First Impressions of Zemanta: Overall, I give it a D.
UPDATE: June 22, 2009 Max went to work quickly on this one and the Simple Sidebar Navigation Plugin is now completely compatible with 2.8. I love this plugin and will have a full post on it later this week. Be sure to read the comments below.
If you are using the Simple Sidebar Navigation Plugin by Max Chirkov It is not currently compatible with Wordpress 2.8.
It will still function but you can’t add additional pages to anything currently setup
By creating these two div classes below you can put your NextGen Gallery displays to the right or the left of the content in your post. The width of the div can be modified to whatever size you want to make it. It depends on the size you have set for thumbnails in your NextGen Gallery Options.
REBARCAMP “An un-conference” “It is kind of sitting around talking about stuff you are interested in or want to learn more about” Hum. “It is show and tell for Big Kids”
Did your captions suddenly get a mind of their own when you upgraded to 2.7?
The existing images with captions will be fine. However, with the advent of 2.7 captioned images are now wrapped in a “div” tag. There are two lines of code you will need to add to your styles.css for images to once again behave themselves.
It seems to depend on a couple of things I haven’t isolated yet. I don’t know if it is the browser you use to create the post, the theme you are using, or a change in how the WP Editor writes the code.
What I discovered when trying to place a caption image to the left in a post it was missing code to handle this since it was now wrapped in a div tag. I added these lines to the CSS captioning section and all began to work again.
.alignleft {
float: left;
}
.alignright {
float: right;
}
Place these right under:
/* Captions */
.aligncenter,
div.aligncenter {
display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
}
With this little addition they should behave themselves again.
This probably doesn’t have an impact on many bloggers. I don’t see very many using the Caption feature. It also seems to be rare to see an image in a post which isn’t centered.
What does this say about images and captions
If you want your blog to stand out from others put images left and right with text along side and use captions.
Your blog won’t be the same as every other blog you read. Yes, I know there is no image in this post.
(UPDATE)
While helping get a Bloodhound Senius Widget up and running using the Fun With Widgets Plugin we discovered there is a conflict between that plugin and the Thesis theme.
I recently ran across another plugin (My Custom Widget) which I decided to try and I like it much better. It is easier to get your Senius widget code up and running in your sidebar with the My Custom Widget. It isn’t that hard to figure out. (Well maybe) If you want you can check out the detailed post on My Custom Widget for Your Custom Blog.
I have to confess, I often don’t understand much of what Greg Swann is saying. I don’t know what a Scenius is and Praxis is either an exploding moon which was the Klingon Empire’s prime source of dilithium or something I go to the chiropractor to get put back in place.
I’ve read all the posts about Scenius several times and I don’t know what it is yet. I think it is a pretty cool piece of code and when I went to put it in my sidebar (which is widgetized) I found I could put it at the top or at the bottom, but I couldn’t place it in the list of widgets to get it in the sidebar where I wanted it to appear; till today.
If you have a widgetized theme and use those widgets you probably have never even thought about editing the sidebar.php file. Many RE bloggers aren’t comfortable editing those files for fear of breaking their blog and theme. However, most will add a widget to the sidebar using the widget functions under design in the newer versions of Wordpress.
Fun With Theme Widgets
I found a new plugin for building Theme widgets called Fun With Theme Widgets
This is a pretty cool plugin all on it’s own. Activate the plugin create a yourwidgetname.widget.php file and put it in your current theme directory. When you go into Design, Widgets you will see your newly created widget in the list. Drag the widget where you want it to appear and save the changes. That is all there is to it.
Since starting this post I’ve learned more about the process of using Scenius and what it is doing. It is very creative and a good way to syndicate quality local content. Please Note I’m not talking about splogging local content. I”m talking about providing links to local content of interest to the readers on your blog, even if some of that content might be from another local RE blog.
I’ve created two widgets ready to be placed in your theme directory once you unzip them. One for Scenius and one for Phoenix Headlines.
If you have been wanting to try the Scenius code but weren’t sure how to get it into your widgetized theme this process should make it much simpler.
(UPDATE:) You can use the Delicious Widget in ways you can’t use Scenius code. Again, this is a learning process and the more I learn about the Scenius process it is nothing like the Delicious Widget. Like comparing apples to oranges. They are both fruit and there the similarities end. Scenius is just getting rolling and like any tool, used properly it will be of great value, used improperly it has potential for misuse. But then again so does a lot of tech tools we use everyday. I still use email but hate the spam that comes in. Scenius scene is still being painted.
The Delicious Widget
The Delicious Widget does something similar in this sense. I install the widget and tell it what tag to be looking for to display in the sidebar. Anytime I find an article or post on the web that fits that tag I tag it with my special tag and it shows up in my delicious widget on the sidebar.
Not the same process, but very similar results. You can read all about the plugin in an earlier post “Using the delicious plugin“.
However, I have a feeling there is more to the Scenius scene than we have yet scene. Being able to put future revelations and manifestations in widgets should be beneficial to Scenius end users.
It is impressive to the buyer’s agent, it is impressive to the buyers themselves and it is impressive to your clients when they see how well their home is being marketed online. Win, Win, Win.
Single Property websites don’t have to be a conundrum. Kevin Boer is debating the issue with himself I might add. He is getting some great resources from Matt Dunlap at Realivant.
Honestly done right, there should be on conundrum about single property sites. Done wrong they will be just like any other website. They won’t be found on the search engines.
But if we use the examples of single property sites done wrong as the norm then conclude they aren’t worth the effort. I would suggest applying the syllogism to real estate websites. We all know of all the real estate agent websites out there the majority of them are no where to be found on the search engines. Therefore, real estate agents have a conundrum if they decided to have a website. Bad Logic!
If you have been following the series of posts on Single Property Sites you know that done right they can be found on the search engines in a matter of a couple of days and set up and managed correctly they can produce sales results.
There are a few posts to go in that series and I’ll admit it has slowed due to something called Real Estate Sales and business. The series will conclude soon. In the mean time here is an update on the ones I’ve been using as examples and live on the web.
3149 E. Macenroe SOLD
If you search Macenroe, Marcenroe Lane, The Tucson Racquest Club you will find this site. Granted the last one is now on page three, but for the first month it was on page 1 and hits came from that search. Macenroe is now sold, many people found it on the web, many had parents and relatives look at the site for their input since they couldn’t be in Tucson. It sold from the single property site.
13237 Mortar Pestle SOLD
Sold, every visitor and many inquiries were sent to the site. It was one of the first before I learned how to direct a lot more traffic to the site with relevant posts. This site is no longer needed. It is still up. It has a PR3 ranking on the homepage, it is a real estate related site. Can you think of any use for this site now? BTW if you search Mortar Pestle Dr. It still comes up in Google.
5378 W Desert Flora SOLD
This home is located where the Accenture Match Play with Tiger Woods was in February. Back in January before the actual tournament you could search accenture Match play and up would pop this home. It was sold to a couple searching the web on accenture match play and they found this home. They love it.
You can’t find this site now. Why, bad permalink structure. it has page=6 instead of the keywords from the category and title that it should have. This site did it’s job but it hasn’t survived well due to its poor structure.
4241 Pontatoc Canyon
Pontatoc Canyon is a sought after community with a limited number of homes. Many people will search google for Pontatoc Canyonand there it is. I can bring this up on new searches by posting about La Encantada Mall that is just up the road as well as some other area attractions that will bring it traffic.
4875 Windsong Canyon
Nice gated community large lot. Windsong Canyon Google search.
There are more, but that should be enough for now. I’ll be building, or I should say rebuilding one this week for a property that was on the market, withdrawn for 4 months and is now back on the market, but if it sells this weekend, (it is getting a lot of showings) I’ll forgo building the site. They don’t all sell from the internet.
But are Single Property Sites a conundrum. I would definately say no. The process of building them can be, but if you follow the posts on the process I’ve put together you will avoid the pitfalls of SEO for a single property site.
I like having three column layouts for single property sites. I’ll go into the why in the theme’s post.
I also like to have a couple of text boxes so the first thing you will want to do after activating this plugin is to add at least an additional text box and save. You do this at the bottom of the setup screen
The layout of the sidebars is as follows.
- Text1
This is where I put the brokerage and contact information - Text2
You can see above is the Summary Description of the property - Links
This is where the categories and links to them show up- Documents
- Information
- Websites
- Pages (I change this title to Detailed Information)
- Recent Posts (I change the title to Additional Information)
This requires editing the sidebar widget file finding the word Recent Posts and changing it to read “Additional Information”
function widget_recent_entries($args) {
extract($args);
$title = __('Additional Information', 'widgets');
$r = new WP_Query('showposts=10');
if ($r->have_posts()) :
?>
This isn’t as hard as it may sound, you can copy all the text to notepad search for “Recent Posts” replace it with “Additional Information” copy all the text back to the plugin editor and save.
Or you can do it the way I do. Look at the code line for line till you find Recent Posts and replace it.
However, I only did this once. After that I saved this altered copy of the widget plugin for the single property listing blogs.
If you want to see how this works here is our example blog from the beginning.
Macenroe Single Property Site
There are a lot of, I’ll call them “sub-widgets” you can add to a blog if you have the sidebar widget installed on a blog. I keep it to the ones mentioned above.
The Sidebars are to:
- make navigation of the site easy
- provide quick summary details of the property
- allow visitors to grasp a lot of information in a couple of quick glances
The Sidebar isn’t to steal the show. Keep it simple.
“Remember that every agent’s livelihood and ultimate goal is to have as many signs in the ground and as much advertising as possible. The signs and advertising bring more listing leads and buyer leads, which puts more money in the agent’s pocket.” Taken from Real/diablog – tomorrows real estate trends the post titled: ”Agents “Buying Listings” – How Much Does It Truly Hurt The Consumer And Real Estate Industry?”
A single property site is of no value if it can’t be found.
Post and Pages play an important part in creating and getting our site found in the search engines. I’ll outline the difference of each and the importance of each in this post.
I’ll cover the sidebar widget, links to documents, tags, odds and ends, pick a theme. But this is the post that tells you how to bring Single Property Sites to Life so the search engines bring buyers to your site.
Pages
Front Page is where I put the static information. It is an introduction to the site. The property street address is the page title (DO NOT include the City, State, Zip). This page is set as static in Wordpress. How
- Options
- Reading
- Select the Page or Post to be on Top
Property Video Page I put the video on a page because I haven’t found a single video format that will validate. By putting this on a page you isolate it from the rest of the site.
When you hold a traditional open house you set out your open house signs at the major intersections which will provide you with the most traffic.
When holding a 24/7 open house you want to do the same thing.
Posts are Open House signs on the web.
What are the major intersections near the property.
- Is there a national park
- a historical market
- a national attraction
- an event held near this home
- are there activities for a family
- major shopping centers
Identify these locations then set out your signs at each one.
How do you do this?
- Write the first post about the property Title address with City St Zip.
- Write a separate post about each one on the listing blog site.
- Put a map post showing where the home is located along with the location of each.
- Each post should contain the event or location in the title.
- After each post is published send out pings.
It won’t take long for your signs placed at each of these major intersections to begin to show up.
Someone searches for the local mall and up pops one of your signs. They search for the location of the golf tournament they want to attend and find one of your signs. They start thinking, it would be nice to have a home near there.
The Secret Sauce
Ok everyone, here is what you have been reading all these post for.
Here is what sets apart a Single Property Site that get found by the search engines and the ones that are created to impress the sellers.
ITS THE POSTS
I have created more than a dozen single property sites. But about three of those sites sold before I got the site posts created. They had pages, the blogs were active and pinged. But they were completely invisible on the search engines.
I never see any of the sites in the search engines, even if they are live for two or three weeks without posts. But as soon as I add posts the site suddenly is found everywhere.
Think of it this way, if you hold an open house but don’t put out any signs, do you think people will know it is open?
The house is open.
I have searched, and struggled and spent many hours working with various plugins for Wordpress to display maps and links the way I want them. I’ve finally found the solution that fits for what I want in a mapping for my sites, it is YourGMap.
I don’t know about you but I hate reading post or articles where I get a litany of “I tried this one, then this, and you can do it this way, but here is what I actually do and have decided on using.”
So I’m not going to list or go into all the map plugins I’ve installed, configured and found wanting.
I am focusing in on YourGMap and how to get a great map page up on your single property site quickly.
Getting Started
- Go to YourGMap and create an account.
- Click on “Create a New Map”
- Give the Map a name. I use the street for the name
- Click “Create”
- Click “Create New Location”
- Give the Location a Name ex. “Home”
- Fill in the Address
- I usually pick the Blue Home marker, It is up to you.
- Comments
Here you can place an Image, Text, or Link. I usually put an image in the comment bubble. I keep it small ex. 100 X 50. The syntax for including an of these is at the bottom of the comment area. For ex. The image format is !http://www.image-location!100!50!
- If you don’t want the address in the bubble. Uncheck “Prefill comment with location name and address”
- Click “Create”
Add Additional Locations on your map
You will notice that on most maps the pointer isn’t exactly located where the home is. You can easily move the pointer for each location. See the option “Pinpoint on Map” Right above where you select the type of marker. Click on that and then click where you want the pointer to be located. It is that easy to move the pointer.
If you do move the pointer you will have to manually fill in the address in the comment bubble if you want it displayed
Click on “Map Settings” Tab
- I prefer the “Hybrid” option but it is up to you.
- Set the center of the map. I use the Home location
- Set the Zoom level I prefer “Manual” zoom level “0″or “1″
You can see the small the number to closer the zoom. The zoom level will be determined by the number of locations you want showing on your map at default zoom.
Anytime you want to see the effect of your choices go over to “Preview and Publish” then back to the tab you are working on.
- Click Save Changes when you are done on this tab. You can always come back and edit, even after you publish.
Click on “Marker Settings” Tab
Pretty self explanatory. If you don’t like what you chose you can change it here, or on the individual locations.
Click on “Publish Settings” Tab
Attention: This is the most important tab to making your map work on your site.
Way to many people setting up a YourGMap don’t take the time to setup these settings and then wonder why the map doesn’t look right.
- Size of the Map
This is determined by the size of the space you have available. On this blog I have 600px in the post area, on my Tucson blog I have 400px in the post area. I set the width of the map to be at least 25px less than the available area. I usually set the height by keeping the aspect ratio the same. You can use any photo editor and select resize width and see what it says for the height and then use that figure.
- Embed the map on your site. This is my option of choice for displaying this map.
- Select a Page Layout. I prefer “Classic” It puts the location list under the map and doesn’t mess up my post area by making the map too wide.
- If you have more than one location. I would select “Include Location List below map” And set the list height based on the number of locations on the map.
- Click Save Changes.
Click on “Preview and Publish” Tab
When you have the map set the way you want it.
- Click on the “Publish Map” button.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the code to embed the map into your post or page on your blog.
- Copy the code and paste it using Code view in your editor.
Page or Post?
I prefer to put the map on a post. I do this because I set up the post as “Additional Information” on the sidebar and the “Area Map” shows up under that list of posts.
For an example of how this all works go to: Macenroe Area Map
You can see an example of a YourGMap in a blog post on the Tucson News site Tucson Loves Organic and Natural Foods
YourGMaps are:
- Easy to Create
- Easy to customize
- Easy to publish on your blog or website
- Adds visual geographic information about the property
I like the maps for showing potential buyers the proximity to
- shopping
- schools
- locations of interest
Maps are a real benefit to a single property site. YourGMaps makes adding them simpler than drawing a map on paper and scanning it in. : )
Plugins really make setting up a single property site much easier. One Plugin I use heavily is the Sidebar Widget plugin, when you chose a theme you want to make sure it is “Widget ready” or “widgetized” if not you will need to know how to go in and modify the theme code to include widgets. I’ll go into how to do that in another post one of these days.
For now it is better to select Themes that are widget ready.
Here is a list of plugins that I use for setting up property sites.
- Askimet (for spam)
- Sidebar Widget (creating custom sidebar/s)
- Tags in the Head (meta tags for your pages and posts
- Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) tags, tags, more tags,
- Windows Media Posting (embedding wmv files in posts)
- Or Coolplayer 9 (A more vercital media player)
Askimet
This is a plugin that is included with Wordpress updates starting with version 2.1 It is the main force for spam control on your site. After you install the plugin you will need to create an account at Wordpress.com They will email you an api key and you will copy this into the Askimet setup under plugins askimet configuration.
Sidebar Widget
This particular plugin is more than a simple plugin you activate setup and forget. This plugin is the basis of the Wordpress term “Widgetized” or “Widget Ready” It is a must I believe for any Wordpress blog.
There exist an entire subset of plugins written just for the sidebar widget plugin. I’m going to write an entire post on this plugin. Just note, you definitely want this one.
Tags in the Head
Tags in the head are tags that you set up under the options page for the meta tags for description and keywords for page or post generated HTML. You want to activate this plugin then go to the options tab and click on tags.
Ulitmate Tag Warrior
UTW is a another great plugin for adding tags to your pages and posts. Once installed you go to the Options tab and select tags. There are many options you can set for how and where you want your tags to appear. For Single Site Property Blogs I usually don’t use local tags, instead I prefer the Technoraticommalist at the bottom of the page or post.
It is your personal preference. Usually there isn’t enough internal navigation to merit internal tags being displayed, but to make your site easier to find on Technorati I like putting those tags into place so my site is searchable on Technorati.
When we cover the topic “Pages and Posts” I’ll explain the use of tags as open house signs on the net.
Windows Media Player Plugin or CoolPlayer
I like the use of video media on the sites. It makes a site pop and often gives potential buyers who are out of state or country the ability to see the property. We often have people phoning or emailing their family to go to the site and view the videos. It has closed more than one deal when dad in California could view the inside and out of a home his son or daughter wanted to buy.
I like each of the above plugins. The Windows Media Player requires someone to already have Windows Media Player V10 or higher already installed on their computer for the viewer to work. It only plays .wmv files
Coolplayer on the other hand plays almost any kind of video file you can find and it has a lot of options on how the player displays and functions on the blog.
I used to have other plugins for displaying maps and doing some other things, but I’ve found a great mapping solution using yourgmap.com which I’ll show how to implement in the Single Property Site – Maps post.
We are talking about setting up Single Property Sites, I have many other plugins I would use on a Real Estate blog in addition to these. Remember the old glade commercials with the theme song; “Plug it in, Plug it in” Well in the same vein, Wordpress plugins will keep your site from smelling stale and they will help give it a fresh clean look.
ReBlogWorld 2010
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.Yeah Right !
