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 had a request for a Recent Transactions plugin for Wordpress so I took our featured Listings Plugin, tweaked it and developed a plugin that shows only pending and sold listings.

Pretty simple, but effective. You can get it from our widget section.

Unlike the Featured Listing Plugin, this does not create a sidebar widget. it only builds a page.

Popularity: 13% [?]

I was introduced to Google Analytics be my friend Jeremiah (web-strategist.com), while at a "Cinco De Mayo" party. Jeremiah always has the most up-to-date information concerning start-ups, web2.0, and social media. He advised me to look into Google Analytics to see how it would help track visitors to our websites. I did some searching around his blog, and found this good video:

Web Strategy Show: How to start a Web Analytics Program at your Company with Avinash Kaushik
Watch and learn

In the past I just used Webalizer, which comes with most hosting accounts. Webalizer is OK, it will get all the data for you, but analysis of the data takes time, So it's not really worth looking deeply at the data. It's good for a quick snapshot of your site. Since our websites are starting to get more and more traffic, I am more interested in the learning about how our sites are being used. I'm especially interested about setting up marketing goals, and keyword analysis

I was impressed with Google Analytics from the first day I started using it…3 days ago…I thought it was a tool for adwords so I never tried it before. I was reading the Google Analytic blog, and they have a new version released Today! They are moving all accounts over to the new system as we speak.
Here is a tour of the new system

Now, Let's talk about the magic of Wordpress and how to get Google Analytics on your site. If you have a normal website, for every page that you want to monitor, you have to add a small piece of javascript. If you have Wordpress website you just use a Google Analytics Plugin. There are a lot out there, but the one I use is from Boakes.org

Get the plugin here 

Simply activate it, and add your Google Analytics ID Number. The Plugin will add the javascript code to the footer, which is displayed on every page in a Wordpress blog. Within 24 hrs, you will start gathering data from your site.  

We added a Google Analytics plugin to our single property websites (Start one here). This is a great way to track activity for your listings. See what people are looking at, their location, set goals, and marketing strategies for your websites.

Plugin Troubleshooting:
If you enable the plugin, but Google.com cannot find it on your site, make sure you have this in your footer:
do_action('wp_footer') That is the hook the plugin attaches the javascript to display.

Popularity: 13% [?]

There are two features of our single properties websites that need to be highlighted because they are great features and essential to get the most from your sites. Google Sitemaps, and Google Analytics. In this post I will be talking about google Sitemaps.

Why do you NEED to do this?
Because every single property website you make needs to have links to all your other websites, creating a web of links to all your websites. When the Google bots index your websites they see all these links to your websites and increases your page rank. The higher the page rank, the more often your website will appear on searches.

What does it do?
The Wordpress Google Sitemaps plugin builds an XML file that maps your website and lets the google robots know about pages and posts in your website. Once the sitemap is built, you submit the xml file to google using their webmaster tools and within a few days you will be indexed on google and in the search engine. The webmaster tools allows you to see how Google indexes your site, views your keywords, shows incoming links, etc… You can add unlimited number of sites to you account which makes it easy to check the status of all your websites

If you have a self hosted wordpress website, you can download the google sitemap plugin here

Since we run wordpress MU to host all the single property websites, we had to tweak the sitemap plugin to work for us. Below are the steps to create and submit a sitemap for our single property websites.

1. Activate the plugin, then in options you will see the sitemap tab. Once on the sitemap page, simply click build sitemap. Or rebuild sitemap. You only need to build it once, unless you do major changes to your site. 

the sitemap gets created instantly and then provides a link to the webmaster tools.

2. If you do not have a google account, create one, then add your site. At the top of the page, when you are in webmaster tools, you will see the textbox to add the url of your website.

3. Once added you need to verify it. There are 2 ways to do this. Since our single property websites do not have ftp permission, and you cannot add meta information to the site we had to make a little hack to allow Wordpress MU to get indexed.

4. at the dropdown, choose Upload an HTML file.

5. That will bring up this page, which tells you to upload a certain type of file so Google can verify that you are the owner. 

You are suppose to upload that file, but our little hack takes care of it for you, so just click "Verify" and in a few seconds, you will see a success message that your site has been verified by the google bot.

Now you need to tell Google where your sitemap is.

Navigate to the sitemaps section in webmaster tools. You have 2 selections, mobile or nrmal sitemaps…choose normal. You will then see this page. Notice the example below the textbox. That is the link you need to add. Just copy and paste the example url into the textbox, click submit and your done. Now just let Google do it's magic. 

Like always, if you have questions, shoot them my way  

Popularity: 20% [?]

We updated the featured listing plugin recently, and added a widget to it.

This plugin now works with PHP 4, using CURL, which seems to be on many more servers then PHP5 and simple_xml.

If you still have trouble, you will just have to get another hosting provider. We offer hosting starting at $9.95…if interested shoot me an email. Our server are built for Community applications, especially Wordpress MU.

The admin section has also been updated. The plugin will now create the page for you, and update it as you change your listings. You do not need to cut and paste the little code snippet any more.

The sidebar widget displays your active listings. The major benefit of the widget is that it does not display you listings on a third party website. The public stays on your site and views your listing without leaving. The widget is dynamic so as you change the status of your listings the widget will change also.

If you have any trouble, just shoot us an email…by going to our "About Us" section.

This plugin comes pre-configured in our Single Property Websites, Start one here 

Popularity: 13% [?]

First, I want to note that Craigslist has updated their formatting again…Our flyers, Postlets and Vflyer are all affected by the new formatting issues on Craigslist. From what I see, they have removed the style for "A" tags. I cannot remove the underline from links anymore. Many of the "Div" tags are not working properly. 

I remember the days when I could use javascript for image rollovers on CL, but that same magic for stylish images, also brought nasty pop-ups, and redirects.

Right after we released the Single Property Websites, I wanted to update our Listing Designer so you can post websites directly to Craigslist.com, Backpage.com or any other classified website.

Our listing designer is pretty useful for posting your listing to classified sites, but I wanted to make it even easier.

The solution was to take your property website, remove the navigation tabs, and the widgets, so only the listing was visible. Then allow you to copy and paste the code to when you make a Craigslist advertisement.

The benefits of this system:

1. All the links on Craigslist go back to your site. They do not go to a third party site.
2. The custom headers you upload for your Single Property Website will also be used at Craigslist.
3. There is no editing, you just click "Select Code" and then go paste at Craigslist.
4. They look really nice, and have your contact info.

This is our third update to way we allow you to post to Craigslist. It's funny that every time we update, it gets easier for the agents, but it looks like the agents more time on it. Your Sellers will love it, and it really makes the agents stand out above the crowd.

This new feature has been added to the admin section of the Single Property Websites.

Basically, this theme is the first Wordpress theme that will post directly to Craigslist.

To make a Single Property Website, Go Here 

Popularity: 16% [?]

I upgraded the themes last night with a background image uploader. Before a user could only edit the background color, but now you can upload a custom background image and override the colors. 

I also found a very, very nice stripe generator that make stripes for tiled backgrounds on the fly. If anyone knows how hard and time consuming it is to make tiled stripes, this website will knock your socks off.

www.stripegenerator.com - You can edit the thickness, color, and shadows, then download the image as a png and use on our themes instantly.

If you have a stylish condo, or trendy loft, a stripe background adds an element of design and makes the website looks very nice. Here is an example of our olive theme with a newly added stripe background

Go ahead and start a website here and then play with the design features. Add a custom header, change the background colors, add some images…you can do it all! 

Popularity: 14% [?]

All of Realivent's Single Property Sites are now video enabled. This means you can embed videos that you've uploaded to YouTube or you can upload directly from within your own website admin panel. You can see a sample video enabled site here.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Realivent.com is proud to announce that we have put together some incredible single property websites using Wordpress, our real estate plugins, and other worpdress plugins to make a website for your listings that are just amazing.

Website Samples: (Click to go to website)

In less then 5 minutes you can have a fully functional website, that has all the search engine optimization, spam filtering, lead generation, and contact forms for you to get more business.

Simply add your listing details, add your listing photos, choose a theme and publish. If you have a listing in our system already, you can just select your current listing and choose a theme…this takes less then a minute.

The themes have an interchangeable header image so you can upload your own header to the website. You can change most of the colors on the website including the background color, menu color, and link color.

Change Colors with our color picker 

Since the website is built on Wordpress, you can blog about your listings, and people can subscribe to you listing and get automatic updates via RSS 

Many plugins are installed for you automatically.
The Realivent plugins include:

• Featured listing plugin - This plugin puts your listings on every website you make, add a listing once and it is will appear on every website. includes mapping, neighborhood data, email to friend, print flyer, and information request forms.
• IDX smartframe Home Search plugin - this allows you to put your home search in every website you make.
• About Me Plugin - make one professional profile and use it on every website you make.
• CMA form with Zillow estimates -This plugin is a lead generation monster…It allows people to get the value of any home in the US instantly from your website. There is also a form that allows people to request a CMA from you.
• Calculator - A wonderful financial calculator that returns monthly payments.
• Property Watch - Allows people to send you their home search criteria to you as an email, you then put them on an automatic home search.

Wordpress plugins:

• SEO Title Tag - makes your website better for google search engine
• Spam Karma 2 - blocks all comment spam from your website
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - fills your metatags with keywords based on the website content to make your website better for google search engine
• Related Posts - Adds a list of related posts to each blog post you make.
• Google sitemaps - allows you to add your website to google search engine for indexing and use Google webmaster tools to make sure your site is high in rankings
• Meebo Plugin - Adds Instant Messaging to your site.
• MyBlogLog Plugin - Adds social networking to your website
• Google Adsense Plugin - Allows you to monetize your websites.
• More coming soon!

As we update the websites with more plugins and features your active websites will stay updated, and you will have access to all new plugins immediatly after they are released. This also applies to themes…

Manage Your Listings From Within Your Website Control Panel

Another great feature is that you can add and edit your listings and your profile from any admin section all within your own website. Say you have 5 listings, and therefore 5 websites… You can control all your information from any website…simply amazing. You can also create beautiful HTML Posts for Craigslist, Live Deal, and Backpage from your admin section, and we syndicate to many sites like Google Base and Edgeio automatically.

You can also add a custom domain name your single property website instantly. Just point your domain nameservers to Realivent servers, and your set.

You can make unlimited websites for Free. Custom Domain Name hosting starts at $9.95/month, or host your single property website for a full year and save $50!  

Popularity: 19% [?]