1. Blog Title - Don’t forget to give your blog a title. Even if you decide to use graphics in your title like this,

Leaving this blank will make your title not recognizable by search engines. To have the best of both worlds, do this to your blog:

#pagetitle h1{

visibility:hidden;
}

2. Blogroll - change or add your personal blogroll links immediately by going to >>Blogroll >> Manage Blogroll >> AddLink
Usually your blog install will have default links that you may want to change to maximize your visitors benefit

3. Widgets - activate and drag your widgets into your sidebars. If widgets are not installed on certain themes , your blog layout will look broken.
This will not be a problem for installs 2.3.1 or greater.

4. Permalinks - make sure you set your permalink structure to "Custom" with a similar string "/%postname%/"
This will make your blog posts easily recognized and indexed.

5. RSS Feed - submit your new blog to Feedburner or any of your other favorite feed management systems so that site visitors can start subscribing to your posts,

install the FeedButton so that visitors have more RSS options

6. SPAM K2 - stop SPAM from the very beginning by installing Dr. Dave’s SPAM Karma plugin

7. Visual Editor - uncheck the “visual rich editor” so that you can embed YouTube videos and other 3rd party code. Goto “Users” >> “Your Profile” >> and scroll down to the very bottom to uncheck the editor under “Personal Options”

8. Sidebars - if you are running themes with multiple sidebars or sidebars on the wrong places, you can add/change them as you like by going to your
"sidebar.php" pages and adding the sidebar calls in the appropriate places.

< div id="leftsidebar">
<?php if ( function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’) && dynamic_sidebar(2) ) : else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
< /div>

Also, make sure the number of the sidebar corresponds to your desired location.

9. Headers - to change your site’s header, just follow your "header.php" file and find the corresponding ".jpg .png or .gif file extensions" that is called to display your header"

10. Themes - install several themes to get yourself thinking about the design and layout you want, then focus on one and start customizing
There are tons of themes to get you started, install many and switch through them until you find the right one, explore lots, its free.

1. Wordpress Theme Viewer - This is the original source for free Wordpress themes. Choose from 1000s of themes and designs with 2, 3, 4 column designs, fluid vs fixed width, and 2 to 20 sidebars.

2. Wordpress Themes Community- Free themes from several categories including several real estate specific themes here…

3. Template Monster - 400+ premium themes from Template Monster, templates starting from $50 but designs are unique and make your blog stand out from the crowd

4. 83 Themes with Clean Designs - this has been around for a long time, but these themes can be used over and over because of their clean designs and simplicity

5. Wordpress Theme Generator - design your own theme in minutes. Change background colors, link colors, font colors, font types and sizes and then download your rockin design

6. WPDesigner - best place for premium themes including the popular Digg-like theme

7. Revolution Premium Theme - by Brian Gardner this series of themes is great for community sites and news-style blogs starting at only $79.95

8. 1Click Install - This plugin essentially reduces the time required to install any plugin or theme to 10 seconds.

9. PSDtoHTML - do you need help turning your custom designs into XHTML and CSS code , this is the resource for you

10. iThemes.com - look out for this site in 2008 as it is predicted to be one of the best premium theme resources on the net because 2 of its founders are some of the most well respected blog designers including Cory Miller who designed GeekEStateBlog.com and Brian Gardner the Revolution godfather.

1. Wordpress - the official Wordpress plugin repository for all of your plugin and widget needs

2. Housing Widgets from Trulia is a great place to get real estate specific widgets

3. Widgetbox - more than 30,000 widgets for your blog

4. Wordpress Plugin Database - very neatly organized directory of Wordpress plugins allows you to get right to the source and download directly

5. 300 + Tools for your Wordpress Blog - Mashable has put together a comprehensive list of 300+ great tools for any Wordpress need

6. Captcha Plugin - fight spam with this CAPTCHA plugin

7. 1Click - reduces the effort needed to install a plugin or a theme for wordpress to just one simple click (Winner of the Wordpress Plugin Competition)

8. Smashing Magazine’s Wordpress Plugins List - another great collection of Wordpress plugins, tutorials, and ideas

9. QuickOnlineTips.com - clean and well organized list of plugins and widgets

10. And of course, our own plugins page is a great place to get started on real estate specific blogs.

1. Branded Header - the first impression of your blog starts with your header design. You may not need a completely customized theme, but a unique masthead/banner is the easiest way to make your blog looking professional. Start by taking photos and pictures of your local area of expertise and then adding personal touches such as your favorite fonts and color overlays. Your header theme will be the anchor for your whole site and will set the tone for your overall theme and design. For example, if you sell real estate in wine country, then take photos of wineries around the area and of course the homes in your area of expertise like this. Match your theme to your offline marketing.

2. All-In-One SEO Plugin - this is an awesome plugin to install and you can see the results immediately. It helps you tag each of your pages without having to write the same keywords over and over again.

3. Featured Listing Plugin - after you’ve installed this plugin, go to your "Options" >> "Featured Listings" page and configure this page with your Realivent account.
You can choose a specific listing to display as the default upon page load or you can leave it as "Do Not Use" to show a list of all of your featured listings. You can
also choose to format your page with one sidebar or no-sidebars.

4. Zillow CMA Plugin - after installing this plugin, go to "Options" >> "CMA Request" to tune this page.
Add your email address which will direct all site inquiries directly to you. Change the page title and again
choose your page format.

5. Agent Profile Plugin - you can certainly create your own about me page, but this plugin breaks your profile down into several categories and presents it nicely on your blog.
This one is easy, all you have to do is import your profile from Realivent.com by just entering your username and choosing your page layout. That’s it.

6. Property Watch Plugin - you have a lot of options here… just go to "Options" >> "Property Watch" >> then configure.
Add your email address where the property watch form will send the inquiry to. Page title, and choose your layout.
Here you also have the option to change your introductory message and response page directly. And finally, you can change
the colors of your widget to match your blog look and feel.

7. Altos Research Widgets - Install Altos Charts - get data analysis widgets for your city with lots of trending information including median price, days on market, and inventory.

8. Google Analytics - one of the best free analytics plugins to date. Install this and check it constantly to monitor
your site traffic and sources.

9. Google Sitemaps - get the sitemap plugin here then configure it by entering in your site URL .
Then go into your WordPress administration page, click on Plugins and activate it.
After that you will have a new menu point called "Sitemap" under the "Options" menu.
You can alter the default change frequencies, filename and other options there.
Click once on "Rebuild Sitemap" to create your sitemap the first time.

10. Blog Lab - last but not least Dave Smith at the Real Estate Blog Lab has a lot of Wordpress experiments going and lots of good SEO articles and tips. Head on over to the lab for some great detailed Wordpress science.

Popularity: 100% [?]

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: 65% [?]

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: 73% [?]

Have you noticed a design change on our main site ?   We hope you are still able to find the login buttons as you browse through the new design, but the main purpose of the change was to introduce a new exciting lineup of real estate business packages.  Since we've received plenty of positive feedback from our users for our single property site system, we decided to extend our On-Demand Website Platform to agents and brokers.  The same features which are available on single property websites are now available on agent and brokerage sites.  You can see all the features of each product here and see the new packages here.

One of the most exciting features of our new agent and broker platform is the ability to add new sites to "your personalized domain name" ON-DEMAND.  What does this mean ?  Well, basically it means that you can add new neighborhood sites, new individual listing sites, new niche sites anytime you want as long as you have enough site bandwidth.   For example, if your site is currenlty "bobbroker.com" and you have 10 listings, just use our system to add 10 individual property sites on top of your main site in minutes.  Then, turn each of these sites into their own custom domains anytime you want.  Want to grow your reach even further ?  Let's say you are the neighborhood expert for the "Bel Aire" community in xyz city and want to expand your offerings to the "Eagle Ridge" community near by.  You don't have to go out and spend more money to create new websites for each of these communities, just use our ON-DEMAND system to build these new neighborhood sites on the fly  - and build them in minutes.  This allows you to grow your website by constantly adding fresh content and new niche sites making it truly dynamic to meet the ever changing needs of the market.  Don't understand how all of this works yet ?   Contact us to schedule an agent or broker demo today.

Don't forget, once you enter your listing once into your website platform, your listing is automatically syndicated to listing sites such as Google Base, Edgeio, VAST to name a few.  But that's not all, your online flyer has already been created for you as well.  Where do you find it ?  In your website admin panel.  Just go to your website administration and copy and paste the code to post on Craigslist, Backpage, BackFence and many others.   So let's recap, what is the new agent and brokerage marketing platform ?  A powerful fully featured website, a fully functional blog, a syndication service, an online flyer generator, and most importantly a centralized control panel to manage all of your online marketing.

Lastly,we've seen a lot of interest from solution providers who want to offer the platform to their colleagues and clients so we've just launched our Affiliate Program to allow resellers, distributors, system integrators, web developers, consultants, and virtual assistants to offer this platform everywhere.  If you're interested in becoming an Affiliate, please contact us for an online demo and program details.  We hope these new offerings will help you market yourself and your listings faster and aim to add more functionality to the system as we grow. 

Popularity: 27% [?]

Little video that shows how to add a "Link This" button to your internet browser toolbar. When you are on a website that you want to add to your Wordpress blogroll. Please note that this only works in Firefox and Mozilla browers.

How to add to Toolbar

1. Go to your Wordpress Admin Section
2. Click on blogroll > Add Link
3. Scroll to bottom of page and drag "link this" to your toolbar.

How to Use

1. Navigate to the website you want to add
2. click on "Link this"
3. This will open your wordpress admin section. Click on "Add Link"

You can test it by adding Realiventblog.com to your blogroll

[MEDIA=1]

Popularity: 12% [?]

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: 22% [?]

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: 14% [?]

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: 17% [?]

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: 15% [?]

Ok, here is a questions for you agents out there…how do you price your listings.

I personally think, no matter what the comps are, you have 5 price points:

1. $519,950
2. $529,950
3. $549,950
4. $579,950
5. $599,950

The first digit (5) doesn't mean anything, it is the $10K range that I'm focusing on.

I say this because most the home searchers out there do not set their max prices at $509,950…they usually set them at the prices above, with $549,950 and $599,950 being the most popular.

It's one of my pet peeves to see houses priced at $465,700…WHY? because of the comps? that house should be listed at $479,950 because you are going to get the same number of lookers at that higher price. I'm not saying grossly overprice homes, but you represent your sellers, you better get them more mullah.

Also, the last 3 digits, should always be 950…not 888, not 500, not 123.

Before you respond, I know what you are going to say…

Because of the advent of the internet, the traditional pricing models do not reflect the best way to price a home in today's market. This is because the internet doesn't know what you really want. So take $499,950…if someone is searching for homes with a minimum price of $500K, they will not see the home for $499,950, even though the potential buyers will probably be interested in seeing a home that is only $50 less then their minumum. The same ideas apply to square feet. NEVER SEARCH BY SQFT. there are so many homes on the market with 1,298 sqft, or 1,189 sqft. If you do a search for homes with at least 1,300, you will not see the smaller home, even though the lack of 2 sqft will not make any difference.

so why not just make home searches that make a buffer and include homes that are within a margin of the min and max price? Well if we did that the entire internet would fall apart…basically.

So how do you price your listings? 

Popularity: 8% [?]