RSSTesting Some REW Power - Flickr Overrated in Google
I wrote a post the night before last about this years Keller Williams Family Reunion and I wanted to see how it would rank. Currently, it’s just below KW and Flickr, but, I think it will stick longer than the Flickr, but, I really want to just check and see how it’s going to stay up there.
I posted a little of my outline for classess as well as quite a bit more information and photos from Gary Keller’s presentation so it should have quite a bit more staying power than on photo and no content from Flickr. I think Google may be waiting flickr a little bit too high for it’s relevancy. Take a look at the two posts and let me know which one is better on its merit. Just Google “keller williams family reunion”. My post is on the realestatewebmasters domain and the one above me and just below kw is a flickr photo. Seriouly. That’s an algo that needs to be fixed in my opinion.
Category: Testing | No Comments »
Working Out The Kinks in Better Video
Back in May of 2008, I started to play around with a video plugin for WordPress where I created my virst video. The quality of that video was poor and although I really liked the idea of self-hosting videos for better branding and better quality, the video I shot was really too poor and I really didn’t think too much of the actual player. I’m not against uploading real estate videos to tubemogul and other places, I just think that the goal should always be to make your website the place where the moast tatgeted traffic goes and for that, it’s best to make everything look integrated and unique - it just gives a more polished look. All of this testing and trying is time consuming, but, I think will pay off in the long run.
Enter 2009 and video is become more and more important so I have revisited the issue and the WordPress video plugin has imporved tremendously. Below is a video that was actually shot and put together by one of my clients. I have had the video for some time and uploaded it, but, I thought now as god of a time as any to see what was new in the world of real self hosted video technolgy. The new video plugin has numerous skins to choos from that look much better than those in the past and I thought I would check it out. Below is what I came up with.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Marketing Sandy Springs homes for sale in the current market is a monumnetal task so with my new player, I will try to see if I can integrate it into my website, which, is not WordPress. That technical challenge will be something for itself, but, for those on WordPress, this might be worth a shot.
Category: Testing | 1 Comment »
Protected: Abbey at the Mall
Category: Testing | Enter your password to view comments
Integrating Flash Graphs for Real Estate in WordPress or other Platforms
Adding charts to blog posts and websites isn’t exactly new for real estate agents, but, adding slick charts like the one below will not only help convey you as a technology expert in your market, but, will also let your readers see the information more clearly with the flash maps. They are actually pretty easy to create.
Real Estate Statistics
Another example is here where I have put together some numbers and added them in to my new Atlanta real estate market statistics page on my website. There are lots of available flash graphs - some are free, some you pay for and some have free and paid versions. I’ve been playing around with several different ones for a while before I decided to use the ones that I am using, FusionCharts. Check out their free flash charts and there is lots of documentation to go along with them, but, it is much more information than we need to put together some great looking graphs for real estate so I’ll summarize here.
Let’s Get Started
To get going, you need FTP access. Download this file to your computer and unzip it. Create a folder in your root directory named “FusionCharts” and a subfolder named “FusionCharts” to hold all of your swf files. Upload the swf files (found in the “Charts” folder) to your FusionCharts subfolder of FusionCharts. Create another folder under the main FusionCharts folder and name it “Data”. Upload Data.xml to your “Data” folder and you have everything you need to replicate this chart. Your “Data” folder is where you will upload all of your XML files. Do not be scared because I said XML!
Pulling it all together
What you have now is a FusionCharts folder, a subfolder with all of the swf files and a seperate data folder containing your XML files. Your next concern will be only that you make sure that the path to these files is correct because all you need to do now is copy and paste this into a post:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | <div width="520">
<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase=http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" width="500" height="500" id="Column3D" >
<param name="movie" value="/FusionCharts/FusionCharts/FCF_Column3D.swf" />
<param name="FlashVars" value="&dataURL=/FusionCharts/Data/Data.xml&chartWidth=500&chartHeight=500">
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<embed src="/FusionCharts/FusionCharts/FCF_Column3D.swf" flashVars="&dataURL=/FusionCharts//Data/Data.xml&chartWidth=500&chartHeight=500" quality="high" width="500" height="500" name="Column3D" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</OBJECT></div> |
So, your variables here are the .swf chart style that you want and the data (XML file) you want to use to pull your data from into the chart. Check out your different chart styles by opening the folder on your computer “Charts” and click on the files to see the different options you have available for styles and types and don’t forget to read the documentation here for more complex graphs. Also check your Contents/ChartSS folder for examples with XML data that you can save as your XML file and alter as necessary for your purpose. The only other thing that I had to do to make this work in both Internet Explorer and Firefox was to place the chart inside a “div” container. That’s really about it to get started. If you play around with it, let me know what you think and post a link in the comments.
Category: Marketing, Testing | 24 Comments »
Blue Day Real Estate Blog Theme is Released
OK, I’ve finally found some time to release a new and updated theme for the WordPress real estate world. The new theme is called “Blue Day”. Don’t ask me why, I’m not really good at naming themes. This is a pretty solid, easy to use, clean, SEO friendly, real estate ready theme.
I say “real estate” ready because it has a built in additional custom page template for framing in your IDX solution. So many themes out there for you, but, so few who realize the importance of being able to integrate an IDX solution. Well, this one is ready for you!
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them directly on the theme page. I’ll try to answer relevant comments directly from the theme the questions will be about. In the next week or two, I’ll be putting out this theme in several additional colors, but, it will be a middle of December before they launch…
Instructions
Pretty straigthtforward and standard. Dowload the theme, unzip it, save it to your computer and upload it to your wp-content/themes folder and activate it. Let me know if you have any questions.
Category: Testing | 2 Comments »
Blog Themes Coming Back Soon
I’m sorry that the themes are a little out of whack on the site right now. I have been focusing large amounts of time and energy on a complete overhaul to my Atlanta real estate website and I’m also in the process of moving my real estate blog to a different file extension and the whole thing is truly taking much longer than I thought that it would.
I’ve got most of it completed now and should have some time to get things working again within a week or so. All of the themes are also undergoing updates. They will all go from 800 or 900 pixels to the larger 1024 which will take up the whole screen. They will also all have a page that will allow you to frame in any of the aftermarekt IDx solutions which to me, remains a problem for agents looking for solod internet solutions to get started with without paying a fortune, of course, you could always go with a real website solution if you can afford it from Real Estate Webmasters…
Category: Testing | No Comments »
Protected: Happy Mother’s Day to Grandma
Category: Testing | Enter your password to view comments
Hosting Your Own Videos With WordPress
O.K. this isn’t the absolute best video in the world, but, it was my go at it. I think you can see that with some care, the videos will be quite sharp with proper lighting and setup. What I wanted to do was to find a way to take my own videos, host them locally on my computer and play them on my websites with my own video player. The other goal was to be able to create something that had better quality than what we see on youtube. We should still upload them to youtube and Google video, but, self hosting allows for more control with a personal video player that is a free plugin for WordPress. This much was a success. Getting there, well, like all of this for me…not so easy. Here is the video of a listing that I have that will be promoting in one of the markets I serve, Roswell real estate, and below is how you can do it.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
Get this video. Copy and paste the code below.
<embed src="http://www.realestatetestblog.com/wp-content/plugins/flash-video-player/mediaplayer/player.swf" width="320" height="280" bgcolor="000000" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="file=http://www.realestatetestblog.com/videos/Northcliff.flv&plugins=embed-1"></embed>
O.K. the first thing you need is a WordPress video player like this one. It’s a plugin like the rest so follow the install directions. Now you have only just begun so bear with me…
Next you need a video. My problem was that I had a dvd camcorder and let’s just say you can’t use one and leave it at that. So, I got a DV camcorder and shot a video and downloaded it to my computer. Next it was off to Windows Movie Maker for some quick editing. There are movie editing programs superior to Movie maker, but, I am still researching them. Anyone with any ideas or suggestions, I’d love to hear them. The problem was that I then ended up with an .avi file after editing and publishing the movie so I needed to get an avi to flv converter which I got from koyotesoft from download.com before uploading to my server.
That’s it for this one. The player is very customizable, but, follow the documentation they provide - not what I say! Time to go sell some real estate!
One more thing; somewhere in the documentation it says that you cannot place the video in a sidebar - that it must be in a post or on a page. That is not exactly the case. I have added this video to my Atlanta Blog in the sidebar by viewing the source code and pasting it into a div element that makes it look a little more like a TV. The only thing you need to know is that you cannot play the video in the sidebar if you also have a self hosted video in a blog post on the same page.
Category: Testing | 1 Comment »
Simpleviewer
testTesting the Simpleviewer
Category: Testing | No Comments »
Claiming the blog
I hereby claim this blog on Technorati!
Category: Testing | No Comments »