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: 98% [?]

Check out your Meebo chat window today. Do you see that new “send file” icon ?

Here’s what it looks like:

This is a much needed addition which has been long overdue. I have been using Yahoo IM for a long time but quickly switched to Meebo after finding that you can have multiple chat windows open from several service providers at the same time. However, I always ran into situations where I had to shut down Meebo and switch back to Yahoo to send files. Now that this function is working with Meebo, there is little reason to switch back to Yahoo. One less thing to worrry about with all these new tools. Kudos to the Meebo team for finally releasing this enabling function.

Popularity: 47% [?]

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: 69% [?]

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: 61% [?]

It's plugfest  2007 here at Realivent. This entire week will be blogging about plugins, widgets, and extensions. So tune in all week.

The first update we have completed is for the featured listings.

Featured Listing Overview.
This plugin builds a page to display your listings and created a widget for your wordpress sidebar. The benefit of this plugin, is that the website visitor does not get sent to a third party website to view the listing, or pop open a window (pop-up blockers). The website visitor stays on your website and views all your listings. The plugin also allows you to create a single featured listings. For example if you want to create a single property website, the plugin will automatically make the entry page (landing page) for your wordpress blog the highlighted listing instead of the default blog page.

Updates

1. Added Bird's eye view for listings. Now you can map the property on a google map and also get the bird's eye view from microsoft maps.
    

2. Added the title for the listings. Many people were asking why they added a title when inserting a listing into the system, but it did not appear in the plugin. Well, now it is…We just missed it on the previous versions.
3. Along with automatically adding a widget, you can now just pull the listings code out and add to your own sidebar widget.
   
   Simply place the new function in a custom container
   <?php get_listings_only() ?>

   If custom widget skins is over your head, give us a call, we can make custom skins for you to match your website look and feel

   Example of custom widget skins: smartlegacy.com

The updated plugin is available in the widgets section of this blog. You can simply upload over the old featured listing plugin, you do not have to delete the page and recreate it, or de-activate the plugin and reinstall.
Download here: Featured Listing Plugin

Please try it out and let us know what you think! 

Popularity: 41% [?]

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: 14% [?]

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: 15% [?]

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% [?]

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: 32% [?]

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% [?]