Tag Archive for: Best Wordpress Real Estate Plugins

Moving to a new web host or upgrading.

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WordPress real estate websites are unique in the fact that they typically require some sort of 3rd party RETS plugin. When you choose a 3rd party RETS software to integrate into your website you should always have that company do all of their software/plugin setup for you instead of hiring someone else to do it.

One of the “Biggest Issues” you will probably encounter when building out your first WordPress real estate site is that you will probably forget to treat it the same way a general contractor would if he were building you your dream home. What does that mean?

If you are a General Contractor the first thing you do is line up your subcontractors to get their bids and schedules – why? because each subcontractor is a pro at their job – they know their trade and their product inside and out. If you hire some friend, web-dev or seo company then chances are they are only professionals at what they know or what they have previously used/built and are not going to know how to code or how xyz is compared to abc or even how to setup either one since they didn’t develop either one and or have never even actually used/worked with them.

Ever week we get calls or support tickets from some “new” web developer that has now taken over updating or moving someones website etc. The website owner, typically Broker or Agent has now hired yet another 3rd party seo or web designer person/firm who swears they can “do-it-all” when in-fact they typically can’t do half of what they claim in the first place. Typically the minute that they move the site, to yet another hosting provider or try to switch out to some other “better” theme, they start calling us for help.

The point that I’m trying to make here is “why would you ever hire the plumber to do the roof?” Sure he might be able to eventually get it done but its never going to get done as fast or as good as what a professional roofer would do and in the long run its always going to end up costing you more time and money every single time.

Remember to plan you project accordingly and you will end up with a great custom website built your-way via the best subcontractors available…..or …you may end up with a lot of frustration, wasted time and money.

Cheers!

Real Estate SEO

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Real Estate SEO

Real Estate SEO is a lot more complicated than it probably should be due to all of the technical source code aspects.

Here at RETS PRO we strive to take the time to assist all of our SEO minded clients in their pursuit to achieve their desired results. Why? well mainly because this is what we did ourselves prior to developing this plugin for our own SEO customers and because this is what RETS PRO does better than any other WordPress Real Estate Plugin out there!

We are building all New 2020 SEO video series this year for all of our current and future customers that will cover everything from getting started, to deep dive into advanced technical troubleshooting. This will also include a New SEO Forums section that will be a public Q&A with direct links and examples.

Working topics for February will cover the Google site/registration/analytics setup basics and xml sitemaps etc. We will lay out all of the basic steps to make sure that you are getting your site setup properly and getting all of your listing pages indexed.

This year we will also cover how to use free site tools like gtmetrix.com and cloudflare and several other free tools that will not only help you site to load faster but will also help you understand proper content writing, link descriptions, image alt tags and much much more!

If you have any SEO questions go ahead and jump into the forums https://retspro.com/forums/index.php?/forum/75-seo/ and post your questions for us – you can even create a poll on what you want to see covered first this year.

Don’t forget, we also offer Real Estate SEO services for those that want to hire us and this also includes our Auto-SEO and CRM setups – Call 888-540-9666 for more information regarding our SEO services and prices.

Cheers!

 

New WordPress Real Estate Plugins

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Seems like every few months we see new Real Estate Plugins popping up, but none of them include a “Pay Only Once” option.

When we started selling our first version back in 2009, we were then the First and “Only” Solution to not only offer a pay-once plugin years before anyone else but one that you could actually build out your very own custom website with since it’s also open php code (non-encrypted). Not a lot has changed since then, other than a couple companies that have come along to try to now catch up to us with their own inferior versions.

Everyday we get people that call us to ask about our features and options compared to some new xyz product – the simple answer is that we have built the kitchen sink and it’s up to you to now pour in all of your own features. In other words the plugins features are now only limited by your own imagination, skills or budget. We have already built out all of the core function/features needed to then be expanded upon by you or your programmer/developer.

If you are in currently seeking the best wordpress real estate plugins then give us a quick call so that we can give you a live backend screenshare of our real estate plugin to answer any questions you may have before making a decision. We are a Florida-USA based company and would love to show you all of our New Automated SEO options as well as address any questions you may have.

In the meantime we are offering a FREE license upgrade all month this month (June-2019) So anyone wanting to buy a $999 single site license you will automatically get upgraded to the $1999 +License that includes unlimited subdomains and MU compatibilities. Note* If you buy the $1999 +License you will automatically get upgraded to our Unlimited Developers License valued at $2999.

Give us a call @ 866-540-9666
Skype = RETS PRO

Google Maps Geocode Plugin | RETS PRO Geocode Module

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For many years the Google Maps API never required any form of credit cards or payment arrangements, but that changed not to long ago.

With the New requirement to put up a Credit Card it made things A-LOT-MORE complicated for “non-techy” website owners that need to Geocode a lot of addresses for their real estate websites. Instead of just know that you would get x-number of geocodes done per 24 hrs (2500) was great! – but – no more.

Now you have to enter daily quotas so that you do not exceed your free monthly “pre-credit” of $200 dollars. Not only that but every single thing has been broken down to a per api parse such as “did customer use your drag and drop on your maps and then use street view and “places” etc etc. All to the point where managing your own RE websites for average agents trying to do a DIY Real Estate Solution has become even harder for newbies.

We have just completed a new “How-to-gecode” video to walk you through all of the needed steps of both Setting Up Your Google Maps API – to How to Geocode with RETS PRO’s Geocode Module. Be sure to check both of those links to get you guys through all of the How-To’s without getting hammered by huge Google Maps bill for not paying attention.

To make things even easier for our customers we’re adding in a new “max-limit” setting to prevent the cron from running any more than what you set. Hopefully this should save everyone a ton of time and possibly some “oops” money.

And in case you’re reading this and wondering what we recommend setting the geocode limit/quota to?
Well if your Google pre-credit = $200 and then their monthly calculations says that = to 40,000 geocoded Per-Month.

Divide that by 30 and you will get 1,333.33 per-day.  Since you would typically never have more than a few hundred to maybe just over 1000 new listings being added to your RETS feed in a 24-hr period – but you need to also get all of the rest of the listings geocoded due to this maybe being a “new-install” then we would recommend going with setting limit/quota to a maximum of “1200” per day via your cron job.

The good news though for those that are located in the USA because you can pre-run the free Tiger geocode service with our solution and it will geocode approximately 75-85% of all the listings – only minor note though, the pins are placed on the side of the street instead of like google does it where it’s located over the center of the actual building/lot – but its thousands of “free” geocodes that are going to be on your site “today”. Then we typically switch right over to google and then let it run its daily limit for the rest of the 15-25% of listings that were not coded by Tiger.

Cheers –
RETS PRO.

WordPress Real Estate Plugin – Coming in April – New 4.0.5

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Now that the new version is going through its final testing we are excited to mention some of the newest features coming in this new version.

  1. RETS Module – Added a NEW Multi-RETS Option to handle Duplicate Removal.

    Select preferred RETS-ID  – Next –  Select RETS-Field(typically address)  –  SET[]checkbox   [Run Now Button]
    [text box here shows your cron path to execute]

    So that way anyone with neighboring RETS providers i.e. Miami/Ft.Lauderdale where the same listings are in both mls they can now have an easy option to match anything i.e “address” and select their preferred RETS-id to keep and delete all others. Our RETS Module has a couple of other NEW items we are keeping under wraps until we get them done but they are regarding how to deal with Sold Data in a way that I know every developer out there will want to take advantage of. (another RETS PRO exclusive).

  2. We have some great changes coming with our Search Form builder that will take a video to cover all of it.
    1. Fixed search form to now “instant-load” so that only the html is loaded and none of the values are called until on-click of that box.
    2. Also added custom message box that you can also include html etc for your own custom 404-not-found message/template.
    3.  Added in new option to join multiple fields into single pipe|value|values|  will = single Caption name (needed when doing multi-rets).
    4. Added a new option to Set Custom Submit Button settings – Great for setting default sortby options as well as now being able to Select RETS-id as well so that if you wanted to select the jquery tabs for displaying Active/Sold or Residential/Land or RETS#1/RETS#2 then you will ALSO be able to SET the SUBMIT BUTTON settings to select which RETS-ID as well as other button options.  BOOM! #1 Search form builder out there!
  3. Maps Module has some new features – Set a default Property Type and min-price – Cleaned up interface as well.
  4. GeoCoder modules with new google Api links and Api key checker as well as Cleaned up the interface.
  5. Fixed broken Print Friendly template path.
  6. Fixed broken RSS in shortcode templates
  7. Added and fixed New Pagination {tag} – add pagination any place you want now within shortcode templates.
  8. Fixed php 7.1x compatibility issues.
  9. Fixed subdirectory installation path issues that were due toMikes lazy code written by .
  10. New – Added  {logged_in}{/logged_in} check tags so that you can now wrap them around anything in our templates to hide unless logged in and we also have them as conditionals so that you can SHOW something else unless logged in – CTA – Unlimited!
  11. New – listing fields editor option that allows you to select ANY field(s) to be hidden unless user logged in – CTA/VOW – Unlimited!
  12. New – Added new Show Current Count for Search Page
  13. New – Added  UI panel for Registration options that also include Social registration options via your api-keys.
  14. New – Forced Registration UI panel with a limited set of options but is now part of our core plugin.

So all of that is where we are and what we are testing – anything missing?  um ..yeah!  – Favorite listings and Saved Search alerts!
That’s all coming and I’ll be following up with a new promo video of what all we’ve reworked and new features as well.