TECHNOLOGY

We have long supported WordPress as an excellent solution for Real Estate professionals on a budget who wanted a Web presence that looked great and functioned well without the expense of having to hire a developer. It is easy to customize and has a wide variety of templates or themes that fit most tastes. Even if you do want to call on a designer to help with the customization of a theme, it would be very reasonable to do so.

We use WordPress for our Professionals Blog on Exec MediaGroup, LLC. So far, we have experienced no problems and even went through an upgrade without a single glitch. In the past that has been a nightmare with some applications making it necessary to literally start over.

I had already decided to write about WordPress, and in the process of researching I came across the “Great Real Estate Plug-in.” Awesome! Now not only can you get a highly functioning Web site for the price of a song, but you can get a plug-in that will let you incorporate listings. Everywhere I looked I found glowing reports. I have to admit that I have not had the time to test it myself, but I have downloaded the plug-in and intend to test it this month.

The man responsible for developing the “Great Real Estate Plug-in” is Roger Theriault, a Real Estate professional himself. I wanted to know what he had to say not only about the plug-in itself, but about his plans for the application. Here is what he had to say:

"The plug-in developed in a roundabout way. When I initially developed my Real Estate Web site I created a lot of back-end content management in native PHP (the same Web programming language that WordPress runs on). I gradually added to it, including an "opinion articles" section [aka "blog"]. Then last year I converted the opinion portion over to WordPress to make editing easier... and this year I converted the whole site to WordPress. My old site included some listings management, so I added that to the WordPress software. And since I always wanted to provide a Web site solution to other agents, I decided to modularize it into a WordPress "plug-in" that other agents and web developers could simply install and use. WordPress is a great Web platform and I know that agents have been using it, but the one thing it really lacked was Real-Estate-specific tools to manage listings.

"Future versions will have additional features aimed at managing sellers and their listings, including listing appointment and feedback tracking. The next couple of releases will mainly add a bit more functionality, such as geocoding of map locations, some additional ‘featured listings’ display types [a map preview is on his Web site at http://RogerTheriault.com/listings/] and some feedback-driven features and localizations for various parts of the world.

"If you take a look at my LinkedIn profile [see his About page] you'll see I have a fairly long technology background with Web development. I'm getting a lot more involved in the Web again, after six years of mainly using it as a tool for my Real Estate business, and will likely be producing more WordPress plug-ins as I get the time."

This is excellent news for all of you out there who want to take the time to look into an affordable Web site with great capability. Here is a description of what features are available in the current version of the “Great Real Estate Plug-in” and how to get it. These details come directly from Roger’s site.

Screenshots: (you can see more screenshots on Roger's site here)

Overview:

The “Great Real Estate Plug-in” is a Real Estate content management plug-in for WordPress. The initial version allows management of listings. Note: There are many themes that you can use to give the plug-in your own look.

Need an idea of what it can do? Here is a live demo:

Requirements:

Features:

Future Versions may include:

Download:

License:

Support:

If you would like to know more about this subject, blog with me on the new Exec MediaGroup Business Blog. If you are interested in building or upgrading your Web site, call me at (702) 354-1826 or e-mail me at rebecca@erealestateexec.com.

Disclaimer: We bring these items to you as a service and do not have any affiliation with the creators, owners or developers of products or services mentioned in this column. We cannot be responsible for any negative outcomes regarding these products or services.

Purchase a PDF Copy of this Article
$5.00 Immediate Download

Downloads are for personal use only and are not to
be sold or reproduced in any form.