Real Estate Forums

ChiefTutor · 10-17-2007, 02:33 PM

I am looking at the various open source CMS systems and am wondering what people feel are the benefits of each product above. These seem to be the systems with the most traction in the marketplace.

Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

HHI Golf Guy · 10-24-2007, 02:04 PM

Hey Buddy!

I have made the switch from designing "standard" web sites to now only working with Joomla and Open Realty. To clarify things, I use CMS Realty to bridge Joomla and Open Realty.

There are a lot of things that I like about using that combination. For example, I can set it up so that the site owner can manage listings or add content through front end registration (rather than back end admin). Just be aware that you will probably need to prepare a good info sheet for the site owners that covers things like file naming conventions, the "Check In My Items" feature on Joomla, and more.

Another benefit to using Joomla is being able to utilize the great components and plugins that are available (both open source and paid). I'm doing a lot of things with Community Builder, SOBI2, and other components. For SEO I have found that sh404SEF is the best thing out there.

Open Realty offers a lot of flexibility as well. With the site I am working on now I have done a lot of hacking in both the codes and the template structure. The preset layouts aren't bad, it's just that I needed something different for my purposes.

To give you an idea about how OR can be modified, let me tell you about my current project. Normally, when you install OR you set it to use the same Joomla database for your web site. In my case, I set up a different database to store the listings.

Using this separate database, I can now connect multiple Joomla based sites to pull in listings and set the search criteria to limit what is displayed on each site.

For example, I will have a Hilton Head Island site and a Savannah GA site that will serve their local listings only. I will then have a regional site that will display the listings in both of those areas. Then I will have a national site that will show all listings in these and other areas around the U.S.

There is a definite learning with Joomla, and I had to think about the design of sites in an entirely new way when I started putting them together. And while there are a lot of great add-ons out there for Joomla, you really need to test them out before you go live to make sure that they work as expected.

Once I complete this large project, I am converting a number of my current client sites to the Joomla CMS application. I'm that sold on it.

My advice is to set up a test domain or sub domain and play around with it for a while. You can find a few decent free and templates to get an idea of utilizing the different module positions throughout the site.

Speaking of templates, there are some very, very cool templates out there with the ability for the web surfer to change color schemes, font sizes, and screen widths (or you can lock in the settings).

As always, if you have any questions during your testing just drop me an email or give me a call. When I get a bit further on in the development of the new site I can give you the URL.

Jared · 10-31-2007, 07:40 PM

HHI GOLF GUY I didn't read your post before I posted mine and I realized it sounded like I directly challenged you. Sorry about that, I was in a hurry. You provided very good information.

New Member

Here are two third party ones I didn't design but did do the integration;

Columbus GA Real Estate - Georgia Homes - Phenix City AL Real Estate - Fort Benning - Midland - Ellerslie - Cataula - Columbus GA Real Estate - Columbus Ga Homes for Sale - Georgia
Fort Benning Real Estate - Fort Benning Homes for Sale - Realtors Fort Benning GA

~ Jared

Jade456 · 10-31-2007, 11:35 PM

Don't forget Wordpress in the comparison. I like Drupal, here is a great drupal site Phoenix Real Estate - Phoenix Homes For Sale and a good example of wordpress in action Chicago Real Estate - Arlington Heights Real Estate - Schaumburg Homes for Sale. CMS sites are the future. Jared, you do some nice work.

HHI Golf Guy · 11-01-2007, 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jared

HHI GOLF GUY I didn't read your post before I posted mine and I realized it sounded like I directly challenged you. Sorry about that, I was in a hurry. You provided very good information.

No problem, Jared. While CMS Realty has its quirks, I have been able to find some workarounds and hacks to get it to work the way I need it to (i.e. integration with Community Builder, etc.).

One thing that I would like to point out is that many people seem to place a high degree of importance on trying to optimize their listings pages (especially MLS feeds).

Even with unique title and description tags, Google classifies most of these pages as having very low importance. The reason is bevause of Google's boilerplate template filter. If there is a high degree of repetitive content and structure among pages in a site, these pages are tagged by the filter. For example, typical listings pages have the exact same HTML structure, and most of the on page content is the same (i.e. description tags for bedrooms, full bathrooms, half bathrooms, etc.). The typical short, property descriptions that you find on listings pages are not large enough to make the page unique among its peers on the site (this is one of the reasons I advocate property narratives instead of short property descriptions for real estate sites).

Google does a pretty good job of listing pages by order of importance when using the "site:" command. Typically, when you type in site:www.myrealestatesite.com listings pages are among the last pages shown for that query.

The only real factor in URL structure is to make sure that your URL's can be crawled by the search engines. Other than that, there is not much SEO pop for a page named my-city-real-estate.htm and fwefaf.htm.

Of course, you can run OR outside of your core Joomla site, but you lose a great deal of functionality that way.

It's just my opinion, but the flexibility of Joomla far outweighs any potential SEO impact of user friendly listing URL's.

What exactly don't you like about CMS realty?

Jared · 11-03-2007, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HHI Golf Guy

No problem, Jared. While CMS Realty has its quirks, I have been able to find some workarounds and hacks to get it to work the way I need it to (i.e. integration with Community Builder, etc.)......

......... What exactly don't you like about CMS realty?

You know there is only one thing I dont like about CMS Realty and other than that I wont condem the guys product. In fact I recant if my earlier statement seemed anti CMS Realty. I admire the product and I think its a great tool for integration.

The reason I personally don't use CMS Realty is the URL's - No other reason!
CMS-Realty URL's look like this;
component/option,com_cmsrealty/Itemid,4/action,listingview/listingID,720676/cmsrealty,user/

So what I did is have my coder create a series of snippets that give shared registrations when people register via a bridge and for the integration modules like Featured Listings and so on, I've created my own that do the same thing with different types of controls.

You can see some of them here. Products » Jared Ritchey Design

~ Jared

andre77 · 06-29-2008, 11:37 AM

I dont like CMS Realty but they do have cool downloads

check it out /content/view/12/11/

Im not allowed to post URLS

Jared · 06-29-2008, 04:21 PM

Well we have a new component for Joomla / OpenRealty that works with Joomla 1.5 and as soon as I pay my programmer I'll be able to give it away.

~ Jared

HHI Golf Guy · 07-11-2008, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jared

Well we have a new component for Joomla / OpenRealty that works with Joomla 1.5 and as soon as I pay my programmer I'll be able to give it away.

~ Jared

Is the component available yet? I have a Joomla 1.5 site going up that I would like to test it on.

Is this a 1.5 enhanced version of CMS Realty or a new component altogether?

Jared · 07-11-2008, 08:57 AM

Yeah it is available but convincing him (the coder) to not encrypt it is all together difficult.

I think he wants to post it on his site encrypted because the guy that contracted him for it did not pay him so he is concerned that he's out $400.

I told him I'd pay for it and use it as link bait since it works flawlessly and looks 10 times better in terms of integration than the current CMS plugin.

I'll know more today when he logs on to skype.

~ Jared