Zebo Technologies

Plugin renamed to ZeboRealty

I never really officially named the plugin for real estate.  It has come to my attention that wprealty already exists.  And WPRealtors is a dangerous name as apparently the National Realtors Association gets pretty picky about the word Realtors.   So to be totally original I started calling the plugin ZeboRealty for WordPress in early January.

I see I haven’t posted any news on ZeboRealty since 2009.  Well, the plugin is very strong and operates several real estate sites very well.  Agents love the tools it provides in communicating listings to their clients.  If you are interested, just contact me for more info.  I spend most of my time working on client sites.  This site really receives no attention from me.  So please don’t mind the last post dates.  I’m still here and the folks who use the plugin are happy campers.

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WP Realty working nicely

I know I haven’t updated in quite some time.  We’ve been incredibly busy the last year working on several real estate sites.  I have the RETS version of our program now installed on 1 agency site and 4 agent web sites. (4 more sites are in the works) The program scales nicely whether you are a single agent or a large agency.  SantaFeSIR.com is currently the largest installation of the plugin with around 80 agents.

Current Features:

• Listing Manager
  • Tag listings
  • add/edit open houses
  • view new listings
  • view newly priced listings
  • view agent changes
  • email listing
  • print/email pdf brochures for each listing..branded for each agent
• Easily Blog about any listing or groups of listings.  (alternatively, pages can be created for specific groups)
• Contact Manager
• Web Leads Manager
• PDF Document Library
• Advertising Manager
• Photo Shoot Manager
• Staff and Agent Manager
• Web Site membership allows visitors to save listings and searches. Email updates go out should new listings or price changes occur that match their saved listings/searches.

Work is currently being done for a showings module. (currently, requested showings simply get emailed to the agent/agency.)

For pricing or more information, please feel free to contact us.

WP Realty RETS version can also be seen on experiencesantafe.com, santafeteam.com, marionskubi.com, and santafebeautifulhomes.com.

Posted in ZeboRealty: Real Estate Plugin | 1 Comment »

RETS import for WordPress Realtors

I’m pleased to annouce that I am working on a RETS import script.  Its almost finished.  It has taken a good deal of learning the nuances of the RETS server standards.  While I’m pleased with the data that RETS makes available, I’m quite disappointed in the RETS standard.  I had the false impression that RETS would simplify things in setting up sites regardless of city or realtor associations.

The problem I have always had with IDX is that each association decides what is in their feed.  The order of the fields and the names of the fields also changes per association.  This makes creating an import for a new client tedious unless we already have another client in that area.  I had hoped that RETS would standardize the naming of fields and get rid of the heavy customization that occurs per feed.

Unfortunately, it does not.   While RETS does make updating easier (we can update every 15 minutes now and only have to retrieve new/updated listings since we last updated), RETS still allows heavy customization.  The names of fields tend to be different per RETS Server provider and perhaps per association regardless of RETS vendor. (this remains to be seen, I will have to wait to see when I get more clients to work with)

An example of this.   RETS has a recommended standard name for a listing id.  It is called ListingID.  Albuquerque’s RETS follows this standard name.  Hawaii on the other hand calls it MLSNUM.   This is just one example. There are dozens of fields in the RETS database.  Of which only around 30 even have standard names.  The rest of the fields have been determined by the realtor association or the RETS provider. (not sure which)

What does this all mean?  It means that for every new client in an area where we have not scripted the import already, will have to have the data mapped from scratch.  In WPRL, I have used as many standard names for my variables as I have found so far.   So I am calling an mls number ListingID.  I have to map the data I import from RETS so that MLSNUM = ListingID.   A map has to be created for all the variables we wish to download.  (I have over 100 setup for the Hawaii residential property feed)

It likely means I will need to relook at my pricing sheet.  Setup of WPRL just isn’t going to get easier with RETS like I had hoped.  Looks like it will be getting more complicated as the RETS feed data will need to be carefully analyzed and mapped into WPRL data fields.

Regardless of all this, RETS importation is coming to WPRL.  This will let us meet the needs of many potential clients as the National Assocation of Realtors is pushing all Associations to provide RETS only by July 2009. (goodbye IDX, I will not miss thee)

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SantaFeMove.com

A couple weeks ago we finished another site for a pair of Santa Fe Agents.  What I want to highlight here is the ability of WP Realtors to create any type of page you want with listings inserted.

On one page of this site, the client highlighted listings that were in the Historical Santa Fe area.   WPRL allows you to easily tag listings (similiar to the tagging feature of posts in WordPress).  So the client tagged a bunch of listings as “historic”.   They then created a page in wordpress and inserted the following shortcode.

[wprl_search tag="historic"]

This inserted all the listings into the page that they had tagged as historic.

Posted in Portfolio | 1 Comment »

Las Campanas Experts

It has been a while. We’ve been quite busy with about 7 agent sites on the table at the same time.  WPRL is proving to be really fantastic.  Very fast to install and format around.  Combined with the power of wordpress, is really helping us make sites faster and better.  It is still early in WPRL’s life, but so far so good.

Our latest launch is for lascampanasexperts.com.  Las Campanas is a subdivision of Santa Fe, NM.  These 2 agents specialize in this subdivision. The use of shortcodes and a little modifying of the search template helps us narrow the MLS search to this subdivision.   What is great is that we can quickly produce these pages while letting more of our time go into content development.  Which everyone knows is the most important part!

Site design by santafewebdesign.com

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First version of WP Realty available

I’ve now launched 2 sites that use my new wordpress realty plugin.  3 more sites are almost finished as well.  Its proving to me that my first version of WPRL is ready to be used.  It isn’t extremely rich in features. However, it does display listings quite well.  Integrated google maps, a simple mortgage calculator, simple and neat image slideshow of each listing, and simple integration with cforms for visitors to send property requests.  It also keeps a simple counter of listing views so you can track your properties.  The backend is still a work in progress but it does let you manage listings and add tags to listings.  (as well as showing the view count stat)  Still to come is contact management, file library, saved searches, favorite properties, and newsletter integration.

Live demos are available

• northvalleyland.com
• juleebrooke.com

If you are interested in getting this plugin for your site, please contact me.  While I realize wordpress is free, I can’t give this plugin away for free.  It is a culmination of years of work.  I would never have been able to make this without getting paid along the way.  To ensure that clients that we use this for continue to benefit from new features, I must charge so I can continue to work on it.

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Julee Brooke

This is the second site to go live with my new wordpress plugin.   North Valley Land used the Albuquerque IDX.  This site is for the Santa Fe IDX.  We are launching a handful of sites that will be based on IDX.  In June or July I will be programming a RETS importer.

Currently I have the import process as a seperate plugin from the main listing plugin.  This allow me to more easily create an import targeting a specific IDX feed.   I’m looking forward to the days of not using IDX though.

Site design by santafewebdesign.com

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North Valley Land

Here is an agent site done entirely in wordpress.  It uses the first stable version of my new wordpress real estate plugin.

Site design by santafewebdesign.com.

The plugin is coming along better than I had hoped.  It gives so many possibilities for the agent to actually blog about their listings and the area they sell in.  Single listings and many different listing search results can be quickly tagged to an article simply by inserting a tag into a post or page.  For example, [wprl_search min_price="500000" max_price="550000"] would quickly insert search results matching those parameters.  Lots of parameters are available to target listings such as city, mls numbers, square footage, and more.

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Event Calendar 1.3

Release 1.3 brings ZT Event Calendar up-to-date with WP 2.5

Unfortunately, the new write page is pretty funky. They removed our sidebars so now scrolling is necessary to assign dates to a post.

Hopefully they will fix this soon or workarounds can be made.

ZT Event Calendar 1.3

Other changes:

- fixed bug: where events with dates that spanned the end of a month into the beginning of a month weren’t showing. This also was actually preventing events from showing that were on the end of a month.

- fixed bug: major bug fixed that caused events to start changing dates if you edited the event multiple times.

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WP Realtors Plugin Coming Soon

I’m really excited about my latest project.  I’ve worked with real estate and IDX for about 8 years now.  I’ve written tons of code for IDX over the years.  With my migration to everything wordpress, it was only logical to convert my work to wordpress.  Its essentially a complete rewrite pulling bits of code from all over the place.   I’m almost done with phase one of the migration.  I’ll be launching a site soon that uses this plugin.

At the moment, I’m using IDX.  However, with the news from National Association of Realtors that all MLS’s should have a working RETS solution by July 2009, I’ll be creating a RETS importer this summer.   Until then, some work is required per MLS IDX solution since every MLS’s IDX feed is different.  I’ve minimized how much work has to be done per market where my code is used.

Phase one of the migration will be limited to the following features.

• requires WordPress 2.5+
• IDX Import
• easy creation of listing pages.
• embedded tags in posts/pages inserts listing data
  • ex: [wprl_listing mls="123456"]  would embed a summary view of listing #123456 into your post or page.
  • ex: [wprl_search] would embed the search form into a page.
• manage listings in backroom – edit some features of the listings in the wordpress backroom.  Useful for IDX feeds that don’t include things like property descriptions.  (ya, some MLS’s are really out of touch with reality)
• Google Map of property
• tie in with CForms plugin for things like property inquiries or showing requests.   This leaves you with full control of the form data.
• easy to modify templates in the same format as wordpress themes

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