FREE Open Realty 2.4.3 Templates

Posted on October 22, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 9 Comments

15 FREE entry level CSS - XHTML templates for Open Realty 2.4.3

I promised over the weekend to wrap up the collection of designs that I had planned to give away on this site and I’ve done just that. IT took me a spank of time to get things to validate after looking again and again at what consistently failed validation had to do with Open Realty’s core but I managed to trick the validators into calling these compliant.

I’ve got some documentation to do to the templates and I’d like to add a snippet or two to make them a bit more interactive and I’ll publish them in my new Joomla install. PLEASE IGNORE my Joomla template as its a bit goofy. I had it in inventory and can’t quite remember where I even got it from but its not my design. Just something I tossed up as I wanted to configure my install.

You WILL be required to register to the site in order to download and I do require email verification. If you feel this is nonsense I’m pretty understanding and you can just toss me an email and I’ll grant you access to the templates. I like to have people register because I’m taking a great deal more time in completing projects for my site than ever before and I’d like to notify people of updates not to mention when people register to my site it boosts my ego by 10 fold. Ego is important.

Thanks for visiting….

Open Realty XHTML Compliant

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

Creating Compliant Sites with Open Realty

CSS and XHTML compliance was a bit of a challenge in the early days of Open Realty as much of the hard coded layout had been riddled with very old coding methods. Today however Open Realty has made substantial updates to the quality of its PHP and template engine code by adhering closer to the standards and compliance traditions expected or should I say demanded upon by top design professionals and site owners. Although Open Realty still has some minor changes necessary in order to bring the application to the full XHTML Strict compliance, the application runs a great deal leaner and cleaner than previous versions.

Just a few days ago, I had taken the latest version of Open Realty 2.4.3 and went through each and every file changing code elements that were yet to be modified for proper functional specifications of XHTML Strict compliance. Additional modifications to areas of the application where I added a collection styling rules that provide more flexibility and control over the styling of websites. Albeit not a fork by any means, these changes were done for the most part in an attempt to revamp and expand the possibilities of using Open Realty as a stand alone application for things other than a Real Estate script.

The struggle with XHTML or CSS compliance was largely on a per project bases as many designers experienced which had been my motive for maintaining what I’ll call the “production version” of the Open Realty. I frequently do this with applications I work with where I usually correct or modify them to meet design needs. Open Realty seems oblivious to suggestions I make so I feel compelled to release something to assist other designers with similar frustrations.

Open Realty has done a great job with its addon system and it stands to reason that expansion and inclusion of other applications can be achieved to certain degrees with the addon system as it currently exists. This however is not an answer to all situations and nor should it be. Having worked with a great number of integration projects where blogs, cms, crm, mls and idx are used, most integrations have been through direct modification of core files in Open Realty. After looking at this for some time I realized that most of these things could be easily achieved with simple template modifications and some PHP code. Its a hassle to continually update an application that has been modified and as each successive release of Open Realty changes often drastically, the task can be cost prohibitive. So, I’ve come up with a solution that meets the objective of designers and site owners at the same time.

Granted some things in Open Realty do require core modifications still to this day in order to bring it XHTML compliant but these changes are trivial and can usually be done in minutes with Dreamweavers bulk find and replace feature. Seeking out every instance of <b></b> and replacing it with <strong></strong> is a simple task. Having done this many times with those tags among others has become a bit of second nature with every release I keep in inventory. But integration is an all together different animal and having modified the core enough times to not like it, I decided to simply make most integration requests I encounter via a few global control files and some PHP in the actual templates.

Open Realty is loaded with most the code people would need to make it dance, roll over, and beg on demand, its just a matter of getting to it. Use of the addon system is the prescribed method and most commonly used for things people wish to achieve programatically. This however isn’t required and can actually slow down a site substantially.

Since we are lucky that Open Realty allows the parsing of PHP in the template files we have a good deal of control with the functionality of the website which makes integration at the template level a great deal faster and less demanding on resources than using the addon system. As mentioned above the addon system is well thought out and a great deal leaner than previous releases but may be overkill for some very basic tasks like echoing the number of listings in a link to say, residential properties or maybe displaying google maps using the google API. Google provides enough code necessary to work cleanly with Open Realty without the need to create an addon to display a map for a particular property on the listing details page. Having done this among other things with the template structure, it becomes obvious that the speed in a site can be greatly increased by use of this technique.

Open Realty 2.4.3 Administrative - Admin Template

I’ve released a new XHTML compliant administrative template based entirely on CSS rules that have been tested and work well. I’ve included a few configuration files that gives site owners the power to adjust and modify the admin section of their Open Realty site to such a degree that maintenance and control of their site as a whole becomes much easier. The idea behind these modifications is to create an admin panel that works well across commercial as well as personal websites. Image is everything sometimes and a well organized administrative panel can lend a great deal to the perceived quality of an application. Since the template requires the admin.inc.php file to be modified its not likely you will want to use this template in your standard release version of open realty. I will however create a modified version of the template before I publish them to the site for download later today.

Should you decide to use the full version of the template then making a backup of your admin.inc.php file is advised before you upload the modified version. Options was the name of the game at the request of many clients so I’ve created a few unique features that you can chose to use or not to use at your discretion.

I’ll first get these applied to an assortment of my client sites before publishing them for download. Successive releases will be maintained as Open Realty continues with its development. A guide on how to bring the application to full XHTML compliance and a list of changes made to the admin.inc.php file are well documented.

Jared Ritchey and Open Realty

Posted on October 16, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 4 Comments

Almost three days now I’ve received back to back questions and emails about the reason behind the ban in the Open Realty forums and this has prompted me to just post a small blurb on the reason so there is no confusion or speculation.

I was removed from active membership in the Open Realty forums for one simple reason according to the email I received (still have saved) from Ryan the forums owner. The link in my signature use to go to www.jaredsdesigns.com which I had sold to a large national jewelery company and redirected the traffic to my new blog. It was the blog that caused the issue apparently.

According to Ryan I was banned because I changed the link in my signature to point to this very blog and apparently something in my posts offended them to such a degree that my account was closed. What exactly was so offensive is still a bit of a mystery to me as my blog tends to favor Open Realty with bias. I’ve been told by associates who are still members in the Open Realty forums that the motive centered around the issue of me offering competing products to Transparent Technologies and to this day I’ve yet to discover what those competing products are. Where I once had more than 880 posts in the forums I notice massive editing of my posts and outright deletions where the current number lingers about 730+. I don’t have an issue with Open Realty, Open Realty’s administrators have an issue with me.

I’m a visual design professional and photoshop instructor, Period! IDX / MLS / PHP / MySQL / and all else are the realm of my partner whom of which does accept commissions for such projects for Realtors no fewer than two to three times a week. The last time I looked, Transparent Technologies was a hosting company and developer of Open Realty and they do offer some sort of IDX products which I’m not entirely clear on the scope or depth of the products. I’m not sure how exactly we are competitors based on the forum rules which seem to have changed since the last time I saved a copy. But regardless of the semantics of this issue, Its interesting to note that today I visited Open Realty only to discover links in signatures to hosting companies and other third party vendors clearly in direct competition with Transparent Tech. So its anyones guess as to the mysteries of this.

As far as the questions regarding resentment and forking of Open Realty, its important to note that the entire notion of a fork was the result of chat session with Ryan Bonham and Mick (the administrator) where I was instructed that a fork is legal but they “REQUIRED” and “MADE CLEAR” they do not want “Open Realty” anywhere in the forks name. Obviously they did not want to support it which stands to reason. The forked version was to be created only because I work so frequently with MLS’s that I wanted to create an integrated solution to a few other products instead of using the Open Realty Addon system. It was not an endeavor to challenge or create conflict with Open Realty but rather a fork specifically designed to accommodate automated updates to the inventory via a live feed from an MLS.

I speak highly of Transparent Technologies and of Open Realty in all posts and in all correspondence so it amazes me that anyone could interpret ill intent toward either. I still have a forked version of Open Realty I use in nearly all projects that substantially alters three primary files in Open Realty but I’ll likely never release it as a fork. Patch ins for vTiger and our Joomla menu manager are likely never to be released either as I tend to just include them in all projects I work with.

In the past I’ve had but two tiny complaints or should I say observations about Open Realty and that was centered about the DB structure and the non compliant XHTML markup persistent from the beginning. Open Realty is a great product and I highly suggest it to anyone in pursuit of a rapid development platform for any type of listing gallery.

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 | 2 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.

WordPress Real Estate Listing Manager

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 9 Comments

Remember this one. My programmer had built and we beta tested the WordPress 2.2 Listing Manager for Real Estate sites and Brokerages but never released it. Well today its back on the project block of things to do in September even though our new code makes WordPress work beautifully with listings in a way I’ll reveal later.

I charged my coder to do three things before we call it a “Real Estate” plugin for WordPress. I told him that I wanted the new modifications to feature custom fields and to have it so I can have three versions on my site for FREE download under three different names. Minor changes will naturally justify the three names as I want to approach three types of blog genera with this script.

I’m going to call the three versions; “Real Estate Listing Plugin” , “Automotive Listing Plugin” and “Photo Classifieds Gallery” since this plugin is really only a gallery plugin to begin with. The main difference is the fact that it is a gallery script that the display of gallery items are fully customizable and additional details and elements can be added by the blog owner. Search abilities are naturally a key feature as are PERMALINKS for SEO friendly links.

I hate delays more than anything but sometimes priorities shift and I’m forced to make drastic changes to keep up with obligations. I certainly hope I can get this to you before I grow old.