EZ Pro Realty Features Summary

Posted on March 20, 2008
Filed Under Open Realty |

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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11 Comments so far
  1. Kelly March 20, 2008 9:52 am

    Jared sorry about no user name but I don’t want Open Realty mods to figure out who I am.
    I watch your site daily and all I can say is awesome work dude.

    Quoting you “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 eventhe-name-of-your-page/ is possible.”

    I asked about this in Open Realty and my post was deleted. I reposted and again it was deleted. These guys are assholes and pbflash is some sort of forum cop I just can’t stand. I’m so glad you guys are doing this fork. I have wanted to get my URL’s into some sort of decent format for the past year and every request is either shot down or told it can’t be done. I’ll run, not walk to EZ Pro Realty once a download becomes available.

    Just to warn you too, any mention of your wordpress plug-in in the Open Realty forum is instantly deleted so hope for no traffic from them regarding this plug-in. Once I get my copy installed I promise to provide a link back to you for your amazing work.

    Thanks again
    Kelly Ferguson - Keller Williams Kitsap Agency

  2. Jared Ritchey March 20, 2008 10:08 am

    Kelly you made a comment while I was updating the post. Look at it again, I added more detail about the globals.php and file structure just now.

    As to the forums at Open Realty deleting posts. Kelly this is par for the course for many forums. In fact I know of one forum that if you even moderate another real estate forum its grounds for being banned. Since these forums in question are just small companies they are of no consequence but what is most funny is that they have the big corporation idea of keeping the masses dictated to and enslaved. We are at that time in history when spinning and censorship are common practice. You WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE that in the EZ Pro Realty forums nor will you in any of the forums I moderate and or administer around the web.

    Quite frankly, anyone fearing slavery and control should avoid forums that behave in such a way. Censorship takes place most often where fear is present and control is desired. When you are condemned for asking questions or even pointing out challenges, then freedom has already been lost.

    ### LAST EDITED BY JARED 03/24/08 ###

  3. Brianna March 20, 2008 11:24 am

    Jared I’ll make a donation and contribute to this if its available any time in the next week. My god this is the best news ever. I do not like those people at open realty at all they are rude and that guy Mick is the biggest ass i have seen. I’m am so glad people like you are around to give girls like me an option because i was so frustrated with open realty support.

    ###### Edited by Jared
    I edited this post to remove the link to your site only because it did not resolve. Please send me the link and I’ll add it back.

  4. Mick March 24, 2008 3:27 pm

    Looks interesting Jared although the comments are a bit harsh regarding “three dip shits”. I’m still a bit unclear why somebody such as you, who seems to be a rather intelligent individual, seems to only be able to resort to childish comments regarding people you didn’t get along with… but I’ll get over it.

    One comment on #1, while we use template areas for simplicity in the Open-Realty listing detail templates users are free to use template tags for specific listing fields for much greater control over the placement and design of the fields on the search results and listing detail templates, that combined with the ability to have class specific listing detail and search result template I think covers this feature and is already included in Open-Realty and has been for some time.

    For Kelly, I’m sorry posts were deleted, I don’t think any of us delete posts unless they are obvious spam or serve no purpose other than trolling. If you’ve had problems with this in the past let me know you OR Forum username and I’ll look into why your posts were deleted. If I can’t figure it out then make a new post and send me the link to it and I’ll monitor it and see what happens to it. If somebody is deleting it for no reason then I will have Ryan deal with them.

    Brianna, sorry I came off as an ass. I do tend to be short with people on the forums from time to time. Unfortunately, I have a stressful job and sometimes I allow that stress to get transferred to the forum responses instead of remaining professional. I volunteer a ton of my rare free time to working on Open-Realty and making it better and answering forum posts, helping people setup sites and even personally troubleshooting people’s sites. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to give you that experience.

  5. Jared Ritchey March 24, 2008 5:34 pm

    My post edited for my rude comment. My apologies to Mick, pbFlash, and Open Realty support.

    Mick the feature for class specific templates allows a person to have a separate listings-details page and separate search result based entirely upon property class and then some additional features.

    I sent through Open Realty extensively a month ago when I completed my Dreamweaver Extension for template building which I took down to add in the new menu code. I’m not sure how I missed the feature you suggested but I’m glad to see we are on the same line of thought as far as features should be.

  6. Mick March 25, 2008 1:42 am

    Thanks Jared,

    Also, didn’t think about it till there was a post on the OR forums just now but you can do the featured listings on top of the search results in Open-Realty already using multiple sortby’s/sorttype’s although at the moment if the end user clicks on another sort option then it will clear both the existing sortby’s and the featured ones won’t be first any longer.

    For example the URL to view all listings with featured ones first then the rest sorted by price would look like this:

    index.php?action=searchresults&sortby=
    listingsdb_featured,price&sorttype=DESC,ASC

    Perhaps a config option in 2.5 to be able to choose to keep them static on top of the search results will appear soon.

  7. Jared Ritchey March 25, 2008 8:53 am

    Mick that would be interesting; I’d like to see Open Realty offer that as a feature too. I know that the admin panel of the variant these guys funded has an admin option for settings based on various criteria not to dissimilar than featured listings plugin, not sure if that will be your approach but its all admin configured. Since the admin panels are not at all compatible it would be difficult to really tell how this feature would be by dropping it in to Open Realty as an addon. The new AJAX admin panel uses the XMCDHTML class and comes native with Mootools for the entire package.

    Thanks for your continued responses, they are greatly appreciated.

  8. Craig Walker March 25, 2008 1:07 pm

    Jared to be honest I’ve never seen an issue in the Open Realty forums with Mick. The only person that irritates me at Open Realty is pbflash. Maybe that is who you were referring to because no one likes that guy but Mick has always been nice to me and so has thesandking. IMHO!

    Although I’m glad you have this fork in the works my only concern is if Ryan will still get credit as I see you preach credit where credit is due. Also Mick is right about the feature for listing details and search results by class for custom templates. I’m curious when the demo of the fork will be out and if there is any plans to share code with Open Realty.

  9. Jared Ritchey March 25, 2008 3:38 pm

    Hello Craig and thanks for visiting my blog and taking the time to post your comment. I stand corrected in my initial wholesale characterization and I stand in error as well. Its no secret that I felt the reason for my ban to be petty and personal as it was told that such action was taken simply by providing a link to this very blog. I was annoyed with such things and it tends to reflect in my comments about how the Open Realty forum is ran. Mick, over time has certainly become 100 times more friendly and I do understand that his job in law enforcement would make anyone a little short I would think. I’m understanding in that regard. My interaction with pbflash has been good for the most part but I agree, rude is sometimes a common place there at the forums.

    Ryan and anyone involved will be given credit and I did verify that the class based templates with featured listings and search results was in the Open Realty core at one point but never spoke of or even revealed and when I read the features list on EZ Pro Realty it stood out to me as something new. It was my assumption that it was the result of their work.

    I can verify however that many features in EZProRealty came directly from my archives and addons including PDF support, CSV, Google Maps, Featured Listings manager, integrated SQL menu management, bridges for vTiger, WordPress and even Joomla are my personal contributions to the project not to mention the new admin interface and collection of default templates.

    I’m not an enemy of Open Realty at all just so you know.

  10. Mick March 26, 2008 4:28 am

    Thanks Craig. Although Jared was more or less accurate as I can be quite short and rude from time to time. My job can be stressful (mostly trying to pay my bills from the little money I make at my job is what is stressful to be honest) . From time to time that stress translates through to my forum replies.

    I got started with coding mostly as a fun hobby as something to occupy my mind and provide stress relief and fun. After 4-5 years of answering the same questions over and over again on the forums coupled with putting up with personal attacks on me, my character, my unwillingness to basically write complete addons for free for people in need and there were plenty of times I was quite short with people. No excuse really but it is life. Not making excuses at all but PBFlash spends even more time on the forums than I do answering questions so, I can only imagine his frustration.

    After a few months away from Open-Realty I’m a bit refreshed and having a lot more fun again, hence the progress being made with 2.5 lately.

    Anyways, enough of hijacking Jared’s blog and back on topic.

    Jared was correct in his other blog post about EZProRealty, it sounds very promising and Open-Realty will likely add some new features taking a cue from EZProRealty. I already commited #4 to the SVN tonight for 2.5.

    The GLOBALS.PHP idea is interesting. I personally find the addon system very easy and for my wife’s site I basically use the same idea of the GLOBALS.PHP, I have a single addon that I add template tags for any new functionality I need to it. Maintaining a single addon and just adding to it makes things very quick and simple along the same lines as the Globals.php idea.

  11. Jared Ritchey March 26, 2008 11:31 am

    Mick, I’ll help where you allow me to do so. I’m a fan of EZ Pro Realty’s efforts because of the user blogs and that they listen to my advise in how to implement features like the globals.php file which was my idea and the three separate template design methods which they have two implemented.

    I’ve also been able to motivate them to include my featured listings addon along with something I’m extremely proud of (I’ll reveal what later) that works in Open Realty as an add-on.

    Let me know where I can help.


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