EZ Pro Realty Features Summary

Posted on March 20, 2008
Filed Under General | 11 Comments

EZ Pro Realty standard features not so impressive as of yet.

Okay well yesterday I managed to finally look in depth at EZ Pro Realty on the demo site from the developers and I must say that I’m impressed but surprised more hasn’t been done as of yet.  I’m glad to be part of the project and the efforts but of the features that are included in EZ Pro Realty now, other products can easily adapt via plug-ins, add-ons and core hacks making EZ Pro Realty efforts moot.  Now I’m not going to give EZ Pro Realty a bad rap as of yet since the project is barely a year old and the effort of two people part time, but considering the time frame I would have expected more.  I guess the good thing is that these features are core features and once they implement my new admin interface contribution site owners wont have to mod and bulk up their installs with countless add-ons to achieve things that SHOULD have been in all real estate applications.

Again, although after I examined the demo I wasn’t substantially impressed with the features that were added I must say that the open attitude and features of the website in general are such that make this fork a worth while attention getter.  Everyone who reads my posts here and abroad knows my attitude toward sociopath forum moderators and one thing that has set off every qualified professional (hacks and geeks don’t count) is the relentlessly rude and abusive un-friendly attitude in the Open Realty forums.  Thank God Almighty that EZ Pro Realty will not only entertain feedback, contributions and open forum support for things that INCLUDE core modifications but welcomes all developers, designers and other persons regardless of experience with the same respect and regard. That to me makes EZ Pro Realty the true benefit even if the application failed to achieve anything in its updates.

Top 10 EZ Pro Realty Features that Impressed me

  1. Search Results and Listings Details Templates by property class.  This feature I list as #1 because this is long over due.  When real estate companies have more than one class, they often have different fields of data applicable to that single class that should not or normally would not show up on the listings details template if it is not needed.  Now although Open Realty solves this by assigning fields to areas of the template using tags like {top} {center} etc… this does not solve the need for different layouts and design features of the class specific search results and listings details pages.
  2. FEATURED LISTINGS ON TOP OF SEARCH RESULTS. This is a real cool feature. This allows a site owner or real estate company to list their listings on top of search results and custom style those results so they stand out. Now my initial concern was that it would make the search results look spammy but after seeing it live and in use I was truly impressed with the potential.  If a company were to import 10,000 listings and the search results for any particular criteria brought back say 1,200 results for example then the mere addition of having 3, 5, or even more featured listings up front based on that criteria is very impressive.
  3. CSV Loader and XML Import Features.  This was going to be #2 but its not one many will use even though its very effective.  This is a commercial feature in Open Realty and as such adds instant value to EZ Pro Realty in that data can be imported via XML formatted sources.  Export methods are also on the list of features and when that happens maps for popular services like Trulia or Movechannel will be included.
  4. TRUE SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY FEATURES  EZ Pro Realty has a very effective feature for the SEO types by providing the ability to customize the page title, meta tags, URL and header includes (which I’ll cover next) per listing or per page.  When you create or edit a listing or page in the editors, you are presented with options to set the browser title or <title>{browser_title}</title> wording separate from the URL which lends a great deal to the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.  Also the biggest issue and by far the most confusing one is why exactly Open Realty felt that URLs would look good with page-The+Name+Of+Your+Page.html is beyond us. Not only is it baffling to try and relay that to someone its not at all SEO friendly.  I’m happy to say that EZ Pro Realty does it proper by first FORCING the URL to lower case and separating with hyphens as opposed to plus (+) signs.  the-name-of-your-page.html or even the-name-of-your-page/ is possible.
  5. HEADER INCLUDE VARIABLE EZ Pro Realty provides an impressive yet simple feature for content publishing which allows you to paste in code like JavaScript, CSS and other header includes types of scripting on a per page basis.  Why have javascript present on all pages when its needed in only specific areas? Why have form validation code and other types of variable includes displayed on each and every page when they are not needed? This feature allows you to specify what pages get what code.
  6. TEMPLATE TRANSITIONS BASED ON CLASS I love this feature but honestly can only see its use in companies that either do fsbo type sites or have a lofty rental or other types of management features for commercial properties.  This feature changes the look of the site to pull in a totally separate main.html template based entirely on property class or user defined type.  That means that your rental site could look like a rental site and your commercial site can look like a commercial site all from the same database and domain.
  7. SUPPORTED BRIDGING WITH WORDPRESS BY DEFAULT WordPress is the worlds premier blog solution and Realtors are discovering its power in marketing properties. One thing that is not easily done is integration Open Realty with WordPress nor is it an easy task to put WordPress features into Open Realty. EZ Pro Realty accepted my three contributions to the core which allow for three very important features that BTW will work with Open Realty as well (and they are free I might add).  EZ Pro Realty provides a new globals.php file that lets you do things like include Latest Posts or Latest Comments directly into your template and or pages for great cross linking features.  This globals.php also has other features I’ll cover shortly but a big part of this is the USER REGISTRATION BRIDGE which provides a way to have registrations to either EZ Pro Realty or WordPress and simultaneously add the user to both applications even if they reside in separate databases.  Now I funded this feature and I’m glad to say it will be a free snippet on my site for those who wish to use Open Realty and WordPress together as well.
  8. GLOBALS.PHP Has some key features. The first part is the simple inclusion of functions that can be called from within templates and or template pages and can even be used as a sort of mini-addon system by providing a quick way to add {template_tags}  What this means is this; if you have a website project for example that you represent ski lodges or properties in a recreational community where swimming, sports, events, and other things are key attractions then this feature natively supports an IF THEN type of scenario for showing data.  Still not clear? Well look at it this way. In Open Realty if you want to show an icon that represents a swimming pool or ski lodge as a sort of quick visual reference in the listings details page you either have to seriously work the existing system or alternatively build an add-on. With this feature in EZ Pro Realty the same can be achieved as plainly as "IF the field-name value is true, show this, if not, show this or nothing at all" So, if the property comes with a swimming pool, then show the little swimming pool icon you made and if it doesn’t then show the little swimming pool icon you made with an X over it or show nothing.
  9. Form Mail Manager Tool This tool is similar in features as pbflash’s commercial form add-on but in EZ Pro Realty it’s a standard feature.  I asked that one of my form processors be made optional to the project and if that happens that EZ Pro Realty will have all the necessary features for form processing and data capture it could need from the start. The current feature which basically provides custom fields and form processing on three primary default areas of the site is a nice feature but if they include my form tool then Realtors can have unlimited numbers of contact forms for things like CMA, mailing lists, news letter requests, online loan summary applications and more all of which the fields will be stored to a database for later retrieval.  I’m trying to encourage them to use this and if they do, as I said, it will make EZ Pro Realty sing.
  10. Google Maps  Last in this list but by no means last in features is the google maps feature that is at present a commercial option available in Open Realty.  EZ Pro Realty provides a way with a new template file that features an inline google map of the property and also a map feature for search results complete with baloons and photo thumbnail.

That was the top ten but these are worthy of mention;  EZ Pro Realty also has an inline mortgage calculator in the listings details template, dozens of included templates to chose from for design base, dozens of details, results, and featured templates to chose from and will also have bridging for Joomla users in the very near future.  The site bolsters external code hacks and snippets that make things easy to achieve simply by following some well documented instructions.

One thing I found interesting about EZ Pro Realty is the implementation of several new fundamental features all sites have and the inclusion of two new database tables bringing the total to 29 tables.  EZ Pro Realty added to its default package a /scripts folder, a /media folder and an /images/stories folder each of which has some default content used in the distribution version.  A brand new installer is also available which loads 11 default content pages, 15 default example listings (3 for each of the 5 default classes), two default example agents, and new default templates.  Things missing are the vertical-menu and cms templates included with Open Realty. Also removed are all the templates provided with the Open Realty SVN package as of the forks official diversion date which was a few weeks back. 

If you recall, legal council took a snap shot and copy of the Open Realty license from three locations including the SVN as of a certain version build so they could document the Open Realty permission to use their product in subsequent products providing criteria is met. That was done naturally in the event a change in the license pending version 2.5 were to take place preventing such a fork.

It is important to note that EZ Pro Realty is NOT developed as a rivalry to Open Realty, it was being developed as an alternative set of features and to provide more friendly and open support to members. It was taken down a new path since no other means to achieve changes were possible aside from add-on hell which is the loading up of Open Realty with dozens of add-ons just to get it to perform as it should.  Add-on hell is avoided as the fork includes most features as standard features normally found in add-ons.

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