HHI Golf Guy
05-25-2006, 09:11 PM
Before we had the unfortunate server crash on this forum, someone had asked about how to customize Birdview and I had stated that we were working on doing that for an upcoming site.
True customization is not really possible with Birdview because you can only send parameters to Birdview's server and display the results on their server through your own URL (think of it as a one way street). You cannot extract data from Birdview to customize the presentation or manipulate the data.
However, we were able to do some things to partially integrate Birdview within our own pages. For example, go to the home page of our Main Line real estate (http://www.mainlinejohn.com) site.
On the right hand side of the page you will see "Quick Main Line Real Estate Search". Creating this form and the "Town" drop down box allowed us to limit the town selection to the agent's immediate area (instead of that huge list provided by Birdview). The only drawback is that we had to open the results in a new browser window. We could not pass the data to an IFRAME.
Take a look at the Philadelphia MLS (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/philadelphia-mls.asp) page to see how the typical Birdview MLS search is integrated into an IFRAME. Now take a look at the Main Line MLS (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/main-line-mls.asp) page and see how we created a form with the same basic options except that we again limited the search to a select group of towns by using another drop down box.
If you look halfway down this Wayne PA real estate (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/wayne-real-estate.asp) page you will see we created another search form that allows the user to select specific criteria about their home search, but automatically limits the search to the topic of the page - Wayne, PA. We created this type of form on all of the appropriate community pages.
Birdview also has some neat demographic reports that people can view when they look at an MLS listing. But I also liked these reports (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/reports2.asp) as standalone reports and created a page to allow them to be accessed via an IFRAME.
Anyway, I think that covers what we did to better integrate Birdview within the site as well as limit some of the search parameters so that web surfers can quickly find homes in the towns that are in the immediate area.
If you have any questions, let me know. If you would like me to customize your Birdview solution, I can be had for a price.
Birdview has promised to show me some things "behind the scenes", but who knows when that will happen. In the meantime, I am trying to convince them to come up with an XML package that would allow for true customization.
True customization is not really possible with Birdview because you can only send parameters to Birdview's server and display the results on their server through your own URL (think of it as a one way street). You cannot extract data from Birdview to customize the presentation or manipulate the data.
However, we were able to do some things to partially integrate Birdview within our own pages. For example, go to the home page of our Main Line real estate (http://www.mainlinejohn.com) site.
On the right hand side of the page you will see "Quick Main Line Real Estate Search". Creating this form and the "Town" drop down box allowed us to limit the town selection to the agent's immediate area (instead of that huge list provided by Birdview). The only drawback is that we had to open the results in a new browser window. We could not pass the data to an IFRAME.
Take a look at the Philadelphia MLS (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/philadelphia-mls.asp) page to see how the typical Birdview MLS search is integrated into an IFRAME. Now take a look at the Main Line MLS (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/main-line-mls.asp) page and see how we created a form with the same basic options except that we again limited the search to a select group of towns by using another drop down box.
If you look halfway down this Wayne PA real estate (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/wayne-real-estate.asp) page you will see we created another search form that allows the user to select specific criteria about their home search, but automatically limits the search to the topic of the page - Wayne, PA. We created this type of form on all of the appropriate community pages.
Birdview also has some neat demographic reports that people can view when they look at an MLS listing. But I also liked these reports (http://www.mainlinejohn.com/reports2.asp) as standalone reports and created a page to allow them to be accessed via an IFRAME.
Anyway, I think that covers what we did to better integrate Birdview within the site as well as limit some of the search parameters so that web surfers can quickly find homes in the towns that are in the immediate area.
If you have any questions, let me know. If you would like me to customize your Birdview solution, I can be had for a price.
Birdview has promised to show me some things "behind the scenes", but who knows when that will happen. In the meantime, I am trying to convince them to come up with an XML package that would allow for true customization.