beachbum777

I own a real estate investment company and need a new website.

We buy, lease, and sell properties. These are the three goals of the website.

To buy, the site needs to generate leads - create contact from motivated sellers via online forms, email, telephone etc.

To lease and sell, the site needs to be built in a way where we can EASILY upload/change pictures, video, and property data on a continuous basis.

It needs to project a very professional theme and be well optimized for SEO.

From research, it appears Wordpress may be a customizable, easy, user friendly option. I've seen a number of templates that can be purchased that appear to do what I need. But, I have also been warned templates can be quite limited and lack flexibility to grow the site in the future. True?

I've purchased a domain and have hosting at Bluehost. They offer a number of free wysiwig builders (pagewizard, concrete5), along with Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. via simple scripts.

So, basically I have lots of questions:

Which platform is best for a real estate website?
Which is easiest for ongoing maintenance and uploading/changing properties?
Which is best for SEO?
Which is most scalable/changeable if needed?
I've also looked at purchasing coffee cup or web easy professional. How do they compare?

I am looking to have the site built, but also want someone who can train me at times. Someone who speaks great English and can work with me over the phone. I've tried a few projects via guru and elance. Tired of working through language and time barriers.

Obviously, I am looking for someone who is experienced, works fast, and is reliable. We are running a business, and as they say....time is money.

Any ideas or recommendations are GREATLY appreciated!!

Steve Diamond

Hi, beachbum777. I'd like to recommend myself as a freelancer who could accomplish this for you. I'd be very willing to work closely with you to make sure that you'd be able to do a lot of the ongoing site maintenance on your own once it's up and running.

I believe that WordPress is an excellent platform on which to build such a site. I like to work with a theme framework called Hybrid which allows me to add custom layouts, formats, and functions easily on top of WordPress itself. This basically eliminates the problem you mentioned of having a rigid template.

I've worked on real estate websites before, including very extensive server programming for a company that provides sites to MLSs, so I'm quite familiar with many of the requirements for real estate listings.

You can find out more about my background and qualifications by following the link in my sig. Please PM me if you'd like to explore working together on this project.

Thanks.

Steve

Executive I.T. consulting for small/medium business
Website development | PHP - MySQL - JavaScript expert programming
Software requirements analysis | Specification writing
Project management | Vendor relationship management

dhanediesil

Beachbum777,

Wordpress would be my recommendation!

Seeing as how you purchased BlueHost hosting, installing Wordpress won't be a problem. You can have the whole process completed in minutes.

Now on to the interesting stuff...

Wordpress offers plenty of themes that fit your needs. If you want to go with something pre-made, a simple Google search for "real estate wordpress themes" should turn up some interesting results.

If you have a nice budget to play with, there are plenty of options you have to get a more customized theme to suit your needs.

Wordpress is very versatile, expandable, user friendly, and the search engines love it. You can easily make changes and updates to your Website without contacting your Webmaster every single time you want to make a change.

There are plenty of plug-ins and third party applications that will allow you to add contact forms to gather your Website visitors contact details.

As far as SEO goes, Wordpress comes ready to go right out the box. Of course you can also download the "All In One SEO" plug-in to take care of SEO tags for individual post and etc.

The bottom line...

It's pretty much a no brainer to go with WordPress. I'm a bit bias. And while I've only read up on Drupal and Joomla, I've never used those CMS's.

Check out my free eBook, "Why WordPress? 24 Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress To Power Your Web Site And Elevate It To The Next Level" to get a better idea about what I'm talking about.

You can download it here dhanecrowley[dot]com/why-wordpress

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beachbum777

Steve & Dhane-

Thank you both for replying!

Sounds like a consensus that Wordpress would be the right platform.

Wordpress is available in my simple scripts within the Bluehost cpanel.

What would it cost to have you get it loaded, adjust security settings/preferences, etc., load a real estate theme, recommended plug ins, and have me up and running ready to load pictures and video? And how long would it take?

Loren Woirhaye

Wordpress has it's virtues. Based on your stated criteria
of scalability however I would seriously consider going
with Drupal.

Steve Diamond

Hi, beachbum777. Between your list here and the requirements you posted earlier, there are quite a few details potentially needing clarification. I find it's much more efficient in the long run to make as few assumptions as possible when approaching this kind of project. I'll send you a PM in a few hours where I try to sort out some of the possibilities and ask the important questions.

Steve

Executive I.T. consulting for small/medium business
Website development | PHP - MySQL - JavaScript expert programming
Software requirements analysis | Specification writing
Project management | Vendor relationship management

beachbum777

Very good. Thanks Steve.

beachbum777

Steve-

In reading your first reply, I see you set up MLS sites. Just to clarify, I don't need anything close to that. I don't need a major database. I will only have from probably 1 - 20 listings on the site at a time. And I don't need broker/prospect tracking or separate databases for active/pending/sold/withdrawn/expired/etc. Just a place to upload interior/exterior pics and video along with bullet points of the property's features. In addition to the listing sections, I do need a section with a form for anyone looking to sell. Plus, a contact us, privacy stmt, and sitemap. Nothing too fancy.

Steve Diamond

Thanks. Understood. I'll PM you in a bit.

Steve

Executive I.T. consulting for small/medium business
Website development | PHP - MySQL - JavaScript expert programming
Software requirements analysis | Specification writing
Project management | Vendor relationship management