get your gallery at realiventblog.com
We’ve added lots of new themes to our agent blog platform packages and we’ve tested them with all of our plugins. With 100s and 1000s of Wordpress themes available we haven’t had a chance to test them all, but anything is possible from simple 3-column agent sites to 20 side-bar widgeted community sites. We will continue to add more themes and will provide more updates shortly…

Popularity: 26% [?]

We’ve been asked recently about how to add property disclosure documents and floor plans to blogs and websites. There probably are a number of different solutions that many have used before, but we just discovered a way to make them more easily accessible (no downloads) and instantly viewable (at full page width).

The tool that we’re using here is Scribd. I’ve seen many people used Scribd before in real estate to share:

Property Flyers
Trump University Lessons
How-To-Manuals

But the same tool can be used to embed full width reports and supporting documentation for your property.

Here is a sample inspection report at full width on a property site: Full Inspection Report Page

Here is a sample floor plan page at full width: Floor Plan Page Sample

This can be easily done in a few steps:

1)Upload your PDF
Go to www.scribd.com and login to upload your PDF file

2)Resize your embed code to your page width (in our samples above the width was set to 950 pixels wide) and desired height by clicking on the “advanced” option next to the “Embed” option:

3)Login to your blog and “Write” a new page and select your “Page with no sidebars”
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create a full width page with no sidebars.

4)Embed your code from Step #2 above and make sure to click on “HTML” before you paste the code.
Finally save and update your page.

That’s it, the finished product should look like this : Full Inspection Report Page

Popularity: 27% [?]

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: 45% [?]

I think we nailed down all the bugs and ready to release this widget.

Download it here (zip file)
Extract and upload the entire folder to your website plugin directory.

What is it?
This widget will add 2 forms to your Wordpress website. One form is for instant house values, retrieved from Zillow.com. The other form is a request form that allows users to send you a description of their property so you (the agent) can send then a custom made comparable market analysis of there home.

Both forms can be turned off, so you can only display the Zillow form, or only display the agent form…or turn them both off and display nothing.

Why Should I use it?
Offering instant online house values is a great way to advertise your website. You can make newspaper ads or google adwords offering this services. It's all about getting people to your website, and staying there. This adds value to your website. Sometimes Zestimates can be high or low, so the agent form allows people to send requests for professional home estimates if they need additional help while checking for house values.

Editing Options:

To configure the pages and widgets, you have to active the plugin, then go to Options > CMA Request. From this page you will create the CMA page. If a CMA page already exists, this page will update the public CMA page. To delete the public page, go to Manage > Pages then delete the cma page 

1. Add your email address because that is how you will get the request form set from potential clients
2. Make a page title. This will appear in the menu bar.
3. Choose page template. I prefer wider main sections, but this should work with main sections as narrow as 400px.

• Then you need to add a Zillow Api Key and select what forms to display. You can get a Zillow API Key in about 30 seconds here

• You can edit the introduction message for the agent form, and edit the message after the agent form is submitted.

• The widget colors are configurable also.

• Zillow provides some very nice graphs for address, city, state and zip. These graphs are configurable. You can adjust the height and width so they fit perfectly onto your pages.

Once you have it all configured, the page will be created automagically. The forms will work without the sidebar widget, but the widget will allow people to get house values from any page on your site, so I recommend adding it.
Note: this is only for widget enabled themes

Go to Presentation > Sidebar Widgets and drag the "Realivent CMA" to your sidebar

The widget will disappear when the CMA page is accessed so you do not have the main form and the sidebar form visible at the same time. The widget will be visible on all other pages.

Enjoy  

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: 10% [?]

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: 11% [?]

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: 8% [?]

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: 24% [?]

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: 6% [?]

We added a new plugin to our site today. It is called Link Love, and it rewards passionate readers by giving a link back to their site.

Normally, when you comment on blogs you do not get a link back, because of a 'nofollow' attribute. This is so spammers do not get a hold of your site and blast comments all over them and get better page rank…Oh wait yeah they still do that.

to give link love, use this plugin: Allpassion link love
To keep spammers off your site: Spam Karma 2 (Incredible plugin)

But wait, I don't just give love, I need to get some first, so you have to be a regular reader/commenter on our blog before you can get link love. I'm not telling how many comments you have to post, but I will say it is very low… 5 …I just want to make sure that the spammers don't get through. I can change it anytime.

BTW, comments like "great post", and "I like your blog", and "do you need Viagra" will get you nowhere!

If you have a real estate blog, and either remove the nofollow, or install the above plugin, let me know. I want to start a list of blogs that "Give the Love" 

Popularity: 8% [?]