Developers: reveal.js is a great standards-compliant slideshow script. It looks great and is an awesome alternative to Flash-based or image-based slideshows.
-
Gravity Forms is the single best plugin you can get for WordPress.
Ten Blue Links
Remember when Google was ten blue links?
Today, for the first time, I was actually taken aback by the amount of visual crap on Google results.
Introducing IDX+, WordPress Real Estate & IDX Done Right
I’m happy to release IDX+, the best WordPress IDX solution.
IDX+ is a project I’ve been working on for months. It was born came out of necessity: a client told me “there is no perfect solution for WordPress real estate websites.” After looking into it, I realized he was right.
IDX+ is the solution to your real estate website’s problems. Continue reading
Posted in Plugins
Tagged IDX, IDX Plus, Real Estate, WordPres Real Estate Plugin, WordPress IDX, WordPress Plugin, Wordpress Real Estate
7 Comments
Selling BoulderSEO.com
A great domain goes up for sale on GoDaddy.
I have put the BoulderSEO.com domain up for auction: with the upcoming release of the top-secret WordPress real estate plugin, I have chosen to sell this prime property.
The BoulderSEO.com auction will be ending in 18 hours, so if you’re into Colorado, Denver, Loveland, or Boulder SEO (you get the idea!), check out this auction.
You will instantly rank well with this great domain.
Currently priced at only $660 – it’s a great deal! With literally no work done on the site since April, 2009, I still get 1-2 leads/month from this site. This domain will pay for itself in a month.
Go to the auction.
WordPress Real Estate Plugin: Stay Tuned…
You may have noticed this blog has gone un-updated. That’s because I’ve been working on an awesome new plugin.
WordPress + Real Estate + User Data + SEO
In the past, I’ve written posts about how to optimize your WordPress real estate website for SEO and I’ve created a Trulia plugin for WordPress.
This WordPress real estate plugin changes the game of what you can do with your WordPress website — and for how much money. No longer do you need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for an indexed IDX solution.
Next week I will release a beta version, so stay tuned for the formal announcement.
Posted in WordPress
Tagged IDX, Real Estate, Real Estate Plugin, Wordpress Real Estate
Leave a comment
Easy Content Deployment for WordPress: RAMP
RAMP allows you to make all the changes you need in your staging environment, then selectively push these changes to your production site. You can set up a new section of your site, upload some images to fill out a nice carousel for it, and add a link to it on your home page. Once this content has been reviewed and approved, you can go to your RAMP page, select these content changes, and push them to your production site.
This would be really handy for larger WordPress sites.
Yourls Google Analytics Link Tagging
In my last post, I wrote about the benefits of using YOURLS, a self-hosted link-shortening service. I’m finding that YOURLS is great, but it’s not perfect. Some of the issues I have experience are part of what you get using most URL shortener services.
Some of the downsides of using link shorteners are:
- Google Analytics doesn’t always capture the original referrer (and I have no clue how they do the rest of the time!).
- When generating links using the bookmarklet (or in this case, also the Yourls installation), there’s no easy way to add campaign, source, medium, content, and term tags for Google Analytics to track.
- Yourls doesn’t allow query strings on URLs by default, making overriding existing campaign tags difficult/impossible. For example:
http://katz.si/t?utm_source=2300
I’m not the only one who wanted these things, so I’ve created a plugin that adds Google Analytics tracking to Yourls. It’s very cool.
Posted in Plugins, Web Development
Tagged Plugin, Plugin Development, Plugins, URL, URL Shortener, YOURLS, Yourls Plugin
22 Comments
YOURLS URL Shortener
I was having trouble finding the right URL shortening service. My requests for shortening were not too picky. I wanted two simple features:
- Good statistics that are visible only to administrators
- Edit the long URLs after generating shortened links
…but not one service has both features:
- http://sn.im has editable URLs, a bookmarklet, but no stats. Oh, and they kept on deleting my links.
- http://bit.ly has great stats, name recognition, but the links aren’t editable and the stats are public.
- http://goo.gl is the fastest service (so they claim), they have good stats (maybe the best, since they include OS & browser information), but they don’t have editable links or private stats.
Other smaller offerings may have had both features, but they also seem unreliable. I wanted control of my links. Continue reading
Posted in Domains, Web Development
Tagged Bit.ly, Bitly, Goo.gl, Snurl, URL, URL Shortener, YOURLS
1 Comment
The Google +1 Sprite Animation
How the +1 Button Works
The +1 Button uses an advanced sprite technique to simulate an animated gif. The animation occurs when hovering over search results with +1 enabled, and the shine moves across the button. (The image to the right is an animated gif I made…)
The +1 Button is not an animated gif, however. It’s a sprite image that moves a background image across the “window” of the button using Javascript. The code, if you care, goes something like this:
onmouseover="window.gbar&&gbar.pw&&gbar.pw.hvr(this,google.time())"
The sprite image Google uses for the +1 button is below:
Pretty neat, huh?
Yeah, the +1 Button animation is pretty neat…
…now turn it off!
Oh goodness gracious, the animation is annoying. After hovering over one search result, it’s obvious how awful the animation is and I want to claw my eyes out with a rusty nail. I wanted to find a way to disable the animation. Continue reading
Trulia Plugin for WordPress
Easily add TruliaMaps to your website!
Add a Trulia maps widget showing homes in your area, without touching any HTML or code. This plugin allows you to configure tons of options; check it out today!
The Trulia real estate plugin includes options for:
- Map size
- Map, Satellite or Hybrid map type
- Slideshow – automatically cycle through houses. Choose how quickly the slideshow displays, or to turn it off.
- Map Background and Text colors
Easily add a real estate map to your page or post using “shortcodes”:
[trulia city="Bethesda" state="MD"]
will show a map for Bethesda, MD real estate.
[trulia zip=90210 rotate=10 size=panorama]
will show a wide map of the 90210 real estate for sale, and will rotate showing listings every 10 seconds.
Shortcode
[trulia title="Boston Real Estate" align=right city=Boston state=MA background="#cccccc" color="#333333" size=large rotate=10 logo_color=gry] The following shortcode produces the map seen on the right:
[trulia title="Boston Real Estate" align=right city=Boston state=MA background="#cccccc" color="#333333" size=large rotate=10]
The plugin has shortcode support with the following setting options:
size– Choose betweenlarge(default),small, andpanoramicmap sizes.title– Modify the text of the map heading.zip– Standard ZIP codecity– Name of the city.state– Two-letter state abbreviation.rotate– How quickly, in seconds, do you want the listings to auto-rotate. Defaults to0(off).map_view– Choose between Map (map), Satellite (sat), or Hybrid (hyb) views for the map images.align– Align the map to theleft,right,center, ornone
Note: uses WordPress CSS classes to achieve aligning; some themes may not support this.color– HEX value for map heading text color (#efefef, for example)bg- HEX value for map background color (#cccc33, for example)
Please leave support questions/issues and comments below!
This WordPress real estate plugin was made possible with the support of the Koitz Group, Bethesda, MD real estate experts.
Posted in Plugins
Tagged Trulia, WordPress Plugins, Wordpress Real Estate, WordPress Real Estate Plugin
6 Comments
