We have a major update to the realivent wordpress CMA Plugin, I'd like to say it when from "great" to "Holy Cow, this is awesome".

The biggest improvement is the new feature that allows people to guess on future home values. A new form has been added to the plugin that allows people to choose a future date anywhere from tomorrow to years from now and then enter a price that they think the property will be valued at. The valuation is coming from Zillow, just like the old plugin.

What makes this such a valuable tool, is that when the future date arrives for the estimation, that user gets an email with a link to see the results back on your website. This means constant traffic coming back to your website! Even if they completely forget about you, they will be reminded to go back to your site and see how good they are at guessing prices.

It is really a lot of fun.
Screenshots:

get your gallery at realiventblog.com

This feature is in beta and you can turn it off in the admin section. All data is stored and we will be producing data trends based on the guesses. This data will not be available immediately because we do not have that much data, but as we start seeing some interesting trends we will release the data. The data will be release in the plugin also, so the public will stay on your site (sticky) and see how the world is estimating values.

Since Zestimates update about every 2 weeks, if you enter a future date in the near future and the Zestimate has not been updated, an email will get sent out telling the person that made the estimate that the value has not changed, and they will get another email as soon as it does. 

Along with this feature we have improved many other features:

1. Better look and feel. Of course you can also edit the code to fit your website.
2. Along with the default sidebar widget, we added a function to pull out the form so you can skin with you own sidebar container. See screenshot above.
   to skin, call the form with this function: <?PHP get_cma_widget_form() ?>
3. better results. Removed many of the errors from missing data.
4. added a permalink to the results. You can now get the permalink and use as a reference when blogging about house values, or send to clients in emails. Here is an example of the permalink: Upcoming auctions in Oakland, CA

Download the plugin here: Realivent CMA plugin

typical plugin install, upload entire folder to your plugin directory, and activate. Go to options->realivent cma to configure. The Options page will make a new wordpress page automatically. To add the widget, go to presentation0>sidebar widgets and drag the realivent cma widget to your sidebar. 

Popularity: 61% [?]

I love the lightbox javascript library, but I was having the hardest time getting it to work with Wordpress. I finally figured it out with some help from these plugins

http://zeo.unic.net.my/notes/lightbox2-for-wordpress/

http://www.4mj.it/lightbox-js-v20-wordpress/ 

Here is a sample of ours:

get your gallery at realiventblog.com

The problem I found with all the other lightbox plugins was that they had no image uploader so I had to make the gallery and maually add the lightbox viewer. So I added an uploader and an easy way to add the gallery to the blog post or blog page.

Admin Sections:

get your gallery at realiventblog.com

To install the plugin, upload the entire lightbox_gallery folder to your plugin directory. Then activate it. The admin section will be under the options tab as "Lightbox".

Download: lightbox_gallery.zip 

How to Use:

1. Make a gallery. All photos have to go into a gallery so first thing to do is "add gallery". Once you add a gallery, you can upload images to it. You can delete and move the photos from one gallery to another in the edit section.
2. Once you have a gallery, just add [GALLERY=X] where X is the gallery id. The gallery id will be visible in the admin section. It must be capitalized!

Notes:

If you upload an image that is smaller then the desired max width, the image will not be resized.
It seems the page has to fully load before the lightbox will work. I'm looking into this.
If there is other javascript on the page, like a mybloglog widget or meebo, the lightbox will appear behind it…I'm working on this…no biggie, IMO.

It looks a lot better in Safari and Firefox, then IE7…but then again, most things do!
Safari, is quickly becoming my new favorite browser.

Popularity: 54% [?]

I ran across this while waiting for my Iced Venti Americano*, at Starbucks. Dilbert has always been up there as one of my favorite comics. I read the comic and gave myself a reminder to try to find the comic on the internet so I could post the image. I should set a reminder to fix my inner reminder schedule because it is running a little late. I just now did a search for that Dilbert comic and had to search through the archives to get it.

Click on it to view full size. 

Sooo true…

Dilbert is awesome, he never let's you down. I like their website and you can subscribe to a daily comic feed.

Here is another Dilbert blogging cartoon…your blog is an embarrassment  

The Dilbert website is here 

to subscribe to Dilbert or about `50 other daily email comic strips go here: comics.com 

* An Iced Venti Americano is 4 shots and water with ice. The current price is $2.35 (except for on the Las Vegas strip, where the price is roughly $5.00) which makes this drink by far the most economic "bang for your buck" at Starbucks. The ice allows you to take a mighty swig right when you get it for an immediate rush of caffeine. I have 2 a day because after 5 years of drinking it, 1 does nothing to me. I think the only way to get more caffeine inside your body in the same amount of time is a coffee enema, which is frowned upon while still at Startbucks.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Six Apart is the worlds largest blogging software company, granted Wordpress is not a company. They do provide very good products, and I have learned a lot from them in terms of blogging technology. For example, I learned about pings, trackbacks, and RSS from some developers over there.

Here is a video of spokesman Anil Dash on Obtaining “Google Juice” through effective blogging.

I like the way he puts it. Give and you will receive, this is so true.

Look at the white board behind Anil…I like the “me” with the arrow pointing to Anil…I chuckled

Popularity: 9% [?]

The Wordpress questions are starting to roll in. The first couple questions come from Stacey Macioszek stateofmindrealestate.com

Q. Is there a way to change the page order in Wordpress?

Yes, you can edit the page order by going to Manage->Pages. Then on the right you should see a section called page order. If you have not changed it for any pages they should all be 0

On a horizontal menu the higher the number the further to the right. So you can order your pages

1, 2, 3, 4
Or
10, 20, 30, 40
They would both have the same effect.

Q. Is there a way to lock the font size for my blog in any browser?  I found out by complete accident ( my 17 month old hit Fsomething while I was typing.) that when I adjust the text size at the view tab my font goes all wacky.  I tested other sites and some don't change at all and some adjust accordingly.

First, I want to commend you on introducing your children to technology at an early age, but I think trying to make your 17 month old blog for you is a little lazy, don't you think Stacy???

Anyhow, adjustable text size is a CSS thing. It is actually a good thing, even though it makes most blogs look "funky". This falls into the accessibility portion of internet browsing and gives people with poor eyesight the ability to read your blog. There are a couple ways to layout font sizes on a website

EM, PX, or percentage.

EM is adjustable, while PX is not…I think percentage is adjustable to but not sure. The only time I have seen percentage is in tag clouds, since EM and PX pretty much cover the 2 choices for font sizes (fixed and adjustable).

So to change your fonts from adjustable to fixed you can go into your style.css (most Wordpress theme stylesheets) file and change all the fonts from 1.2em (or something like that) to 12px (or something like that).

BTW
In Firefox, to make the fonts bigger and smaller, hold <CTRL> and hit the "+" and "-". I'm not going to tell you which one makes the font bigger adn which one makes the font smaller, you'll have to figure it out yourself. 

In IE, you can go to firefox.com and get Firefox (preferred method) or you can hit <F10>, then <v>, then <x> then use the up or down arrow to select font size.

Q. Is there a better text editor or plugin to help with writing posts?

I use Mudbomb's editor. You can get it at mudbomb.com
it’s nice…if you have trouble let me know, I’ll help you install it. It is just another plugin, but once you activate it, you have to go to your profile and turn off visual editing. That is the only special step I think you have to take.

There is also a table plugin for it so you can add tables to your posts.

Thanks for your questions, and keep 'em coming, our support department can handle anything!

Popularity: 8% [?]

When you publish a post, Wordpress can automatically notify blog rollers all over the world and maybe even in other galaxies (wouldn't be surprised). These are called ping servers, and if you go into Wordpress->Options->Writing you will probably see you have 1: http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

This is the default pinger, but you can add more…try this list. Yeah, some might not work still, but all you have to do is copy and paste the list to your blog and forget about it. if you enter the URLs manually remember to add each new ping URL as a new line, do not add them separated with a comma.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://realivent.com/ping.php
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpchttp://blogmatcher.com/u.phphttp://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.php
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.imblogs.net/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

If you would like me to add your ping URL to the list…shoot me an email 

Popularity: 8% [?]

Ultimate Tag Warrior is an awesome plugin. If you don't have it, get it, NOW!  *waiting...waiting*

Ok, now that everyone is back, let's discuss a problem I ran into and how to fix it. When you write a post and have the UTW plugin activated, you will notice a section below the post edit box that gets related tags for you. UTW sends your post to Yahoo's content api, and then Yahoo returns keywords based on the content...really cool stuff. You can see the Yahoo content API Here.

The API will only send 5,000 queries per application ID. So if you click on the "Get Keyword Suggestions From Yahoo" button and nothing happens UTW has probably reached it's limit of queries. Think about how many blogs UTW is installed on...it's a lot.

You can fix this by adding your own Yahoo API Application ID. I know it sounds hard but I don't think you have to even go to yahoo to change it.

The file to edit is in the UTW plugin folder. The file name is ultimate-tag-warrior-ajax.php 

On line 95 you will see $appID = "wp-UltimateTagWarrior"; If your editor does not have line numbers, you can search for "wp-UltimateTagWarrior". Change the appID to whatever you want, but make it unique because if the appID is already in use by another large website you might just run into the same problem as before. I changed the appID to my credit card number: 4532-2344... J/k

anyhow, once it is changed, re-upload the file and go check it on a post...it should work and return the tags based on the content of your post. 

Here is another useful code snippet I use to return tags based on content
You can try the code out here: My Keyword Generator
Simply send it content and it returns the keywords, don't forget to change the appID in the snippet too.

Popularity: 9% [?]

We have the platform, you have the ideas, let's work together.

If you would like to grow your own real estate community, now's your chance. We will give you our blogging software which is based on Wordpress MU. You will be the administrator and have the ability to control every aspect of your site, including themes, plugins, widgets, users, etc...it's is your site. 

If you can understand the benefits of starting a community, then we want to talk to you... NOW!

We received so much praise for our real estate plugins that we made for the real estate community, we decided to unleash our entire blogging platform. The phone has started ringing, we are amazed by the calls we get. I think real estate professionals are starting to catch on to the technology that is available and getting the community bug. Right away we started to receive calls from people that wanted to use our blogging platform and start a local community blog in there area. This is a great idea and exactly what we are developing propblogs to do. So if you want to start your own community, here is your chance!

what we need from you

1. A domain name, and an overview of your community. The reason we need an overview of the community is because we are not setting up communities based on city, state or zips...we are setting them up as, well communities, so if you want to start a community that loves Green homes, you got it. If you want a community based on high rise apartment rentals, you got it...simple right, basically you are the boss. We also do not want to flood the market, so if you start a community based on Green homes, we do not want more green home communities sprouting up, ruining your community. So basically it is first come first serve...

2. well thats it, you don't need anything else. This is completely free, and if you thought blogging on a single blog was fun, just wait until your community takes off! It's very exciting, and a great way to get business.

Even if you already have a blog...this will only make it better

I've read enough I want to start now!
Contact Us: info@realivent.com

What you get from us.
Lets just start by saying a whole lot!

1. You become an admin of your community, you get ftp access to you site, and you can control pretty much every aspect of the community you run, including themes, plugins, widgets, etc...

2. You get access to all our real estate tools. You can brand our listing designer to your community, you can brand our virtual tours to your community, you can provide print material for your community...You become part of the next big movement in real estate.
3. You get our support. We love Wordpress Multi-User, we love bloggers, and we love real estate. Your community will always have access to the cutting edge plugins, widgets, and tools to keep it popular.Your community becomes part of a larger community, a global community of weblogs that help raise the popularity of the sites you host.
4. Much Much More...a purpose in life, a being, an understanding (maybe I'm pushing it, but you get the picture)

Sounds Interesting, but what are some community options?
I'm Glad you asked...

This platform extends far beyond simple blogs sites, this platform handles e-commerce, forums, interactions, etc.

Do you want to start a FSBO site where people can post homes for sale?
you can do it, we even have the payment software so you can sell the websites that are created on your site. Image having a site that allows people to add their FSBO's to your site in minutes, put it on a google map, syndicate it, etc...this is powerful stuff, and it's all yours.

Do you want to start a blog for your Brokerage?
This is a great idea. image bringing a software platform into your brokerage that allows agents to blog about their listings, create single property websites, post to Craigslist, syndicate to major websites, etc...Your agents will have access to our tools, they enter their listing once and all their marketing material is created automatically in seconds, including webpages, print, virtual tours. It's Powerful stuff.

Do you want to create a huge referral network?
We already have networking and referral plugins available for your new community. This is a very powerful idea, competing with Homegain.com, and other real estate referral monsters, you can start your own.

FAQ

How long does it take to set up?
The process is simple, we get a domain name from you, and set up the community. You change your domain nameservers to Realivent (we can do this for you, if it is over your head). Once the nameservers transfer, you are up and running...could take a couple hours to transfer, or a couple days depending on your domain registrar.

How do I administer the site?
You will see a "site admin" section of your community. Only you will see this. In this section you can choose what themes are available, access to plugins, control user accounts, etc...It's very easy.

Is it really free?
Yes, it is. If you need our help we can provide additional support at a price, such as graphic design and layout, custom themes, branding, etc...

Can I sell advertising on my site?
Yes, absolutely. It is your community, your site, you can run it anyway you like. If you have a major idea, but unsure how to do it, let us know.

Feel free to email us any other questions you might have.
Contact Us: info@realivent.com

Popularity: 11% [?]

It has now been a week since negotia-gate, in which the Redin CEO stated that their agents beat down other agents by .9% in negotiation skills, and the trolls are coming out:

The silence from Greg Swann, Marlow Harris, and the rest of the real estate flunkies is absolutely deafening. First they claim you guys are liars, then call into question the Seattle Times' integrity, and now they can't even muster a rebuttal...
source: comments from Redfin blog by an amused spectator

hmmm...Greg are you flunking? doesn't look like it from the amount of buzz you create.
Marlow, how about you? are you going to be silent?

I was a real estate agent for 1 year...it was the hardest job I ever had, I loved marketing, but hated everything else. I now work with Realtors and help them market, and It is the most fun job I've ever had. Real estate negotiating is stressful, demanding, empowering, and rewarding, especially when you get your client everything they asked for...You can't put numbers on this.

Here are some words from the flunky, silent real estate professionals

Realivent
Who’s the best negotiator? and can you base it on Real Estate Data?

Can this be true? Is this more nonsense?

3Oceans
Redfin Numbers Food Fight — Oh Goody, Let Me In

Redfin’s Negotiating Prowess: Even Rocket Scientists Make Accounting Errors, But Good Companies Own up to it Quickly

Sellsius
Redfin and Zillow: Stats of a Feather

Marlow Harris (Accused Real Estate Flunky)
Has Redfin jumped the shark?

Greg Swann (Accused Real Estate Flunky)
Thinking skeptically to rain on Redfin.com’s parade . . .

The numbers are clearly bogus, Mr. Kelman. Show us the files . . .

Does Redfin.com have tougher agents or tougher clients? A challenge in Bloodhound red . . .

Future of Real Estate Marketing
Redfin Agents More Effective?

TransparentRE
Redfin Validates its Negotiation Capabilities with MLS Statistics

Inman
Redfin: The first year

FSBO Law Center
Is Redfin really all THAT?

Northwest Real Estate Updates
Redfin Saves You Money!!! So they say…

Phoenix Arizona Real Estate
A Challenge for Rain City …

Rain City Guide
Redfin’s First Year

Popularity: 7% [?]