More cool blogs and useful websites for your viewing pleasure. Today’s selection is for those creative types who design and personalize their own websites and those who help others develop unique websites.
These sites offer tools, tips, tricks and even creative motivation for web workers. Feel free to share your own favorite sites!
If you are building your first independently hosted blog for your real estate business and you have decided to go with WordPress, you have already made a great decision.
Now, there are some other items to consider:
I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about how to make sure websites are mobile-friendly and, in particular, how to make them iPhone friendly.
Sure, there are lots of mobile devices out there (and I’ve owned quite a few myself) but none have the kind of market saturation that is expected for the iPhone. So, as a website owner, I’m interested in how to make my sites more iPhone friendly and will encourage my clients to do the same for their sites.
If you want to read more on this topic for your own site, consider the following resources: Continue reading
I have a client, a Realtor, with a particularly hairy situation. This genuinely nice individual has managed to become entrenched in the mire with a unethical builder. Normally, I’d find this situation incredible — but I’ve watched it develop and it has made me wary of such situations for my other clients.
I know that times are hard for many in the industry right now. I know that people are running scared as the houses sit and the inventory increases. Builders are hard hit, real estate professionals are starting to struggle, even the general public is starting to worry and sweat what Forbes Magazine is calling a Recession Dead Ahead. But, as I read over the letter that this particular builder is now posting all over the Internet, blaming the Realtor and the broker for all the problems he and his family are experiencing, I just have to shake my head. Continue reading
WordPress is extremely user-friendly. If you have ever hand-coded or altered or edited any HTML, it’s a snap. If you haven’t — you really need the easy-to-use interface… like WP. And widgets improve the ease of use factor.
What’s a Widget?
Widgets are tiny programs, usually with specific functions that people add to their desktops or (in the case of WordPress) their websites.
What Do They Do That’s So Cool?
Widgets allow individuals to customize the look, feel and function of the chosen platform quickly, easily and (usually) without the need to touch a single line of code. Read this article about the general concept of widgets and how Coldwell Banker has a desktop version to show new listings in a tidy little package.
Do People Really Use These Things?
Comscore, a digital data tracking service, recently launched “Widget Matrix” to track widget saturation across the Internet. According to the report on widget popularity, the top ten most popular of these little snippet sized programs reached an audience of over 177 thousand unique visitors and in North America alone over 40% of all Internet users visited a website with a widget. The most popular type of widget? Photo-related (think randomized shots of your current listings with “click to view full description” capability).
How do I use them?
Widgets allow you “drag and drop” functionality in many cool features for your new WordPress site — and you can select those and install, activate and customize them yourself. It will give you the ability to be creative and to add new “stuff” without calling a webmaster.
It also gives you the ability to turn off, activate and move around your site’s content to your satisfaction. Once you get it the way you want it, a single click on the “save” button in the widget dashboard and it goes live!
How Do I Use Widgets on My WordPress Install?
First, select a pre-widgetized theme. If the theme you love doesn’t offer widget capability built-in, you can get it widgetized by a code-jockey or you can widgetize it yourself (which is what I did for mine).
Widget-Ready WordPress Themes
Download the WP Widget Ready Theme Pack (15 megs) of over 100 themes.
How to Use Widgets – a step by step guide for beginners
Widgetizing Your Own - http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/
Finding Cool Widgets
http://www.widgipedia.com/ - Widget supersite (but not for WP specifically)
Turning Plugins into Widgets – Here’s how!
Real Estate Widgets:
http://www.thegoodblogs.com/wordpress_widget – the good blogs widget
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#links – I like quite a few of these widgets — like the aggregate RSS feed widget (I need this for my own blogs).