Best Idx Solution - Freeeeeeee!!!

[EmpireApts]

Hello,

I would like to share the BEST IDX solution and it's called "Open-Realty".

http://open-realty.org/ It's completely FREE!!! The templates are easy to install... Check out what I did with my site. Most Programmers charge up to $5k for a site like this. I did this one myself. Barely any HTML or PHP knowledge required.

Look what I did with it.

http://www.nycbrokerfree.com

[Dallas Broker]

I wouldn't say this is the best idx solution out there, but anything for Free can't be too bad, at least until you can afford to have customized Idx integrated into your site.

[Techno]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to say that it isn't the best one I've seen, however it is certainly worth a look.

The one thing I didn't like on the site was the Google ads, IMO monetizing a R.E. website, no matter what type of real estate you practice, comes across tacky. I'm not sure if the ads are a part of the template or if you added them yourself.

Without having searched for this topic on the forum, how do y'all feel about adding Google Ads to your R.E. websites?

Michael:).

[riverviewrichie]

One thing I learned is that there is nothing in life that is for free. If the site has google ads then you are advertising for them and possibly driving away from your site.

[Dallas Broker]

I tried adding adsense to website a few years back but quickly learned that the small income produced was not worth loosing potential clients. If you are going to use adsense, I would recommend creating specific websites to market these ads

[Techno]

There is no denying the power of advertising on the Internet. I just think, why would you put ads on your real estate website that may end up annoying or, worse yet, leading the potential client away from your site. It is beyond me.

I support using these type of ads to get folks to your site, but I am against having them on the site itself.

Michael :).

[HHI Golf Guy]

OK - a couple of things here.

If a developer charged or anyone paid $5k for a site like that they should both be flogged.

Second, Open Realty is not an IDX solution. It is a listing management system. If you're up on your PHP programming and database management you can integrate your IDX with OR.

There are also commercial IDX and RETS packages that you can purchase to utilize with OR.

Open Realty is a nice product and I have used it with a number of sites. However, I did have to hack a lot of the OR core components to get it to work the way that it should work.

[ericbadgley]

I guess, if you think about it there is much out there that is good for free.. But this seems to be to bad if you are on a budget.

[EmpireApts]

I put the google ads because I get a lot of hits and it's worth it for me..
It didn't come with the template. As far as adding an IDX to Open Realty, it's a sinch. Just need a $50 addon. I think I have one of the best realty sites on the net now. My competitor is Rent-Direct.com and...

[Dallas Broker]

I would be interested in seeing some additional examples of websites using the open realty management system. I was thinking of integrating into my property management company and apartment locating company. From what I've found on net and feedback in forums, most have good things to say about open realty. Demo does not work on site but I assumed this as many open source code lost financing and interest at some point and there is no one to manage and update

[OceanView Properties]

What is an idx solution?:confused:

[Techno]

It stands for Internet Data Exchange and it is an Internet solution for displaying MLS listings to the public.

Michael.

[HHI Golf Guy]

I would be interested in seeing some additional examples of websites using the open realty management system.

You can see an example of OR listings at our Coastal 360 (http://www.coastal360.com) web site. There are a few things you need to know:

1. Only the listings are from OR, and they are integrated into a CMS system.

2. This is a heavily modified / hacked version of OR.

There are over 3,000 real estate listings and over 2,000 vacation rental listings in this database. This database also feeds multiple local, regional, and national web sites. Only listings relative to the area show up on a particular site (local, regional, national).

The one HUGE drawback from Open Realty is the lack of support, even in the forums. For most questions the answer is, "That requires a modification/hack of the core files and that will not be discussed in this forum." Worse yet, most basic OR questions go unanswered.

The good news is that a few people are working on a "fork" of OR call EZPro Realty. It makes use of the OR concept, but enhances the overall product as both a stand alone and CMS application. Also, most or all of the current OR paid add ons will be offered for free.

When will EZPro Realty be available? There is no release date yet. But from what I have heard it is now in the beta testing stage.

[EmpireApts]

Wowww.. Your site ruuulleezzzzz... Who designed the template for you and how did you intergrate all that stuff?

You can see an example of OR listings at our Coastal 360 (http://www.coastal360.com) web site. There are a few things you need to know:

1. Only the listings are from OR, and they are integrated into a CMS system.

2. This is a heavily modified / hacked version of OR.

There are over 3,000 real estate listings and over 2,000 vacation rental listings in this database. This database also feeds multiple local, regional, and national web sites. Only listings relative to the area show up on a particular site (local, regional, national).

The one HUGE drawback from Open Realty is the lack of support, even in the forums. For most questions the answer is, "That requires a modification/hack of the core files and that will not be discussed in this forum." Worse yet, most basic OR questions go unanswered.

The good news is that a few people are working on a "fork" of OR call EZPro Realty. It makes use of the OR concept, but enhances the overall product as both a stand alone and CMS application. Also, most or all of the current OR paid add ons will be offered for free.

When will EZPro Realty be available? There is no release date yet. But from what I have heard it is now in the beta testing stage.

[Techno]

HHI,

I agree, your website is very well done. I especially love the Interactive Map. Wow, really nice job!!!

Michael.

[HHI Golf Guy]

Thanks.

The interactive map is our own proprietary technology. The "technology" part is not the map itself, but what we can do with our map software. I can't go into details, but suffice to say what the thing can do is very cools.

The Coastal360 site is very "bare bones" compared to the final version that you will see. The entire package is Joomla based. I got some design ideas from looking at other Joomla template sites, then put together a customized template that we can use for all of our 360 sites.

The next step was to make use of some MooTools (http://mootools.net/), some custom modules, and some other free and paid modules and components. For example, the ads are all run through iJoomla's Ad Agancy.

However, I did a lot of hacking and customization done with the pre-made modules and components in order to get things to work the way I need them to work on the soon to be released version of the site. That version will be available on our HiltonHead360 site when we convert to the new package on May 1st.

One of the features I like with the new site is our video library. Web site visitors will be able to view video golf lessons, local promo videos, etc. on the site. But we will also allow them to upload their own vacation videos (a nice web site "sticky" to have in place). They can even link/embed their own YouTube or Google video on our site.

In fact, we are going to use video and photos extensively throughout the site (one of the nice perks of having in house photographers and videographers).

There are a lot more features and bells and whistles for the site, but everyone will have to wait and see when HiltonHead360 is released.

All in all, we have over 200 local, regional, and national 360 web sites that we are developing throughout the U.S. Each of these sites are designed as info portal sites with real estate and vacation rental listings. In most markets we also have associated real estate and vacation rental print magazines as well.

One of the great benefits that we provide is that we DO NOT CHARGE agents and rental companies to place their listings on our web sites. Of course, there is a charge for banner ads, text ads, video bumper ads, and premium page ads. Stay tuned - we may be coming to your market very soon.

[Dallas Broker]

very impressive! mapping tecnnology looks as good as what is offered by local idx providers in texas. Great idea with sticky videos as well. We are about to take a vacation and have searched through many sites, none with past guest videos which would give you best picture of vacation, activities and events that you could enjoy.

[Pinehurst Real Estate Guy]

Very interesting site, Golf Guy, my connection must be slow tonight so I'll go back and take a better look later. Mapping is terrible on any site when the pipes are clogged.

See you later neighbor.

[itrends]

Hello,

I would like to share the BEST IDX solution and it's called "Open-Realty".

It's completely FREE!!! The templates are easy to install... Check out what I did with my site. Most Programmers charge up to $5k for a site like this. I did this one myself. Barely any HTML or PHP knowledge required.

Look what I did with it.



What 'free' IDX solution do they provide? All I see is there php script which is for showing your listings not IDX.

[mstevenson]

yea open realty is not an idx solution

transparentrets or idxmanager are commercial addons (expensive) that make OR idx capable

[waynelong]

Yeah. I wouldn't say the free IDX solution was the best solution. It lacks a lot compared to the one that is on Coastal360 or the one we use on Columbus Home Show (http://www.columbushomeshow.com/idx) but it is free and that is cool.

Coastal - that is a very nice site all around. You are doing some good things there. When you say - all your 360 sites - does that mean you are selling the websites or franchising the 360 concept or are these all your sites and brokerages?

Anyway, nice site.

[HHI Golf Guy]

Coastal - that is a very nice site all around. You are doing some good things there. When you say - all your 360 sites - does that mean you are selling the websites or franchising the 360 concept or are these all your sites and brokerages?

Anyway, nice site.

Thanks.

We're a print media publishing company that specializes in real estate and living/decor magazines here in the southeast. We have a few local and regional web sites, but have now made a strategic decision to bring our real estate/vacation rental portal sites to other cities and towns throughout the U.S. Depending upon the market we may also print a monthly real estate magazine for that area as well.

As I stated earlier, Coastal360 is a very "bare bones" site compared to the final product we are rolling out. We're in the final stages of development now, and our primary site should have the new package up and running by early next month.

We chose Coastal360 for our testing because it was an established site, but not one of our top ranked or revenue producing sites. That way if there was a glitch we wouldn't tick off advertisers or trash our search engine rankings :)

While we are not considering selling our sites or franchising the sites, we have talked about leasing our product to other publishing companies. For example, most markets have a local real estate publication that agents advertise in. Most of these companies have a lousy web site and web presence. That's where a company like ours can help. We can provide a great platform for that company and even include an SEO campaign.

For each of the sites we launch we will allow agents to add their listings for free. We also have a number of paid advertising options available from standard banner, flash, and text advertising to having agents or companies sponsor individual community pages.

Eventually once a site has been established in a market (18 months - 24 months from launch) we may end up charging agents a nominal fee between $39 and $99 a year to post their listings. The bonus for the agents is that their listings will not only appear on the local sites in their market, but also on the regional and national web sites that we develop.

[HHI Golf Guy]

As I mentioned earlier, the Coastal 360 site was just a test of what we were planning for our flagship site, Hilton Head 360 (http://www.hiltonhead360.com).

And now it's finally here and you can click on the link above if you would like to check it out. The site has about 5,000 real estate and vacation rental listings and the start of some good content on the area.

The Real Estate Guide and Vacation Rental Guide sections are still lacking information. But that is because we are actually going to be selling these pages to local advertisers. They will be the ones providing the information, photos, and videos on those pages.

We also have almost 50 more articles to add to the Home & Lifestyle section. These articles focus on building, remodeling, and architecture and come from our print magazine, LowCountry Home Magazine.

In the next few months we will be adding additional South Carolina sites for Bluffton, Beaufort, and Charleston. We will also be adding Savannah and Atlanta, GA and Charlotte, NC this year. All in all we will be developing over 150 localized sites throughout the U.S. All of these sites will feed listings to the regional and national portal sites that we are developing.

We are also looking into offering our sites to other real estate print media companies throughout the U.S. where we are not developing our own sites. All in all, it's a project that will keep me and my team very busy for a long, long time.

[joehall]

Hilton Head 360.

Did you use a CMS for this site?

[HHI Golf Guy]

Actually, at the time you posted this we had reverted back to the old site for a few days. The virtual tour department had not converted a bunch of VT's to the new format, so we had to go back to the old site until they finished.

But now the new Hilton Head 360 (http://www.hiltonhead360.com) has been loaded again.

There are a few items that need to be finished, namely the Real Estate Guide and Vacation Rental Guide sections. But that content is coming from paid advertisers, and we just started selling those pages.

I am also going to add a new section titled "My Hilton Head Vacation" where users can upload their vacation stories and photos (to go along with our video upload section).

And yes - the new site is a CMS site. I used Joomla to put it together.

[joehall]

Actually, at the time you posted this we had reverted back to the old site for a few days. The virtual tour department had not converted a bunch of VT's to the new format, so we had to go back to the old site until they finished.

But now the new Hilton Head 360 (http://www.hiltonhead360.com) has been loaded again.

There are a few items that need to be finished, namely the Real Estate Guide and Vacation Rental Guide sections. But that content is coming from paid advertisers, and we just started selling those pages.

I am also going to add a new section titled "My Hilton Head Vacation" where users can upload their vacation stories and photos (to go along with our video upload section).

And yes - the new site is a CMS site. I used Joomla to put it together.

Those maps are awesome, are they coming from your IDX vendor?

[HHI Golf Guy]

Those maps are awesome, are they coming from your IDX vendor?

No, that's our own proprietary map technology. Once we refine a few things with it we will probably lease out maps to other regions.

The most frustrating part of developing a proprietary map system is that 99.9% of all map companies (i.e. Rand McNally, etc.) won't allow you to purchase or lease maps for your own use.

[agentwhiz]

How easy was it to install this on your website or blog? I have used IDX Direct in the past, but that is pretty expensive. The thought of IDX for free is tempting!
~Hollie
AgentWhiz.com

[allnightit]

I have used openrealty in the past for a few rental websites but ultimately it was too hard to get around, there are many other solutions out there that could handle exactly what the have, and yes they are free.

Joomla (googleit), for example, has a completely free content management system which, with a little patience, can be used to accomplish much more than that of oponrealty.

It's open source, PHP/MySQL, and it's currently developed by thousands of programmers around the world.

However, if you are wanting a real estate solution for the IDX feed then you need to really think about hiring a professional to do it. YOu wouldn't believe how much VALUABLE information is in those IDX feeds that you can properly submit to search engines to get traffic directly to your site that would normally go to that listing agent or some other site with the IDX feed.

There are several companies out there that offer this, I am one of them but I'm not for everyone. I would have to say my software is on the higher end but accomplished the goal of goals - UBER traffic to the site using the very information that competing realtors are submitting every day.

Ping me for more information, I hope I wan't too vague.