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: 19% [?]

Just added the meebo widget to Propblogs.com. The meebo widget allows you to add meebo to your sidebar, quickly and easily.

What is Meebo?

Meebo is a web based IM that lets you log into your IM networks from any computer with a browser and internet connection with no firewall issues. It employs technologies (like AJAX) to make it act more like a desktop application, which dramatically improves usability. Many users enjoy the benefits of a native DHTML application, as it does not consume as many system resources as a Java applet (such as ICQ2Go or Yahoo Web Messenger).

What is the Meebo widget?

This is another sidebar widgets to embed Meebo Widgets on your wordpress blog.
Source: Patrick Chia (author of the widget)

Good job, Patrick, you probably have no idea how much this will help the real estate community!

This is a really good plugin, because you can now make unlimited single property websites, and people can contact you immediately from any of them, how cool is that!! This is what I call a spider web of lead capture sites.

How to use the meebo widget

1. login to your admin section
2. go to plugins and activate the WP-Meebo Widgets
3. go to meebo.com and get the code to make the Meebo IM tool
4. In the admin section, go to Presentation->Sidebar wigets, and drag the meebo widget to yor sidebar. Enter your code in the widget and your done. (don't forget to save settings)

Awesome, this is nice…I'm looking for more plugins that help agents comunicate to put on propblogs, so if you know of one, please tell.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Dustin Sparks has brought a bug to my attention in the featured listings plugin for wordpress. This plugin requires a function called simple_xml() which allows a very easy way to share data, but it only works in PHP 5.

PHP 5 is still in infancy, and only installed 14% of all servers running PHP.

Chart compliments of: nexen.net

I do have a fix, and I will have this patched soon.

So if you run into a simple_xml function error with the featured listings plugin, agent details plugin, buyer and seller reports plugin…don't fret, it will soon be fixed and uploaded to realiventblog.

Thanks
Dustin

Popularity: 5% [?]

There must be scores of video players available across the net to help you display real estate video tours in your blog. I have used about a dozen myself, but am still always searching for the next best player. So far I have 2 favorites. The first is called WordTube…hmmm does that sound familiar ? Yep, it works just as it sounds – videos in Wordpress – in plugin form. This is a plugin that allows you to customize your video settings right in your Wordpress control panel. You can:

Here’s a sample of a video using the WordTube plugin on one of our PropBlogs:

It is very simple, no bells and whistles, yet powerful. BTW, we’ve already loaded the plugin for all of our propblog accounts. All you have to do is activate it if you want to add videos.

My 2nd favorite so far is the VOD:POD. This is more for fun than to promote your real estate listings, but you never know when it may come in handy.

Here’s the VOD:POD in action (REALIVENT ADVISORY – the “Alec Baldwin Real Estate Sales Training” video has strong language – watch at your own risk )

This is a pretty neat tool because you can add videos to your collection on the fly. VODPOD’s bookmarklet function allows you to save videos to your VODPOD whenever you see a favorite video – just pod it! And it allows viewers to vote whether or not they like it, love it, or hate it. Maybe agents can use this to add real estate video tours to blogs and test whether the properties are hot or not.

And finally, here it is in sidebar form

If you find any new video players or video plugins for Wordpress, please let us know.

Popularity: 3% [?]

The other night I could not sleep. I had a my weekly technology class at KWSFP in the morning so the stress from having to get up early probably made it impossible for me to relax. So around 3 in the morning, I got out of bed and started to tinker with the plugins. I try to make the plugins as easy to use, but still give enough freedom to extend and use them in ways that I don’t think of.

The Featured listing plugin works great, I love it…but some people are finding it difficult to use, so I fixed it.

The old steps.

1. download plugin from my website, unzip and upload to your websites plugin folder
   This is straight forward…can’t make this much easier, unless we create a tool that allows direct access to your plugin folder over the internet…hmmm…this might be possible, I’m looking into this. Maybe a download manager or firefox extension.
2. In the admin section, activate the plugin
3. go to options, and click on the featured listing link
4. add your realivent account, and configure how you want to display your listingsThis is where is starts getting confusing.
5. Now, you have to make the page to display the listings. Go to write->page in the admin section
6. switch to HTML mode and enter the code snippet <!–Featured Listings–>
   Note*, this will not work: <!–featuredlistings–>, or this <!–FEATURED LISTINGS–>
   It is case sensitive.
7. publish page and your featured listings should now be displayed on your blog.

The new steps.

1. steps 1 through 4 are the same…so we are currently in the configuration section of the Featured listings.
2. Instead of having to go and write a page, I now create one from the featured listing configuration. Now you do not have to worry about entering
   <!–Featured Listings–>

   . It is done for you. You can also update the page from this plugin. To delete the page, you have to go to manage->pages. If the page is deleted, the next time you access the plugin admin section all the configuration settings will be removed from the Wordpress option datatable. In the configuration section, you give the page a title, and choose the page template. Some themes come with multiple page templates. We suggest using a full page template to display your listings.

When you go to manage pages, you will see the code added to the page to display listings. You can manage and edit the page just like any other page in your blog. I’m updating all the plugins to do the same thing…I’ve finished the home search IDX frame plugin, and the featured listing plugin, they have both beth updated in the plugin and widget section of this blog.

As always, your comment and feature requests are always welcome.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I spent all weekend fixing bugs, writing new plugins and creating my first Wordpress theme. Normally I just use one of the thousands of Wordpress themes available, but I wanted to make a special theme designed to highlight listings and the real estate agents that list them!

Introducing Listing Beautifier Version 1.0

download it here

It is a clean look, with no header image or CSS customizations, YET…I plan to create admin functions that will allow you to upload your own header, change background color, text color, and menu color. This is coming soon, so stay tuned.

This theme is a 3 column theme, with 2 sidebars that are widget ready. I also included 2 templates for pages, that allow you to create a page with 0, 1 or both sidebars. I did this so I can feature properties, or home search and still have one sidebar that displays our advertising. I could not find a theme that did this. All the themes I found either showed all sidebars or no sidebars.

Try it out and please let me know what you think.

Popularity: 31% [?]