Joomla WordPress OpenRealty Bridge Available!

Posted on October 19, 2008
Filed Under Open Realty, Real Estate News |

We finally released the Joomla OpenRealty bridge on EZProRealty yesterday along with our long awaited WP Realty plugin for WordPress and downloads have already exceeded what we initially had expected. Exceptionally well built and effective as these new plugins are, we feel we have achieved a new type of integration that keeps the designer, the SEO, and the site user in mind during its development. The idea behind each of these items was to build something that would be cleverly designed to be customized by designers, effective enough for search engine optimization and easy enough for end users to use.

I’ve been working on the WP Realty along with the developers of EZProRealty for more than 6 months off and on between client projects and I’m elated to see these come to fruition. These plugins are truly easy to administer solutions for turning the worlds most powerful blogging / CMS solutions into powerful real estate tools

I’ve written about my plans and ideas I’ve have had over the course of many months for these new items and I’m happy to say that this is only the beginning. With more than 250 downloads in under 24 hours, the developers and contributors take that as a sign to move forward with our initial plans of building a series of FREE addons and plugins you may find commercially elsewhere. Wanting to stay friendly with the developers at OpenRealty Addons, we will likely NOT compete with them. However, I’m not a programmer and I don’t have the final say for some things as I know for sure that tools for integrating new slide shows, google maps, XML data feed tools among others were planned long ago. Even our coveted IDX import scripts may actually end up as 100% FREE items for OpenRealty users.

Adding News Articles To OpenRealty

There are secondary benefits to the WordPress plugin called WP Realty in that you can build pre defined search results and then control the content that shows within the results. The idea of adding news articles to OpenRealty has long been an idea of mine after building a few rather complex Realtor sites. By adding random or even category specific articles at the bottom of pre defined search results pages you can increase your indexing success in search engines largely due to the unique content for the actual search result.

As you may very well know search results by and large are not unique enough to ever index in search engines, but a few of our clients have benefited from the technique of adding WordPress blog snippets at the bottom of pre defined search results to achieve this very difficult task. Now, when you create your predefined search results, you can add content relative to the result. But it does not end there.

One of the unique features with WP Realty and EZProRealty is the addition of a clever little javascript snippet that makes listing searches super efficient by NOT passing empty or null field values in the search string. OpenRealty as some may know passes all field values regardless of actual value in a GET string for the query. In instances where you have a search form that has maybe 15 fields, all fields get passed into the search string which can crash the OpenRealty MySQL database. By adding a little javascript we have been able to only pass fields that actually have a value. Now when build lengthy search forms with multiple fields the search submit will not pass fields which have a NULL value.

Pay special attention to what I just said above as I bring this together for you. With the new WP Realty and EZProRealty you can finally build a truly integrated solution between the CMS and your listings manager in a way that actually out performs stand alone alternatives. OpenRealty is a great listings manager but not a great content manager so the marriage of Joomla, WordPress or both together with OpenRealty provides the agent with the kind of website tool that most commercial entities are charging several thousand dollars a year to develop. Realtors are gravitating away from proprietary solutions at an alarming rate in part due to the economy and the need to find a cheaper solution to reduce their costs. This is the solution. You can build an impressive site, add in news articles, manage search forms with a greater degree of efficiency and build a site that will dance around the competition all for FREE!

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4 Comments so far
  1. Josh Haaus October 20, 2008 1:49 pm

    Hey my email above is bogus only because I dont want OpenRealty knowing who I am but dude what is the deal with those assholes.

    There is a thread over there where people discuss products and some have suggested yours but they seem like the most fucked up people on the web for deleting them. That PBFLASH guy and that sand king are the biggest dicks I’ve ever encountered.

    Please Jared, release your fork, people are tired of dealing with OpenRealty.

  2. Jared Ritchey October 20, 2008 2:46 pm

    Josh I answered your comment in the other post title. To stress again, the alternative build of OpenRealty is in full swing and is to be wrapped up soon.

    Sorry again for your frustrations, I think Mick is a level headed guy and I’m sure Ryan can be at times but I really don’t know who sandking is and business is business so pbflash could be regulating out of jealousy, Im not real sure, sorry.

    Honestly I wouldn’t get wrapped up in their moderation and just let it go. OpenRealty isn’t the least friendly forum on the web.

    Besides you are not forced at gun point to stick with any company or forum that treats you poorly right? You do have an option! You can ask for support in the EZProRealty forums and join there. Its free and we do give credit where credit is due by providing free member blogs.

    Best regards…..

  3. Chris Watson October 21, 2008 3:25 am

    Hey Jared, found you after doing a google search for WordPress real estate plugins and wanted to say good job on this plugin. I downloaded it and its beautiful.

    I did want to ask however if there is a way to view the source code or remove the powered by link?

    Also in case you did not no, there is a thread in Open Realty that says your product violates the GNU / GPL rules. PBFLASH the moderator posted it.

    Anyway great job.

  4. Jared Ritchey October 21, 2008 11:30 am

    Hello Chris, thanks, yes the plugin can have the link back removed. We do this as sort of donation ware in as far as that goes even though its not technically donation ware.

    Lots of plugin developers who publish their projects often have link backs, we went a step further and encrypted to prevent the prolific removal of it that would likely take place.

    Its not done to be rude its done to gain link back benefits in exchange for a free product.

    As per Open Realty forums and the GNU/GPL statement. I have no idea where that post is but I assure you we follow the GNU / GPL closely. Encrypted files are NOT violations per se. The next release will only have a small chunk of code encrypted.

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses


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