OpenRealty Theme Options Addon

Posted on January 16, 2010
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Building an OpenRealty 2.5.8 website recently we had a unique request from a client in that he wanted to replicate the theme for use by all of his agents but did not want them to modify the theme files in areas of importance.  Given the requirements we summarized the task for the feature like this;

How can we give the OpenRealty site owner the ability to change the logo, agent photo, social network settings and other elements without modifying the actual theme?

The answer for us was to replicate a feature in some WordPress themes by providing a sort of Options Panel.  The addon called OR Template Options uses some simple IF Then php code that would look to the DB Table created by the addon. When the settings are entered, if the setting is available, it would display the setting in the appropriate or should I say defined area of the actual OpenRealty theme.  This would provide each agent the ability to simply type in the URL to their photo or simply the name of the photo along with things like contact details, social networking links and so on. Then they become instantly active.

My initial plan was to wait until OpenRealty releases its new update so I can configure in settings for the OpenRealty blog solution but I think I’m going to just release this demo theme (sorry its not beautiful) for those interested in its use.

This really should be considered an “OpenRealty Theme Developers Tool” rather than a turnkey addon because it does take someone briefly knowledgeable in PHP to make it work. The idea is that OpenRealty theme developers can use this addon free of charge and fully distribute it without cost or obligation with their works.  I think it would be a nice way to provide clever features for their themes.

Again its fully GNU/GPL, no link backs, no call backs, no footer code, not encrypted, do as you please with it but just leave the copyright in the two source files as normal.

SCREENSHOTS of the OpenRealty Options Panel Addon

General Template Settings

Used primarily for features in the template where the render elements exist. In this example screen I had hard coded in the basic stuff like logo, realtor photo, about us summary which would have appeared in the upper right of the header and even to allow for custom styles to be added in the head area of the source.

OpenRealty Options Panel Addon

Social Networking Settings

Social networking has long since been expanded to include about 6 primary and 6 alternate link solutions. This version was the first but it serves to demonstrate what I was after.

OpenRealty Social Networking Panel Addon

Theme Integration Settings

Again, we work with WordPress and Joomla a great deal and sometimes we want to display latest posts in OpenRealty themes. The way we did this was by a php include in the actual OpenRealty theme that was dependant on a setting in the options addon. It worked perfectly for connecting to remote blogs that were not hosted on the same server as the OpenRealty install. Its not perfect but today its also not really required since OpenRealty has a blog solution. I suppose you could use it to connect to a WP blog in addition to what you do in OR.

OpenRealty Theme Integration Panel Addon

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