Open Realty IDX RETS MLS Joomla WordPress

Posted on November 23, 2007
Filed Under Design, Real Estate News |

Multiple Listing Services with Open Realty

It seems I get a lot of questions regarding IDX and RETS with Open Realty even though I post all over the web clear answers to how this can be achieved. Apparently confusing and sometimes conflicting information is encountered by people that read what others have written on the subject and end up avoiding the venture all together as a result.

To me that is a tragic conclusion to come by considering that most integrations with standards compliant RETS or IDX providers offer. I’m going to just very briefly write about the summary technique we use and later expand on this with some instruction on how to do this yourself with PHP. Lets begin with the most common formula we use.

Open Realty MLS IDX or RETS Import

Open Realty as the listing manager is one of the more common tools Realtors are using given the lofty inventory of features the developers at Transparent Technologies have included.

When using Open Realty, most people discover that in situations where RETS is available, the tool more often than not chosen is vieleRETS (see support list here) developed by Mark Lesswing, this application comes with provisions for importing data directly into your Open Realty site out of box. Coupled with a little PHP scripting the process can be automated and designed to run outside of the domain root for optimal results.

IDX and Open Realty are a bit different all together and although there are many options available the method we most often employ is straight PHP and extraction of the listing data into the Open Realty database which is configured to run daily via CRON. Somewhat complex for the non programmer this method is likely the better choice when compared to applications that attempt to convert the listing data to a CVS text file format first. More on this later.

Joomla MLS IDX or RETS Import

Using Joomla for real estate sites is actually so dramatically on the rise that my coders developed 4 proprietary code tools specific to the real estate industry that allow the easy integration of MLS listings into your Joomla site. Requiring either Open Realty or ezRealty to work effectively our snippets will be bundled when the release of Open Realty 2.5 becomes available as a turnkey solution.

WordPress MLS IDX or RETS Import

Once the venture I had financed heavily was the development of a listing manager that integrates with WordPress. Still on the project task list for completion, I’ve been more often asked to simply integrate Open Realty with WordPress using our MLS IDX and RETS methods. Again dependent on an external application to bring in the listings from the MLS, this method is actually the ideal as we often suggest people do not use their Open Realty install for all their text content exclusively as a blog may be better served.

This technique again does require the use of some proprietary code soon to be bundled but is none the less available upon request now. Pricing depends largely on the MLS system you need code for.

I’ll write on this extensively in future posts.

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2 Comments so far
  1. john miller December 30, 2007 5:39 pm

    i see you open a topic of integrating IDX into open realty, but i dont see where you have actually elaborated on this subject. i am looking to integrate an IDX MLS solution into http://bobramella.com. any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

  2. Jared Ritchey February 20, 2008 9:08 am

    Yes article is being updated with links today.


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