know. So I’ve added the service to my business model where prices for entry level researched content can be drafted for your website at a price that is easy to justify. $5 with a minimum of 20 articles delivered in a formatted cut-n-paste ready to use solution that can make all the difference in the world regarding the success of your site.

GET STARTED TODAY

Moving to Missouri – The Brokers Edge

Posted on September 4, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 3 Comments

Joomla / OpenRealty / WordPress Websites are all ranking high

I’m excited about some of my the discoveries I have so passionately invested energies into. Its one thing for a person to draw conclusion and theories about search engine optimization having little or no experience as I so often see today being played out in forums on the subject. But its an entirely different thing to test, harbor, covet and experiment with techniques first hand that lends so much to a collection of winning formulas giving someone the ability to say that what they do isn’t just half wit theory, but something that actually works.

For nearly a year now I’ve planned on moving to Missouri where the offices of The Brokers Edge are located and have held off mainly because the UltimateIDX was in its third beta nearly ready for production release. Well with a renewed teaching contract and the UltimateIDX in production status, a brick and mortar office with a desk with my name on it calls to me.

Being an instructor, writer and freelance designer, my office gets to follow me around most the time as I pack my laptop to and from the college as well as meetings related to what I do. Teaching Photoshop or writing course ware is a fond passion as is design in general but The Brokers Edge presents an opportunity for me to do all three and never skip a beat. But this really fits in when I considered much of the information myself and Mark has been tabulating so it makes logical sense.

Today after confirming that better than 80% of my serious clients (those that take the internet serious) all rank in the top 10 for their search terms, I built a portfolio I had in standby ready to present these gems. Sometimes I wonder if It’s by luck or the grace of god that I’ve never had two clients in the same market for the same industry. I am just not sure how I would represent two competing sites with search engine optimization effectively. Thankfully The Brokers Edge has a formula that apparently works doing just that. Looking down my list I found that client websites I’ve built and or migrated from Advanced Access or Agent Image for example now rank #1 – #10 consistently and the tools we used were Joomla, OpenRealty, and WordPress. Granted severe hacks to OpenRealty were required to achieve this but they none the less work.

So why do I say “serious clients” other than the obvious? In the time I’ve been doing this business it still surprises me that a person would either not take the internet serious for Real Estate or when they do, they simply pay so much money to have me develop a site only to sit on it and let it do nothing but age. Aging a site is a good thing, sitting on it untouched is a bad thing. Serious Realtors, those that know, understand that according to the national averages, nearly ALL (80% – 90%) home purchases begin with searches online. Why then let a site sit stagnant?

Last Thursday I got a phone call from such a client that owns a site in Utah that I developed with the triplicate solution (Joomla – WordPress – OpenRealty) more than 18 months ago. Today I still see that the site has never received a PR and never indexed for a single term because the 9 agent blogs I built were simply NEVER used and the content is as old, cut-n-paste stagnant as can be. Tragic really because the energy that went into the site to provide the Turn Page Flash Real Estate Gallery, Real Estate Document Management, Online RTF document generator (custom mind you), an Integrated Innova Studio WYSIWYG editor with a half dozen content layout templates that should have made publishing a snap. Features is what the site was all about yet inactivity again demonstrates what we have long known. More on that later.

So, moving, I think that The Brokers Edge will give a nice central place to display the technologies in real world demos that articulate the finer points of good seo readied sites. Guided navigation, Title Tags, URL’s, relevant content, and the list goes on. When a Realtor considers that the cost of developing a triplicate solution like I so frequently write about using all these tools for well below a $1,000; it makes it a real hard argument to justify proprietary solutions that so many often jump right into. Had it not been for the up sell on established length and name recognition, more people, not just Realtors, would jump on this because it works and it GIVES YOU CONTROL. Besides, when you couple this with The UltimateIDX which was designed and developed to work with ANY real estate site on a LAMP server and provide CRM (client resource management) features along with Multiple Listing Service data directly into the Realtors site, this IS a total solution. It WORKS with Joomla – Open Realty – Word Press and nearly a dozen other open source CMS solutions and sites. I’ll keep you posted.

Marketing Your Real Estate Listings

Posted on August 22, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Listings with One Way links back to your site

Chatting today with an associate who does a great deal of SEO sparked an idea I’m going to entertain. For months we have been following all the blogs we own and write in for SEO performance and although reciprocal linking is likely dead we have noticed that some listing links are getting good results. I’ll show you what I mean.

It seems that when a Realtor has the opportunity to publish some of their listings off domain as we have been tracking, its certainly noticeable to see a marked increase in listing recognition as opposed to those listings that reside on domain. Before you conclude the obvious assumption I’ll elaborate a bit;

Realtors are essentially in the business of doing what? Selling homes? Part of being a valuable service to your client is to demonstrate that you can effectively market a home by employing the resources you have available. Realtors we have been tracking based on their market conditions, SEO and general lead generation seem to have more frequent visits and responses from qualified buyers by simply posting select or featured listings on remote services or domains. Before you say “duh” note that it doesn’t work consistently where certain factors are not present.

What I noticed or should I say noticed after it was tossed in my lap a dozen times was that listings with a combination of features out performed offsite listings that didn’t have them. These features are entirely search engine bias because in all the listings that I can get to come up in google or msn for instance, only those that don’t look like a big fat inventory perform better. Why? Well I’m not 100% but I can guestimate that like some online e-commerce sites, real estate listings or “inventory” may get kicked to the curb by search engines if the listings appear to be a bulk repetitive catalog of similar items. I’ve tested this with commerce sites before and noticed that even with the aid of site maps, search engines will stop at some point from indexing entire catalogs of products or in this case listings.

What I’m going to do is put up an external listing manager on a blog with real estate related news and content and allow Realtors to publish “DETAILED” listings free of charge. In fact I think I’ll do it on this very blog. I could have fully mis read the data and be barking up the wrong tree but if I’m write the results should be as we expect.

If you have a few featured listings you would like to try out with this then let me know.

Bryan Ruby’s CMSReport.com

Posted on August 21, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 2 Comments

If you have ever wanted to just snag some good information on Content Management Systems then I’ll suggest a blog for you. I was doing my routine searching for some reliable information sources for ideas to write new posts in my college blog and my real estate blog among others when I stumbled upon a truly impressive resource. I love well rounded and informative information. Bryan Ruby, the author, publisher, webmaster for CMSReport.com has a SPANK of good information and resources regarding many of todays top CMS solutions on the web.

What is a CMS and why should I care?

A CMS is a content management system and a content management system is used to manage content. What content? Articles, downloads, images, files, folders, navigation elements, images, media elements like video, podcasts, flash animations and the list goes on and on. Some of my top favorites are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal for obvious reasons; I design for them. But that really doesn’t articulate what a CMS is until you look at from the perspective of a publisher of content. Take this example;

Your morning news paper is organized in such a way to present information according to a criteria or format that applies an age old principle for presenting information. A way that is familiar and comfortable to the readers which lends to its appeal and credibility. In a newspaper writers express ideas and thoughts in the articles they write without altering the structure even though the newspapers articles change frequently. Essential for readability, the familiar structure helps readers quickly locate material and information relevant to their interests. Beautiful, familiar and standard, right? People tend to gravitate towards the familiar. Hence the birth of the CMS formula. Now granted, the newspaper isn’t a CMS but a CMS certainly has the features of a good newspaper.

A CMS does with the web what newspapers do in print. They provide a familiar relatively unchanging structure with intelligent guided navigation (hopefully) and informative content. When it comes time to pick a flavor, needs are assessed and objectives analyzed but fundamentals never change. The idea behind a CMS as mentioned above is the creation of a fundamental look and feel wherein the content changes. So which ones should you choose? Well you should visit Bryan’s site for that answer. For Real Estate I suggest only one as mentioned for my own personal bias. I’m a true fan of Joomla and you can’t stop me with WordPress because WordPress is unique in ways that can make it function as both a CMS and a blog. Check out this article from the Adobe Edge: July 2006 Edition.

Its important to note that CMS’s are not just the future of professional websites; they are in my professional opinion absolutely essential for delivering current and competitive content to your viewers. Lets face it, static HTML is as dead my old Atari Game System and if you are not a publisher for lack of a better term, you risk passing into the realms of other types of dying technology. Some proprietary systems are also on their way out as these age old web based scripts are falling off left and right. Consumers, end users and publishers of web content demand features that are friendly. Yes, “Friendly”, because it applies to every aspect of your site, friendly to customers, visitors, search engines and hopefully every other entertainer of your invested interest being your website. A CMS empowers you with this ability.

CRE Thumbnail Generator

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 3 Comments

Frustrating to see templates I design break because end users upload an image that just blows the sides out of a design. With all CRE Loaded templates I deliver I always include the user guide on standards and formats to administer the site with efficiency. The problem with the CRE Loaded feature for managing image sizes is that it can distort the clarity and quality of your image while doing NOTHING to optimize the images.

One thing that always frustrates end users and store owners is the inconsistent sizes of image that they use in CRE Loaded makes their store look cheap and un professional. CRE Loaded does have an automatic sizing feature but most store owners that maintain commercial sites do editing of images offline. Why, because people gravitate and expect patterns they can gain comfort in. Nothing says crappy site more than one with many things in disarray that it confuses users.

So why not just have an image thumbnail generator that simply takes your image file, and generates the three sizes necessary for product listings? Well this generator does just that; the user can define the width or height variables, the prefix for the file, ie “small_”, “medium_” “large_” and maintain consistency in image sizes for all product listings.

The nice thing about using this method for custom prefixes is that when a person has a product image for say, a Dell Laptop Computer — dell_laptop.jpg the prefixes will generate sized images that are easily identified for size format. The images become small_dell_laptop.jpg, medium_dell_laptop.jpg, large_dell_laptop.jpg or any prefix user defined of course. I mean you could easily make your prefix im_a_tumble_weed_ resulting in an image with the name im_a_tumble_weed_dell_laptop.jpg

This script is NOT a contribution that goes into CRE Loaded primarily because I wanted to keep it external for use with ZendCart, osCommerce and other applications that require such things. Specifically for store and cart systems that do not have sizing options like CRE Loaded does.

FREE for use on my site and a mere $5 to have the feature on yours creates a valuable time saver.

Page Turn vs Page Peel Flash Effects

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Products, Real Estate News | 1 Comment

If you have ever wanted to have a nice high quality page turn effect for your site then look no further. In recent months I’ve invested heavily into the completion of our Page Turn effect which essentially emulates the effects of a turning page.

The difference between a Flash PageTurn (page turn effect) and a Flash PagePeel (page peel effect) is really not a great deal. The underlying code for nearly all page turn and or page peel type snippets stem from a single source. A woman in China named URNAMI was likely the first to publish the solution in the actionscript forums about 4 years ago. Its the source I’ve used and its the source most others use in their projects. Page Flip or Page Turn is the emulation of actual pages as the final rendering looks more like a booklet or magazine for instance. PagePeel or Flash Page Peeling is an effect that emulates the peeling back of the web page to reveal an advertisement or link as you can see in the upper right corner of my site.

Commercial client projects helped fund the development as I have used it successfully on two domains to date and I’m finalizing its introduction into a Real Estate site for online housing and condo guides. Its a truly nice effect given the limited resources for the project.

Two years ago I had actually planned to release a version that would pull its page data into a set of flash files via XML / PHP for use in Open Realty. The idea was briefly abandoned as version changes to Open Realty opened up a few barriers that proved to be a coding challenge. My initial concern at the time was the lofty amount of code that was currently weighing down the addon to make it void of any real practical use.

Well the worm has turned and I’ll be converting this page turn effect to work with database driven applications like Open Realty. I’m not saying database controlled image management or something as trivial as that, I’m saying pulling of listing data and all listing details to be displayed in a turn page document.

The Female Modeling Magazine Site, The CRE Loaded Cart and soon the Real Estate site will be pretty clean examples of how effective this tool can be used. Commercial sites like JC Penny, Victoria’s Secret and IBM have been using such effects on their web sites for two years. People tend to gravitate to the familiar and books and magazines are familiar. This would explain the attraction to its use I’m sure.

I’ll get a demo up this week for you to examine. Chances are most people would want to see the models so I’ll likely publish that one. I’ll then provide a link to the Real Estate site that has the feature effectively employed.

Flash Page Turn Corner Effect

Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 11 Comments

Flash Page Peel / Page Flip Effect Script:

Our advertising script is the most effective type of page peel or page flip flash effect on the market. Modified to work with a select few open source applications, the page peel advertising rotator is effective in bringing to life advertising options on your domain.

Page Peel Effect

Dont settle for out dated and greatly annoying popup ads and why settle for banner advertising on your site taking up precious real estate that could be used for more productive site features when you can randomize multiple client advertising campaigns with a system that puts the rest to shame.

80% of your ads success depends on one thing.

Its been said by advertising experts that the 80 / 20 rule applies to advertising in a clearly difinitive way that articulates the effectiveness of an advertisement. For each dollar spent, 80% of that dollar is in the headline and 20% in the content body of an ad. Headlines serve one purpose, to draw attention. That being said; can you honestly think of a more effective headline than this Page Peel Flash Effect Script? The answer should be obvious.

Affordable isn’t even the best way to articulate this. How about Dirt cheap pound for pound more effective than solutions costing hundreds of dollars. If $80.00 out of every $100.00 is spent trying to CATCH YOUR PROSPECTS ATTENTION RIGHT NOW with effective CALLS TO ACTION then this tool is as cost effective any can be. My 80% would be to bet on a sure thing rather than throwing darts at a dart board in hopes someone would click my banner.

Read more

CRE Loaded Catalog Images

Posted on August 7, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News, Template Design Kit | 1 Comment

CRE Loaded Thumbnail Generator

Nothing is more annoying than seeing or hearing about the frustration end users and site owners have with their site after spending a lofty chunk on its development. Although some things are certain to surface almost routinely, many things can be avoided by taking the time to draft well written and clear documentation.

In CRE Loaded projects I almost always provide site owners with a style guide if I have the slightest idea that he / she intend on using the content page features in the cart. Now, all though CRE Loaded comes with a WYSIWYG editor for product listings, it does not come with a logical explanation on how to use it effectively and therein lies the problem I face quite frequently with end users.

CRE Loaded unlike osCommerce provides a way for store owners to add content in a more rich and controlled format, thats the good part. But Its been my long held suggestion to end users to do their publishing of content offline in a professional html editor (commercial or not) primarily because online editors fill your drafts with countless inline elements that can break a layout. In every single one of my commercial sites, I draft the content in MS Word so I can port a version of my article to a PDF and MS Reader for downloads and then I copy that article into Dreamweaver, clean up the messy MS Word markup, validating the structure, then pasting it into the WYSIWYG editor in HTML format. As you can guess my blog is NOT one of those places I do this at. Nothing here validates. (proof positive on another experiment I’ll tell you about later)

Pictures and Content Break My Layout!

So, in CRE Loaded projects and templates I’ve always provided the client with a simple one page sheet on the correct image sizes and a small collection of examples among other things for the editor. In the last month alone I’ve seen only 1 person use a CRE Loaded design I’ve built correctly. Thumbnail images are consistent in size, the popup images are all the same size and product images are all the same size. Its when people try to upload these gigantic images in hopes that they will be sized correctly that problems begin.

Because of this I’ve had the php guy build me three little CRE Loaded generators that I’m publishing free of charge for your use. The main one is a simple image generator that takes the product photo and produces three output sizes based on user variables for either width or height. It will add a nice little user defined prefix to the image and provide some other features that will help CRE store owners to quickly generate consistent photo sizes without the lengthy process of producing them in photoshop.

I’ll write more on this generator and the content validation generators later in the week. Until then, blog like a mad man.

Web Design Pricing Revisited

Posted on July 26, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 1 Comment

Real Estate Site Design

I knew I’d get emails from my post yesterday about design pricing for Open Realty. It seems I need to stand corrected a bit as my argument that selling templates for $2,000 is in someway unethical.

I have to concede after reading 3 emails in particular that it is true that a designer or webmaster can charge or command any price he / she feels they could get away with and do so without being called a fraud or deceptive. My argument yesterday was the issue of telling your client that a design is exclusive or custom when in fact its not.

Anyway so if any of my blog visitors were offended by that I stand corrected. It is ok to charge whatever you feel your services are worth.

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