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Zoo Tuts – The Real Estate Agent Website

Posted on October 19, 2009 • by Team Zoo • No Comments »

This is the first in a series of Video Tutorials on designing the real estate agent homepage. This goes through all the basics we think are needed to make a great real estate home page.

The Search Result Page

The search results page can make or break the user experience, only provide information on this page that is relevant to the search. if you website only has a handful of listings, never make them use a full search tool, get straight into the listings and allow them to refine down from there.

The Property Page

Creating a property page can be fraught with danger, especially since there are forces pulling you towards what you want. By far the most important things for users are price, location information, photography and features and for the real estate agent, a simple way for users to share information socially and also contact the agent.

Other Pages

Here is a look at some of the other pages we will find on a traditional real estate agent website. These pages may share information dynamically to the home page and also be jumping points to further information across your website. This Zooproperty.com tutorial on how to design some of the other pages such as team member pages and individual team member pages.

Zoo Tuts – Agents System

Posted on October 18, 2009 • by Team Zoo • No Comments »

Here is an overview for the Realtor and Real Estate Agents. There will be more tutorials added to this section over the coming weeks.

Realty Plugin Installation

Posted on October 8, 2009 • by Ryan O'Grady • 10 Comments »

Installation

  1. Install the Realty Plugin and the WordPress Default Enhanced 1.6 theme (or the standard wp theme which might need some configuring).
  2. Make sure the htaccess file and wp-content/uploads directory are writable.
  3. Login to wp-admin and activate the Theme followed by the plugin.
  4. Go in to “permalinks” (in settings) and adjust permalink structure to be “Day and name”.
  5. Create two WordPress pages through the wp page manager, calling them home and news.
  6. Select ‘reading” (in settings) and check the static page radio button and select the “Home” as the front page and “Blog” as the post page.

Note: For the Realty Plug-in to work you are required to install the XML to Array plug-in which draws data from the Zoo Property API and inserts it into the WordPress database for your site. The Realty Plug-in then draws the property information from the tables created by the XML to Array plug-in in the WordPress database.

Real Estate Settings

General Settings: – Insert the Office id for the offices you wish to display property and team member data for. Set the other defaults you would like and add the Google Maps and Walk Score Keys.

Media Slideshow: – If you would like an image/video/plan slideshow then you need to install and activate the Agentpoint Grid manager plugin. You can control flash player settings in this section.

Pages: - This is where you can determine what real estate related dynamic pages you would like included in your website. If you uncheck any pages then they will be deleted from the wp page manager.

Search Results: – Here you can control what information appears on the search results pages. You can Add, Remove & Edit elements which will update the way information is displayed.

Sold And Leased: - All sold and leased properties will appear here with the price being the sold price (if it ws entered when the property was marked as sold) or if there is no sold price the listing price for the sold property. You can elect to “display the price” or whether or not to “display the listing”.

Team: - Select the team members you would like displayed on the website and select whether or not they are an author of any news articles in the blog.

Widgets

Where you control what information will be displayed on individual pages. On the right are the theme files with two theme files belonging to each website page. The plug-in allows you to control where you would like information displayed by using widgets to display all information.

  1. Homepage – Homepage Main and Homepage Side
  2. Property Page – Property Page Main and Property Page Side
  3. Search Results Pages – Tags Search and Static Sidebar
  4. Other Static Pages – Static Sidebar
  5. Blog – Blog Sidebar

The following real estate widgets are available to be added to the files above. Just select, drag and drop the widgets. Once the widget is in place you should open the widget and adjust the settings of the widget.

Note: Some widgets will not activate correctly if they do not have a title or if other data is not entered.

Real Estate Featured Listings – Featured property listings on the homepage.You can control the number of properties which are displayed along with what data is displayed through the widget. The client can select what property id’s are to be featured through the Realty Page.

Real Estate Current Listings – Current listings added to the website. You can control the number and type of listings through the widget.

Real Estate Area map Searchh – Search for real estate by a geographic area.

Real Estate News Articles – Latest News From real Estate Categories. You can select the number of articles, number of characters and article categories to be displayed through the widget.

Real Estate Property Search – Enter property id or suburb.

Real Estate Feeds – Sales, Rentals and Google RSS so listings can appear on Google. This widget creates an XML of the property listings. You can then submit this link/rss/xml to Google who will then index all of the properties on a daily bases so they appear on Google Maps.

Real Estate Quick Search – Search for property through multiple options. In the widget you can control what options you would like to appear in the quick search and what the drop down options are.

Real Estate Sold Listings – Displays sold listings on pages. Through the widget you can select what sold information you would like displayed. The plugin also creates a sold listings page which enables results to be displayed in a table format or exactly the same as the search results appear (this setting can be found in the settings page).

Real Estate Property of the Week – Display Properties of the Week on the homepage. Through the widget you can control what type of property to display.The client can select what property id’s are to be featured through the Realty Page.

Real Estate Similar Sold Listings – Show similar sold listings to a listing teh user is looking at.

Real Estate Rental Application – Rental Application form.

Real Estate Media – Control how and where images are displayed. There are seven image options to choose from or a combination of media types. You need to make sure you have installed the Agentpoint Thumbnail Grid Plug-in if you would like the Slide Show Pro image option. You can control the SlideShowPro player through the

Real Estate Contact Agent – Choose what agent details to display where through the widget.

Real Estate Property Description – Displays the property description.

Real Estate Map – Display the properties location on a Google Map.

Real Estate Walk Score - Display the properties Walkscore and map. In the widget there are settings to control the map and Walkscore style.

Real Estate Property Features – Displays the properties features along with open inspection times for a property.

Real Estate Property Table – Displays key information about the property. In the widget you can control what property information is displayed.

Real Estate Action Buttons – Email self, print and email friend for the property.

Real Estate Mortgage Calculator - Loan repayments for a certain amount of borrowing.

Real Estate Similar Listings - Similar listings to the property a user is viewing. You can control the type of similar listings you want displayed in the property widget.

Real Estate Share – Shares the website property page with popular social networks. You can control which networks in the widget settings.

There are also the standard WordPress widgets which can be added to any page or sidebar of the website.

Grid Manager Plugin

Posted on October 8, 2009 • by SlideShowPro/ /Agentpoint • No Comments »

This plug-in allows for a flash image player on the property page of your real estate website. It users technology developed by SlideShowPro which has been integrated for WordPress.

Make sure you read the terms and conditions at http://slideshowpro.net/ as i believe there is a small one-off fee of a few dollars to license their technology.

Back to the plug-in, Agentpoint have tweaked this plug in so it synchronises with the Realty Plug-in giving users the option to display images using SlideShowPro or to have a Slide Show open in a new window. There are 7 combination of image viewing options available to the webmaster which can easily be switched up at any time.

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Wordpress Default Enhanced 1.6

Posted on October 8, 2009 • by Michael Heilemann/ /Agentpoint • No Comments »

Agentpoint took the Wordpress Default Theme designed by Michael Heilemann and adjusted it so it synchronised with the Agentpoint Realty Plugin.

Any designer who would like to commence building a Wordpress Theme should start with this theme rather than the Wordpress Default which is included with a Wordpress install.

Note: You can use the Wordpress Dafault but it just means you may have to create a few extra pages in the theme and adjust the Index file.

Documentation for the plugin can be found in the plugin. Alternatively, instructions and installation guide can be found in the comments in the Blog.

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Magnesium Wordpress Theme

Posted on October 8, 2009 • by Agentpoint • No Comments »

The Magnesium Theme was a default Worpdress theme built by Agentpoint and designed so the widgets can be placed on existing files created in the Theme. Most pages of the Theme include a main page file along with a sidebar file. Widgets placed in each area will automatically be styled through the Magnesium stylesheet.

The Magnesium Theme also has a theme settings page which allows the user to decide what wordpress pages make up the main navigation bar along with whether drop downs are used in the navigation.

Users can load a logo through this section which will appear in the theme. You can also select the font and control the website colours through this theme page and the enter the business address and social networking links.

This is a highly customisable theme and although we think of it as a vanilla theme it is a great starting place for any designer who would like to create a masterpiece using the Realty Plugin provided for FREE by Agentpoint.

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Location Info Plugin

Posted on October 8, 2009 • by Agentpoint • No Comments »

The Location Info Plugin creates a widget which can be installed on the property listing page and displays local information relating to the suburb the property is located in. The plugin works with the Realty Plugin so once it is installed it will populate the property pages.

Agents can update data for each project through wp-admin and can include images and other suburb statistics.

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