The will and desire needs to come from you (the Agent and/or Broker) but the uniqueness and engagement has been provided (this time anyway) by Gorilla Themes. They continue to put out quality themes to assist Agents and Brokers in their Real Estate Marketing efforts. Take a look at their latest work and decide if its a good fit you.

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In their words: Residence Real Estate is a WordPress 3.0+ compatible gorgeous real estate theme with a dynamic real estate framework management module for easy edit-delete-add more features options making this theme extremely easy to customize to your market needs. Add your own labels and values in your own language ( compatible with all markets) and switch the theme to your own language with English and Spanish files included with the ability to add your own language.
Multi-Category search with breadcrumb filtered results, easy photo gallery management with drag-drop sorting of images.

Build your own multi-category search section menu with custom labels-choices and unlimited dropdown menus presented in a professional module with search results in breadcrumb navigation.

Write your listing address and have the automatically Google maps integration do the rest to show you the exact location of your listing in the property page together with Google Maps Street View option for an extremely close up detailed images of your property.

Upload property photos in bulk with the native WordPress uploader and the new image editing and resizing options in WordPress 3.0+

The theme features 7 different color styles, white, black, blue, red, green, purple and brown with professional layouts, logo and agent photo uploaders

This theme is suited for individual or multiple agents.

Top Features:

• WordPress 3.0+ compatible
• Add-Edit-Delete your own fields
• Google Street View
• Multi Category Search
• 7 Color Styles
• Gravity Forms styles Enabled
• Contact Agent
• Theme localization
• Internationalization
• Dynamic Menus
• Breadcrumb Filtered Results
• Build your own search module in 3 steps
• Single or Multi Agent
• Translated PO files*
• Social Networks integration
• WordPress multisite enabled
• Native WordPres Photos Galleries
• Automatic Google Maps Integration
• Native WordPress Thumbnail Resizing
• Featured Property Slideshow
• English and Spanish language*
• Page Layouts
• Batch Image upload for Listings
• Individual Agent Photo Upload
• Logo Uploader
• Page templates included
• Sidebar and footer widget ready
• Banner Advertisement management
• Google Adsense ready
• Individual Agent pages with Agent bio
• Unlimited photo galleries
• Extensive help and tutorial included
• Related properties for each agent
• Integrated Blog Page
• Finance Calculator
• Autohide Slider

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If your running a WordPress based website (why you wouldn’t be is beyound us?) then you can now convert it to be iPad friendly. Yes that’s right … you can be the coolest person in your circle. Just tell your friends, family and associates that your site is not only accessible on the iPad (even though all sites are) but that its an app!

You will need the assistance of Padpressed to pull of the magic trick. They provide the plugin that does the heavy lifting you will eventually get all the credit and adulation for.

In their word: PadPressed allows publishers to take their content and make it beautifully formatted for the iPad without the need to go through the app store. Right now PadPressed functions as a WordPress plugin that works with your existing theme to deliver the best browsing experience possible for your readers when accessed from an iPad.

Accelerometer Aware: PadPressed notices the orientation of a reader’s iPad. If a reader is holding the iPad in Portrait mode it displays an article as a single column. If a user rotates PadPressed into Landscape mode, the article automatically formats the columns of the article on the fly. CoverPad SwipePad

Touch Navigation: The most important aspect of PadPressed is its 100% design for the tablet touch experience. Each skin plays to a specific touch dynamic. SwipePad focuses on swiping to advance and a swipe featured slider. CoverPad focuses on using flip gestures to go from the cover page and from category to category. CoverPad SwipePad

Custom Home Icon: PadPressed allows your readers to add your publication to their iPad’s homescreen. PadPressed automagically uses your logo and makes the the icon instead of a simple screenshot. This helps give your publication the effect of feeling like a native application.

Built in Social Sharing: PadPressed comes with built in social sharing that functions just like the built in controls of a native iPad app. Readers will be able to share your content across Facebook, Twitter, Email, and Tumblr with one simple touch. CoverPad SwipePad

WordPress CMS Ready: PadPressed works with your existing CMS to deliver the tablet experience to readers. When your publication’s website is accessed by an iPad (and eventually other tablets), it is formatted using PadPressed. When it is accessed from a website, it is formatted like normal. PadPressed currently works with WordPress, but other CMS’ are in the works.

HTML 5 Caching: PadPressed uses HTML5 caching to make the loading off your app’s content speedy and fast when navigating through articles. This also reduces the load on your own server as the content is stored locally for future browsing. Full offline caching mode coming soon.

Custom Loading Screen: PadPressed lets your app have the feel of a native app including a custom loading screen. You can set an image to be used as the custom loading screen for readers that add your publication to their homepage. You will also be able to have your publication appear full screen and act as a stand (see video above)

Multiple Themes: PadPressed comes with two distinct themes right now SwipePad and CoverPad. SwipePad is focused on providing a unique blog/news feel while CoverPad replicates the feel of a traditional magazine with flipping+beautiful imagery. We plan on releasing more themes over time as well as opening up the plugin architecture to outside designers. Each theme can be (see video)

Back-End Options: PadPressed comes with a simple and easy to use administration panel to set up categories, logos, cover pages, and select styles. The whole mission of PadPressed is to make tablet publishing easier for content providers. Our back-end lives up to that mission while staying super simple. (video below)

Every professional who has researched or put together such a site knows that pricing does not come cheap … upwards of $4500 (starting).  Before “ESTATE” came along you would have had to piece mail each component … wordpress + theme + idx/mls integration + design + development = WOW!

And now the GAME CHANGER … yes this is the NO BRAINER that Agents, Brokers and Realtors© have longed for! You get a solid content management system (CMS) in wordpress, a best of the best framework in WOO and now a theme that takes into account what your end users (homeowners) want to see most … property listings (see 2008 Yahoo Real Estate Report)!

How Does it Work?

Working in conjunction with dsIDXpress, WOO Themes (“ESTATE“) have integrated the functionality (code) needed by way of a plugin that imports your approved IDX/MLS Board property listings. You also have the option to upload single properties as well.

You will need the following to launch your Real Estate Marketing Website:

• Domain Name (URL) | Godaddy.com
• WordPress (Self Hosted Version)
• Hosting (Simplehelix or WP Engine) Optimal WordPress Hosting Providers
• Premium WordPress Theme by WOO Themes – ESTATE
• IDX/MLS Plugin by dsIDXpress
• Expert Developers familiar with WordPress, WOO Themes, IDX/MLS integration – Realty Press

You establish your Domain Name (URL) => Sign Up for Hosting => Install & Setup WordPress => Install & Setup WOO Themes Framework => Install & Setup dsIDXpress Plugin => Add your content and listings => Attract Potential Clients => Close More Deals!

We did simplify it a bit above but that is pretty much what your going to do.

What About SEO?

They were especially diligent in considering Search Engines. The WOO Themes framework is notorious for its advanced SEO capabilities and when combined with your pretty hyper-local permalink (i.e. www.realtypress.us/123-smith-lane-southampton-new-york-11968) you get the best SEO friendly Real Estate Website possible!

Detailed Property Search and/or MLS Listings Search via Tab Option, For Sale/Rent, Location, Type, Price including advanced options

Featured Property Slider with “Call To Action” button and links to maximize exposure for high-end listings.

MLS Listings that can be shared to Social Networks (Twitter, Facebook, Dwellicious, Google Buzz & Email), Schedule Showing, Request More info, Printer Friendly, Automatic rotating thumbnail images and detailed MLS Property Info.

Really Cool Sidebar Features: Google Maps shows listing location bubbles w/image and short info of selected location (top thumbnail in screen shot below), Accordion style tabs for popular, latest, comments and tag posts.

Large “Calls To Action” Button with Agent “Contact” Pop Out (when clicked), Google Maps, image thumbnails that enlarge into larger box when clicked.

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In their words: ESTATE is one of our most powerful themes to date and has also become one of the fastest selling themes since release

• Improved RSS feeds to show all property-specific data, and not just the generic WP RSS feed items;
• Property image gallery captions in thickbox / lightbox view;
• Further improvements to the search logic, as well as a property-specific search widget styled to fit Estate;
• Customization all labels in the Search and Single Property pages;
• Contact Agent about a specific property using the contact form template;
• Option to make Additional Features click through to their taxonomy archive page; and
• Back-end options to change Agent-related titles & copy in addition to the iconography for property features.

Google Analytics

Every website that wants to better understand its visitors and how to convert them uses some sort of analytics program. In our case its Google Analytics.

Once logged in (requires GMAIL Account – Free) you see your “Dashboard” that allows you to select the URL of choice (you can add as many as you like). You can then access “Main” navigational links with “Sub” links.  Main links include: Intelligence, Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals.

Each main link has its assigned “Sub” links that show various statistical data and perform certain functions.  For example by clicking on “Traffic Source” you would see various “Sub” links ranging from Overview, Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines and several others.  The information is neatly displayed in graphs and charts each with specific data sets and tools to help you better manage and optimize said data (function).

Just recently Google updated the way you can analyze your data.  What used to be charts and graphs is now presented visually.  Until you actually see the data versus reading the data you can’t truly appreciate how better to design your layout, position call to action buttons/lead forms and other key items.

Website owners usually assess these data sets with the intention of hopefully increasing their conversion rate and ROI (return on investment).  What better way to determine design and development strategies than seeing it … literally.  Although still in “Beta” it definitely will be a value add for webmasters. Thanks Google!

WordPress is the underlying “code/framework” that powers your site (think of it as the frame of a car).  As such you should have chosen a control or optimizing “framework” (think of it as the engine). The “Engine/framework” is what we are covering here today … the steroid induced design and development code needed to make your website truly outstanding.

This space is currently dominated by either Thesis or Genesis.  Well make room for Platform Pro by Pagelines.  Though they are new to frameworks they are not new to themes and are definitely worth the mention and write up.

To truly understand the power of Platform Pro check out the video (below) and better yet download a copy today!

In their words: Full Article (Pagelines)
Before Platform you were left with three choices when building a site: custom-coding, wysiwyg editors, and themes. These all have their problems:

• Coding – Very technical in nature, and hard to maintain.
• Wysiwyg – Need to be built & designed primarily by the user. This costs time and often sacrifices code quality and design.
• Themes – Often require custom code and knowledge of WordPress to customize.

Platform was engineered to solve these problems by combining the best aspects of all three. It is as plug-and-play as a theme, as easy to customize as a wysiwig interface, and extremely extendable so custom code can be added in seconds.

1. Plug-and-Play Sections are pre-designed pieces of web design, which can be very complex (e.g. a feature slider, navigation, carousel, etc..). All the code remains contained and managed by the section API; so all you ever see is a simple drag and drop interface and options.
2. Control Sections can be toggled on or off on a page-by-page basis and add their own post-types and options. This means total control of every page on your site.
3. Performance Sections load their code (for example, Javascript), only on pages where they are used and according to best-practices. This greatly improves performance.
4. Development Can be created and modified by designers in the Base child theme. This means designers can add or alter the drag & drop sections in seconds.
5. Simple Sections add standard html markup and custom hooks (for extending functionality). This cuts down on a lot of code while giving you more functionality at the same time.

In a 2008 Yahoo Real Estate Report it outlines some key factors consumers look for when visiting Real Estate Websites and/or Networks.  One of the highest rated things is searchable property listings.  So it makes perfect sense for them to add this feature and compete with Zillow and Trulia as well as increase their overall unique site visitors.

Agents, Brokers & Realtors© upload (add) their listings, consumers visit those listings AR gets more traffic and professionals increase their lead counts … everyone wins.

Details:

• You can have up to 20 listings at any time.  Each listing will be active for 30 days.  This is to keep any stale information from being displayed.  If you make any changes to the listing (i.e. update price, add a picture etc) the 30 days will re-start from that day.
• Each listing may have up to 20 photos and be a size of 960 x 440 pixels minimum.
• You have to use either Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 to post listings.
• Listings will appear on the new Community Pages and appear on the sidebar of your blog if your a Rain Maker (paid account).

Upon logging into your account you will be greeted with a blue-bar labeled “Welcome to #NewTwitter! Read up on what’s new. You can also leave the preview and come back later“. If you decide to click on the “Whats New” link you will see a more detailed page that shows what features changed, where to find them now and how to use them.

If you use Twitter as often as we do then you will appreciate the “New” look and feel.  All your functions are neatly tucked away in a tab like @mentions, retweets (by you and others), searches (that can also be saved) or easy to navigate to such as “Trends” or “Suggested – Who to Follow” links.

Their attempt to have a more user friendly feature rich platform is well executed – IMHO.  It looks good, functions well and has us wanting to start conversations and/or join one … isn’t that the point?

Big and small brands attempting to track “Twitter Mentions” will appreciate the integrated search function that is more accurate and robust than before. Overall we think they did well with the upgrade and recommend trying it out. Users will have a couple of weeks to test and play with the platform while optionally switching back and forth from the old and new style but eventually everyone will be upgraded.

New Design: You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline – creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen. On the right, you can see the features you’re familiar with, including whom you recently followed and who recently followed you, favorites, and Trending Topics.

Photos, Videos, and other Media Content: Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

Related Content: When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: @replies, other Tweets by that same user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.

Profiles: You can click a @username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

Well thanks to the good folks at MLCALC and assuming your running a WordPress website you can now give them what they want by way of a plugin.  These plugins allow you to put the current mortgage rates and/or loan calculator in your sidebar as a widget or use “short codes” and add it to any page or post you choose.

We like these plugins because they present the desired information in a clear and easy to understand application and is feature rich.  Take a look at the DEMOs (links below) and see how much information is packed into these powerful plugins which are free!

DOWNLOAD (Can also be installed from your wordpress backend) | DEMO

In their words: Mortgage Loan Calculator is a great value-add for any loan officer or real estate agent looking to provide good-looking, functional, valuable content to readers. The execution of this calculator is superb from the smooth sidebar integration, modal window results and AJAX-based graphs that are incredibly visually appealing. It’s a great little application that delivers a lot of value in a user-friendly and well-executed way

You can choose between a Narrow or Wide form.  After you input the loan parameters (i.e. loan size, down payment, term etc) and click the calculate button you are then presented to a detailed amortization table that includes date, principal, interest, taxes/insurances/pmi and balance.  This is done using a lightbox effect (the background darkens and the information looks like it’s coming out at you).

If your not using WordPress CMS you also have choice to “Cut & Paste” Javascript code or use an API call.  You can find further details about usage by visiting the links.

Current Mortgage Rates Plugin | DOWNLOAD (Can also be added from your wordpress CMS backend) | DEMO

You choose from a Narrow or Wide form and choose to show National Average or by state.  And if you want to add the rates to your non-wordpress site you can do so using the Javascript code.

Engage current clients and attract new ones with a Mortgage Loan Calculator and Current Mortgage Rates widget!

As of last couple of weeks Google has made tracking, researching and staying current with all things Google a lot easier … introducing Google New “The One Place to Find Everything New from Google!”

In true Google fashion navigation is a breeze from the main landing page which currently is displaying a short video about Google Instant. You can search by “Products” or “Areas of Interest”.  It is simple to use and filled with all the latest (past and present) news, tools and tips to keep even the geekiest Google fan busy and satisfied.

If you decide to search by “Products” you can navigate through your choice of Adsense, Adwords, Apps, Blogger, Books, Checkout, Chrome, Custom Search Engine, Docs, Earth & Maps, Enterprise, Finance, Gmail, Mobile, News, Orkut, Picasa, Reader, Search, Sketchup, Talk, Translate, Video, Voice, Webmaster, Youtube or All Products which returns info on well all products.  Once you have made a selection (or even if you don’t) each update is neatly organized by date and time of release.  So you can go back by the hour, day, week, month or year … how cool is that!

The other option to search by is “Areas of Interest” which allows to you choose between Business, Developers, Education, Entertainment, Geo & Maps, Mobile, Non-Profit & Social.  Either way you get page after page of details of what your looking for and then some.

A neat feature is also the ability to “Share” the content between friends, family and associates alike by clicking the “Share” link at the bottom of each entry.  You can push the content through Google Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or eMail it.

So do yourself a favor and visit Google New, book mark it and stay in the loop when it comes to Google Products and Services.

Todays consumers want feature rich sites that allow them interact and share your content (Social Web).  Not to mention having a visually appealing layout, be easy to navigate and have mls idx feeds so they can search and view listings.  We have compiled some rather powerful plugins (extends site functionality and features) that you can add to satisfy customer needs and keep them engaged and coming back.

Take a look at ElegantEstate and see if it may work for you!  Keep in mind that it can be customized to suit your Real Estate Brand (logo, colors etc).

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Features:

• Homepage Featured Image Slider
• Automated Thumbnail Resizing
• Listings Search Selector
• Google Maps Integration
• So Much More!