I like to try new stuff and gizmos. It’s just the way I am. So over the past couple of days, a few new blog experiments have been launched. As always, no promises that they’ll be permanently ensconced here.
First up, the Wibiya toolbar. Take note at the bottom of the screen:
This toolbar is the last thing to load, give it a couple of seconds if it’s not displaying. Also, it doesn’t work if you are using Internet Explorer 6. If you’re using IE6, you’re now two versions behind and either need to upgrade, or ditch IE altogether and get a better browser like Firefox or Chrome.
This is kind of a nifty thing. It’s got an area to search (either the blog or Google), recent posts window, a random button that will pull up a random post from the archives, a photo button (pulls from a Flickr photo set), RSS feed button, sharing sites, access to the TPREG Facebook Fan Page, a Facebook Community page (please join!), Facebook Connect implementation and even a Twitter client (that I can’t get to send Tweets. Yet.).
I could, if I were so inclined, also put up “notifier” messages to all visitors as well as send messages to the Facebook Community.
If the tool bar annoys you, you can minimize it by clicking the down arrow on the right of the tool bar.
Wibiya provides some usage statistics:
What’s the point? Theoretically this helps increase page views, time on site, etc. Who knows if that’s really the case, time will tell. I look at it as more of a service to the readers here. The search seems to work quite well. The post navigation page could prove useful for some. “Community building” is all the buzz now, and the Wibiya system may just facilitate that.
Local Market Explorer
Speaking of community, a new WordPress plugin, Local Market Explorer (LME), was released this week that “mashes up” real estate and community info from Zillow, Education.com, Flickr, Walk Score and Yelp.
You can see a sample page here.
I’ve set up pages for several Phoenix area communities, which you can see on this page (the Local Market info pages are accessed via the “real estate info” links).
Of note: I disabled the option to display Flickr photos. I’m not too keen on random photos I have no control of being shown on the blog. Who knows what might pop up. I’d like to see an option to only display photos from Flickr sets I designate.
Also, the plugin requires a minor edit to work with the Thesis theme used here and on many other real estate blogs.
Here’s what has to be done to get LME to work in Thesis:
1) Open the plugin file lme-client.php in a text editor (NOT Microsoft Word)
2) Find this line (Line #36): include(TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/page.php’);
3) Replace it with this: include(TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/custom_template.php’);
4) save and upload the edited file to the LME plugin folder on your server
I’ve also noticed the plugin conflicts with plugins and widgets related to recent posts. If you have a recent posts plugins (or the Thesis Killer Recent Entries widget) installed, you’ll see an error in your sidebar (or where ever you have these plugins out-putting information).
This plugin dynamically generates some pretty useful information. It’s not going to help you in search engines, but if you run a real estate blog, you ought to be posting material for your readers, not Google. I’m pretty certain some will label it a Zillow link love fest. But I’m liking the compilation of a lot of city specific information all on one page. I’d like to see the ability to get even more specific ”“ down to the zip code level or even subdivision level. Perhaps this will be available in a future release.
As always, thoughts ”“ good, bad or indifferent ”“ are welcome!
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy was started by Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... he liked to say...
Hey Jay,I'll disagree with you on the helping with Search Engines. I've been playing with LME for about 2.5 months now and can assure you that it definitely has helped in Search Engines. For <a href="http://www.STLHomeData.com” target=”_blank”>www.STLHomeData.com I put up for 5 days a LME post on Costa Mesa, CA this was well over a month ago and we still rank for Costa Mesa Home Data type searches.
Thanks for sharing this. Great post. These are really helpful information. Keep it up. By the way, I know a great Kentucky home that might interest you too. Thanks.
Jay-"I'd like to see the ability to get even more specific – down to the zip code level or even subdivision level"Good news — ZIP codes will be supported with the next version of the plugin :)I'll have Andrew look at the recent posts error you mention.
Eric – but what does Google index on these pages? Viewing the source code shows there is practically nothing there. Business names and addresses in the Yelp review section, school names in the education.com section, and that's about it.I'm clearly no SE expert, I just don't see a whole lot on a LME page to be indexed. Got a link to the specific Costa Mesa post/page?
Peter – really, please, lay off the spamming of your great Kentucky home. This will be the third time I've deleted your link. Net time I'll just blacklist you and send you off to the spammers club.
Did you know you can type any city name in on your blog now and see a page created on it? ie http://www.stlhomedata.com/local/costamesa,ca/ or for example http://www.stlhomedata.com/local/phoenix,az/Maybe it's the fact that I have so much other data on the site that Google said oh well the site is about home stats and this is a post on Costa Mesa so clearly it must be about home stats in Costa Mesa?I need to look into that. But we still get clicks for it. Also we get a lot of clicks about the schools. With back to school we had numerous people trying to find their school website and found us on Google same with other items. Idea is if you can catch someone interested in the data and maybe get them to stick around a second if you offer them good data, maybe you might build a future client….Personally I think the LME takes WAY too long to load and there are things that need to get cleaned up with it plus add some searching info, but, if nothing else it's getting people to our page right now from a few pages that we have semi hidden.
Fabulous! Also, I've seen the sold homes data come up occasionally but usually it doesn't.The "Go" button in the WalkScore box looks goofy, as does the selection area in the schools box. (Perhaps that's a function of my content column width and/or my theme?)
Thanks for the tip about the lme_client.php and Thesis. Now if they give me a way to turn off the school info (I have that on another page) the neighborhood site I'm using this for will be "complete".
New wordpress tool was used to bulid blogs for real estate. Also, the plugin requires a minor edit to work with the Thesis theme used here and on many other real estate blogs.
Interesting timing – a reader just sent me an email about Wibiya over the weekend. Off to check it out.I like the mashup, too – putting as much of that information into one location as possible can only help the consumer … well done … again.
The ability to turn off the school module is coming with the next version of this plugin.
Great Post! Very informative. I am a new Dallas Realtor and am learning so much from people like you. Thank you 🙂
Great Post! I found it to be very informative. I am a new Dallas Realtor and am learning so much from people like you. Looking forward to reading more 🙂
Crap on a cracker…I've installed the plug-in, modified the lme-client.php file as you indicated and uploaded it, but I keep getting a "Page Not Found" error. Here's where it should point to:http://wallingfordwired.com/local/wallingford/ctAny idea what I might have done wrong?
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Jay, I left a comment here yesterday, but it's not here. All I said was I was having trouble installing the LME plug-in. Was there a problem with my comment?
Well that's weird Wayne. I *know* that comment was here, I read it. I may have accidentally deleted it when I was killing off spam comments. Sorry about that!Someone else using Thesis reported the same problem to me. Apparently my fix doesn't work in all instances. Drew – can you let the developers know we're seeing trouble with the Thesis theme? If they need any files to look at, let me know…
@Jay: Can you try to upgrade to the newest version of the LME plugin and let me know if you're still having issues with the Thesis theme? I deployed a fix in 1.0.2 to handle that issue with the Thesis theme (and any other theme that doesn't have a template for just a regular page vs a post). Feel free to get in contact with me directly if you're still having issues or want to provide additional feedback — you have my info.
Andrew,The only problem was template was mis-spelled. You copied the misspelling above it should be "custom_template.php" The "l" is missing.Both Jay's and 1.02 worked for me after adding the "l". 🙂
Andrew, I can't get the plug-in to wowrk at all; I keep getting an "Ooops! Page not Found" error when I load it. If you'd like to check it out, I'll activate the page on my blog again:http://wallingfordwired.com
Oops, that was stupid on my part. It's fixed in the next version.
Oops, that was stupid on my part. It's fixed in the next version.