WordPress Theme for Real Estate

WordPress and real estate are a match made in heaven especially when you start with a WordPress theme made especially for Real Estate like the AgentPress theme from StudioPress.

View the new goodGround Real Estate website…

Multiple Categories

You can write property listings (blog posts) under as many different categories and sub categories as you like. They all fit seamlessly into the website’s navigation and can then be searched or viewed by category, sub-category or keyword. Adding the Multiple category selection widget means many categories can be searched at once. Eg. Price, Location, No. Bedrooms etc. The Agent Press theme lets you show an image and content summary for each category. Click on photo below right.

Easy Photo Uploading

Upload multiple photos to a property listing all at once and click ‘Insert Gallery’ button to add them to the post. Sizes are setup in your administration so resizing is automatic and you get a professional looking gallery on each listing in minutes. With one click you select a main photo to represent each listing and this appears on your homepage and category pages. Click on photo right.

View gallery in action here… [Read more]

Schedule Statistics Reports By Email

If you have a free Google Analytics account linked to your website you can navigate to any section of your statistics,  then schedule a report to be emailed to you/someone else every week/month/day.

The sort of reports you might benefit from seeing regularly are:

• Weekly Summary (the first page you see when you click on View Reports)
• Most popular posts by title (look under Content tab, then Content by title)
• Posts by a certain author (go to Content by title, then add author’s name to the filter box)
• New subscribers to your newsletter (first setup a goal with your subscribe page url, click on Goals)

Email Yourself a Weekly Summary

1. Login to your Google Analytics account.
2. Click on View Reports beside your website address
3. Click on the grey Email button at the top of the page
4. Fill in boxes to send report immediately or click the Schedule tab
5. Enter additional email addresses ro recieve the report or leave as send to me
6. Add a subject (tip: setup a mail rule to put these emails into a Stats folder under your inbox)
7. Add Description (mostly useful if emailing to others or if you are creating lots of reports)
8. Choose format (pdf is easy but excel compatible formats mean you can keep all stats in a spreadsheet)
9. Choose how often you would like to receive your report
10. Tick Comparison box to include a comparison of previous month/week.
11. Click Schedule button.

Email Report Showing New Subscribers to Your Newsletter

This is really useful if you use the Post Notification plugin to send an email newsletter from your WordPress website as it doesn’t notifiy you of new subscribers. I really like comparison feature on this one too so you can see which of your new content is enticing more subscribers. [Read more]

WordPress Planning Checklist

If you are planning a new website using WordPress, here are some things to think about before you start. Planning or at least considering these will make the entire process easier and will ensure that you make the most of all of WordPress’ features and functionality. Plus, your website will be fabulous!

Design and Layout

Header - Logo and tagline, include ad banner or call to action

Sidebars

• 1 or 2, left or right, same on pages/posts/homepage or different
• What should be in them (recent posts, author box, social media links, twitter updates, newsletter signup, photo slideshow, YouTube video clip, graphics linking to other sections of your website)

Homepage  –   What should be on there (excerpts of certain categories, intro to business, featured content gallery)
Footer –  What should be there (contact info, login button, copyright note)
Navigation

• 1 bar or 2, categories in a navigation bar
• What pages will you want in the navigation bar (what order, parent pages or child pages)
• Do you want a blog page with all categories or categories in the sidebar
• Do you want an Archive Page (grouped by categories, month, per post) [Read more]

Google Analytics and WordPress

Most website hosting packages offer some sort of statistical reports on your website traffic; how many visits you get a day, which pages do visitors look at the most, what country are they from etc. The few people who do actually check their stats don’t tend to use them for much more than a quick confirmation that visitor numbers are increasing. [Read more]

Create a custom Favourites icon

A Favicon is such a little thing (16 x 16 pixels to be exact) but having one on your website/blog really makes you feel like you’re moving up in the world. A favicon is the little icon which appears next to your website title on the menu bar in Internet Explorer/Firefox etc. It also appears next to your website title in the Favourites menu if someone saves your site to their favourites.

By creating a custom favicon of your own using your logo or part of your logo, you both reinforce your brand and make your website stand out amongst the sea of Internet Explorer blue ‘e’ icons which most websites feature by default. Note the tiny black circle with the green ‘W’ next to my website address at the top of this page. Now save this website to your favourites and see what happens….

How to Create Your Own Favicon

1. Decide what image you’d like to use. It is going to be really small so you may want to use only part of your logo. You want it to be clear whether it’s an image or a letter. (See my best favicons list below for ideas)
2. Go to http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ to create your Favicon.
3. Upload your image and create favicon
4. Using an ftp program (see my post on ftp of you don’t have it already) upload your new favicon called favicon.ico to your main website directory.
5. Insert the code below in the head section of your main index page (homepage).
6. <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”/favicon.ico” mce_href=”/favicon.ico” />
7. It took a couple of days for my new favicon to appear online so just keep checking.

My Favourite Favicons

• http://www.springwidgets.com/
• http://www.clipart.com/en/
• http://createpdf.adobe.com/
• http://www.shopnewzealand.co.nz/
• http://www.nhf.org.nz/

NOTE: I originally read about favicons on the Java Script Kit website.