Shari Chase recently launched ChaseNation , a local social network focusing on conversations in the Tahoe/Reno area of Nevada. This was built on Ning’s social networking platform and is a great way to quick start a “social network for anything”.. Membership has risen from 239 members on April 7th to 340 members today.

This is absolutely a good way to get members of a local community to discuss the local market and it is already proving to be a thriving community. There is currently a trend and definitely a lot of talk about mashing up blogging functionality and social networking. Matt at Automattic recently hired the developer of BuddyPress to take Wordpress in this direction. That is awesome Matt! This will make Wordpress a powerhouse publishing/social platform and we can’t wait to use it for business applications.

Fred Wilson has a lively discussion on his blog talking about “Facebook vs Wordpress” and how “blogging is the social network for adults”. Pat at TransparentRE sees adding Ning functionality as the next natural step for blog networks. Current growing real estate blog networks such as Homescopes and WCRBlogs could benefit from these new tools.

For business blog networks , a hybrid approach definitely makes sense. Business blogging is about engaging prospective clients for new business by providing useful and timely information. Writing blog posts, successfully achieves the goal of providing useful and timely content, but posting great content alone does not maximize potential for engagement. You may have lots of readers and subscribers to your blog, but only a small percentage of your readers ever comment. This makes blogsites a natural place to extend these conversation opportunities. As a result of some of these trends, we’ve also been asked to develop a few real estate specific social components for upcoming blog networks and development is underway…we’re excited about these trends and can’t wait to see publishing and social networking come together to deliver a richer blogsite experience….

Popularity: 46% [?]

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% [?]

There are tons of RSS Feed burners and syndication tool options for your site. The problem with this is the more tools, buttons, gadgets you have on your site the messier your site gets (and it could get messy fast). With FeedButton

You can turn this:

Into this:

Big difference ? I think so! Try scrolling over our button on the right sidebar and upon rollover, you’ll notice that the other RSS buttons are still there, just tucked away nicely under one face to the public. Its easy and only takes a minute at the FEEDBUTTON.

Popularity: 57% [?]

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: 74% [?]

Pat at Transparent Real Estate wrote today about Google’s new mapping functionality and pointed out how brokerages can take advantage of these tools to create some novel applications. One of the new functions is the ability to add customized markers. This allows site visitors to clearly and instantly understand what is being offered by looking directly at the map. Pat also believes that there should be more functionality in the infowindow itself. For example imagining clicking on the marker and opening a slew of click to action options such as chat, call and email. Pat has a great visual of what this would look like and we’ve annotated the idea with additional linkages to specific click to action pages here.

Why is this important ? Sometimes site visitors just want to talk or chat with a live person immediately after searching around the web for hours for information. Instant communication tools such as Meebo, Plugoo, and JAXTR allow exactly just that - the ability to instantly communicate with someone without having to wait for email or contact form responses.

Does this sound like a lot of work ? Well we’ve made it super easy! All of Realivent’s websites and blogs are now pre-installed with Meebo, Plugoo and JAXTR. All you have to do is copy your widget code into your site’s “CHAT” option page. Like this:

Also, you only have to do this once. For example, if you create 20 single property sites with us, then you only have to configure your page for the first site and we’ll do it for you automatically each time thereafter.

If you are listing your website anywhere where you want to give prospects the ability to instantly talk to you just point them over to your new communications page using this link: MYCHATPAGE

Here’s a sample, enjoy!

Popularity: 57% [?]

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: 70% [?]

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: 60% [?]

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: 43% [?]

In a previous post, how to hide pages in wordpress, I talked about hiding pages in wordpress. I gave three solutions, one was wrong and the others were a little confusing. I could have sworn that the draft and private methods worked...maybe they were bugs in older versions? I want to thank a reader from blogsandbucks.com for pointing out that the draft method for hiding pages does not work.

if you make a page, and save it as a draft, you will be able to access it but only if you are logged in. I guess made a page and didn't logout to see how the write would look from.

adding exclude='' and include='' should still work, even for WP2.2...I'm looking into it.

exclude (string)

Define a comma-separated list of Page IDs to be excluded from the list (example: 'exclude=3,7,31'). There is no default value. See the Exclude Pages from List example below.

include (string)

Only include certain Pages in the list generated by wp_list_pages. Like exclude, this parameter takes a comma-separated list of Page IDs. There is no default value.

Source: wp_list_pages function at wordpress.org 

 I also want to thank, blogsandbucks for pointing me to the code section in the post-template.php file. Since a lot of people are having trouble with hiding pages from the menu and sidebars, I wrote a little script which adds checkboxes next to the pages in the admin section so you can easily hide pages.

Warning, this is geeky...you will be editing 3 files...if you are scared, shoot me an email and I'll take care of you.

You can download the altered pages here: hide_pages.zip - for wp 2.2 only...but it might work with earlier versions.

first, we have to update the blog options to store an array of our hidden pages.

open wp-admin/admin-functions.php
You have to add the checkboxes to the table.

There is a function around line 830: page_rows( $parent = 0, $level = 0, $pages = 0, $hierarchy = true )
this function lists the pages in the admin section. You need to add a table row.

add this to the '<tr>' block...you should make it the last '<td>' section

That code will add checkboxes to your admin pages section. you are done with this file. Save and upload to your website.

now open wp-admin/edit-pages.php
You have to wrap the table that lists the pages in a form. so you are going to add form tags around line 34.

this will send an array of hidden pages as post data to get inserted into the blog options.

Then right after "require_once('admin-header.php');" on line 6 of the same page add this code:

That will do the insert. you might need to serialize the $hidden variable before you update_option. I think on newer versions of WP, update_option will serialize arrays for you. 

you are done with edit-pages.php. Save and upload to website

Now open wp-includes/post-template.php
This is the page that controls the layout visible by the public. you will find a function called wp_list_pages($args = '') around line 277. a few lines after that you will see all the arguments you can send that function, one of which is exclude=''. right after this line: $r = array_merge($defaults, $r);
add this code:

that just reads your blog options and then makes a string of page id's to exclude. 

this is licensed under the WOMC (worked on my computer), so if you have any questions feel free to shoot an email.

Popularity: 42% [?]