As you can see I’m releasing a lot of plugins. The idea behind the plugins for wordpress is to create a full real estate website for your blog.

Take your typical wordpress blog, add IDX, your featured listings, contact forms, etc… and you now have a full blown website.

I’m releasing these plugins quickly because we are currently programming blogging software for Keller Williams San Francisco Properties. The foundation is WPMU, which I love. I actually use for all blogs I make, even for single agents, because it allows you to easily create subdomains. The great thing about subdomains is that google sees each subdomain as a different website, but the front end user see one site. WPMU handles this perfectly. Although you cannot just set up WPMU and create subdomains, you have to have wildcard DNS available, and access to the httpd.conf file. If your hosted on a site does not allow this access, you are welcome to come over to Realivent.com. Our servers are completely set up and ready to host Wordpress MU sites.

For more information, please contact: matt@realivent.com

Back to the new plugin. I have made a lot of websites over the last 8 years, and one of the biggest wastes of time is creating forms for people to contact you over the internet…There are a lot of form generators, but any programmer knows you still have to build them manually.

I created a property watch plugin that allows visitors to your site to fill out a form that contains information for home searches. The form gets emailed to you, and you (the agent) sets up the new lead in your automatic email notification system.  All you have to do is download the plugin, add your email in the admin section, and then add it to a page…Simple and effective.

Example website: http://smartlegacy.com/property-watch/

Download the plugin: Property Watch Plugin v1.0

Install into plugin directory, and then access it at admin->options

Any comments or questions are welcome, and as you can see I’m focusing a lot on plugins for wordpress, so if you need anything made, just let me know. I can do it.

Popularity: 7% [?]

No matter how much you focus on SEO and creating links to other websites, the number one thing people are searching for is “homes for sale”. Buyers, are not searching for blogs, they are searching for homes. So why don’t you highlight your listings in your blog? My motto, come for our listings, stay for the information.
Here is a little plugin I wrote for wordpress, because wordpress rules!

This plugin displays your active, pending and sold listings on a page in your blog.

The process is simple, create a Realivent.com account, add some listings, create a profile, and that’s it…the plugin does the rest.

Get the plugin here:Featured Listings Plugin v1.0

Remember, you need a Realivent account for it to work. After you add your listings, you can also use our listing designer to create some beautiful online posts.

Upload the plugin to your wordpress plugin directory, activate it, and it will appear in admin->options
Here is an example page with featured listings: http://smartlegacy.com/featured-listings/

Please test it out, and let me know if you like it. Any suggestions for new features are welcome.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Hey,

I have been writing some code for clients of mine and I thought I would post a simple way to add your IDX framed solution to your blog as a page. Since, I love wordpress, and recommend it to everyone else, I made it a plugin you simply upload to your plugin directory.

Download plugin: Realivent home search plugin v1.0
Instructions:

1. Download plugin, then unzip into your plugin directory.
2. Activate it. Once activated it will be in under your admin options section.
3. add your IDX framed solution link, set width (in %, normally 100% is best), set height (in pixels, normally around 1500), set border (either yes or no), set scrolling (yes, no, auto). Then click update and your settings will be saved in your blog options.
4. write a page. Make sure you click on the html tab so that you are writing your page in html, not design mode. Design mode will strip the tags. So, while you are in html mode write this: “<!–Home Search–>” without the quotes and publish the page.

Example website using wolfnet: http://smartlegacy.com/search-for-homes/

I have only used it with wolfnet and SFAR public search, so if you want to use it and have a different idx solution, please try it and let me know if it works for you. If you need help, just send me an email and I’ll get your home search working in your blog.

More features will be developed soon.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Found this post at condodomain:
http://www.condodomain.com/blog/realtors-against-realtor-spam-rars/
In my personal opinion, if you get a lot of spam, you don’t have a good spam filter. No matter how many groups you start or complaints you make, spam is only going to get worse. Why, because you can make tons of money easily sending spam. Spam is now conducted by large international groups that compromise large number of computers and send millions of emails a day. 9 out of 10 emails are spam, up from 5 out of 10 only a couple years ago.
So, Get yourself a spam filter There are free ones out there and most hosting services that provide webspace provide a little tool called spamassassin. And most network admins keep it up-to-date and blocking the spam. Problem is nobody ever knows about it. All the hosting that we sell for blogs, comes with a very good control panel, called cpanel. This control panel lets you configure email, spam blockers, forwards, etc…

Here is a good free spam filter:
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

Just install it, and then train it. You train it by separating your good email from bad. Spambayes then figures out what you want and don’t want, and then it will continually train itself as you get more spam. Just hide the folder and no more spam problem.

Now for the flipside, what happens when your emails get flagged as spam?

over the last couple weeks, my partners have been receiving my emails in their spam folders. I went to SORBS (Spam and Open-Relay Blocking System) and checked my IP number. Since I have a wireless network in my home, I had to log into my wireless router and get my “Real” IP. my real ip is used by the router to communicate to other computers on the internet and all the computers in my network get “hidden” IPs, 192.168.x.x. Anyhow, My real ip is issued from a DHCP server from Comcast. at Sorbs I enter my IP number and I get this to my surprise:

DHCP is way for an ISP to issue dynamic IPs to their customers, so your IP will change every so often. As you can see, this IP address that I’m using is flagged. I thought there was no way off this list, but a quick email to my buddy Alain, made me feel a lot better.

I thought Sorbs was the only spam blacklist, but there are more, many more. submit your IP here in their spam database and see how many spam databases your ip is in http://www.dnsstuff.com/. I also thought, Once blacklisted, you can’t get off, but again I was wrong…

here are some other spam sites:
TQM-DYNAMIC (http://www.tqmcube.com/)

NOMOREFUNN (http://www.moensted.dk/spam/no-more-funn/)

DNSBLNETAUT1 (http://www.dnsbl.net.au/)

So I’ve requested the IP be removed from the database, and hopefully I can email my partners again.

Popularity: 4% [?]