In this video you can see how to use the Staff Directory extension to manage staff members on your real estate website. There are several options that allow you to customise it to suit the needs of your WordPress website.

What is really neat about the extension is how it can dynamically merge all the content from a particular agent and it integrates with other extensions like the Testimonial Manager to automatically display the latest testimonial in the tabbed box and on the staff member page.

The post How to use the Staff Directory extension to manage real estate agents on your website appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

• Fix: Fancy pagination paging works correctly when shortcodes used on home page.
• Fix: Wrapped new pagination feature in esc_url to prevent vulnerability.
• Fix: Corrected sorting by price when using shortcodes. Note: Rental sorting works on post_type=”rental” in all shortcodes.
• Tweak: Added rental rate view for text entry of rental rates for REAXML compatibility.
• Tweak: Corrected admin display columns and edit listing pages for better display on mobile devices.

The post Version 2.1.6 Fixes and Tweaks appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

We’ve been busy updating and tweaking Easy Property Listings since releasing the major version 2.1 and will continue to provide incremental updates with fixes and enhancements and even new features like found in this version.

Our active community keeps asking for features and we keep delivering.

• New: listing_search shortcode now has style option for adjusting the width. You can add style=”slim” or style=”wide” to the shortcode to adjust the appearance.
• New: Listing Search widget now has style options for adjusting the width.
• Tweak: Updated translation epl.pot and added missing sqm translation element.
• Tweak: Allowed for hundredths decimal in bathrooms field.
• Tweak: Floor plan button CSS.
• Tweak: Address and price responsive CSS.
• Fix: Auction listing price set to no displays auction date correctly.
• Fix: Fix: Author position css class.

The post 2.1.7 Released with new shortcode templates appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

Watch the full tutorial how to install FeedSync on a cPanel server and process hundreds of REAXML file in minutes.

The post How to use and install FeedSync 2.0 appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

The REAXML format is widely used in Australia and New Zealand and has become a standard listing format. We’ve been hard at work at creating the next version of FeedSync to process REAXML files for your real estate website better than ever and ready for you.

Most real estate agents use a CRM that has the ability to supply REAXML files to your own website. FeedSync has been created to merge these thousands of files so they can be imported into your website.

The previous version of FeedSync had limitations but it worked and I called it a “dumb” program as it did its job but it didn’t have any “smarts”.

Well its not “dumb” anymore as we are now using a MySQL database to store the listing entries which allow us to add some smarts for faster processing plus we can now add new values which the REAXML format lacks such as the first listed date and better handling of latitude and longitude results.

Watch the video for an overview of the new features found in FeedSync 2.0

The new version of FeedSync is also easier to get working on a wider range of website servers by using a MySQL database which can also instantly output listings from a simple URL that you can use in your importer like WP All Import Pro.

When using Easy Property Listings we added a customisable label to show new listings and now when importing listings you can keep your listings in a better date order.

The REAXML format does not provide a listing date… but with the improved smarts in FeedSync we been able to automatically save the date the first time a new listing is imported. Once that date is added it is not updated with subsequent listing entries.

Many other improvements have been added which you can see in the video.

We have added the full installation tutorial video for you to watch here.

FeedSync 2.0 Installation instructions.

The post FeedSync 2.0 Overview of Whats New appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

Most WordPress themes are lacking in printing functionality and the new Brochures extension changes that. We have just released a new extension for creating printable brochures for your listings. This initial release has two brochure variations with a customisable header and other options for you to tweak.

Once installed and activated a Brochure button will appear on all your listings automatically and is compatible with all the listing types.

We have more plans for this extension but its ready for purchase from the store today.

The post New Printable Brochure Extension appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

We have just released the new 2.1.8 version of Easy Property Listings for your real estate websites. It contains a number of tweaks and a few new features and hundreds of improvements.

Hide the map on a per listing basis

You can now turn off the map on a per listing basis and this will also work if you are using the Advanced Map extension.

Disable all CSS styles

If you are a developer who likes to start from scratch and code all your own CSS you can now disable the plugin CSS completely from settings.

Search Widget and Shortcode

We have added the ability to turn off the Location search in the shortcode as well as improved CSS classes after adding the wide and slim options.

Along with the search options you can now control the Any label and customise your search widget to create super slim search widgets like this one. Search label filter details are here. Note: this is a customised WordPress theme.

Listing Table Templates

We have added two new templates for you to use in the listing shortcodes. These are great for creating an open for inspection list.

[listing_open post_type=”property” template=”table”]

[listing_open  post_type=”property” template=”table_open”]

Reviews

We love getting feedback from users using Easy Property Listings for their real estate websites and we got a couple great ones this week. If you are using the plugin please leave a review so help spread the word!

Easy to understand and use plugin!
Fast and qualitative support!
Thanks Merv! – Alex

This plugin is so powerful and so easy to integrate into your site. I work with an agent that consistently has 50 or more listings and the functionality and speed of his site is amazing because of this plugin. Highly, highly recommend. And, their support is top top notch. wipdowntown

Full Changelog

• New: Ability to disable all plugin CSS from Advanced Settings section.
• New: Search widget and shortcode now have the option to turn of Location search.
• New: Search widget and shortcode now have filters to control the display of “Any”. Each field has a unique filter which will allow you to hide the label using CSS and for example change the Location “Any” label to “Location” this will allow you to create super slim search boxes.
• New: Added translation Belgian (Dutch) thanks to pascal.beyens
• New: Polish translation thanks to Weronika.urbanczyk
• New: Two mew shortcode templates table and table_open usable with shortcodes to provide a slim list of listings. Example usage is [listing_open template=”table”] or [listing template=”table_open”]. You can copy these new templates into your theme/easypropertylistings folder to further customize.
• New: Added currency support for Qatar Riyal (QAR), United Arab Emirates (AED), Ukrainian Hryvnia (UAH), Vietnamese đồng (VND)
• New: checkbox_single ability for plugin and extensions.
• New: Ability to disable map on each listing.
• Tweak: Updated currency symbols for: Israeli Shekel, Thai Baht, Indian Rupee, Turkish Lira, Iranian Rial.
• Tweak: Improved CSS and added additional classes with epl- prefix in templates and search.
• Tweak: Improved CSS for Location Profiles and Staff Directory extensions.
• Tweak: Added filters for commercial titles to allow you to change “For Lease” and “For Sale” using epl_commercial_for_lease_label, and epl_commercial_for_sale_label filters.
• Tweak: Additional CSS classes for Land, Commercial and Rural special features.
• Tweak: Gallery CSS classes added.
• Tweak: Improved table shortcodes CSS and styling for better full display and responsive widths.
• Fix: New/Open Sticker now appear on listings with the price display set to no.
• Fix: Translations work correctly for categories.

The post Version 2.1.8 has been released with a number of tweaks and new features appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

This week I was a featured guest on Josh Cobb’s weekly Real Estate Pros podcast at Stepps where we talk about how real estate websites fail. We talk about the latest tools available to help take your website to another level and why your website should be the central point of all your marketing.

Mostly this is because we all tend to focus on the look and feel of a website and not what is most important to its success. Pretty pictures and flashy website elements will only take your real estate website so far. Even the best looking real estate websites fail to generate leads on a consistent basis and in the podcast we go through what is most important for your success online.

Hop over to Stepps to listen to the podcast and be sure to subscribe to Stepps as each week Josh brings in valuable real estate guests that you can learn from to help you better success as a real estate agent.

Stepps Digital Marketing are leaders in real estate marketing and provide specialised lead generation services to help take your business to the next level. They also work with you to craft excellent social media marketing strategies to help design and navigate the social media landscape that help drive your real estate lead generation and integrate with your website.

You can visit Stepps and kick off your success where they will assess your current digital strategy and help you with PPC, SEO, lead generation, automation and so much more.

Hop over to Stepps to and listen to the podcast so you can create a better online presence for your real estate business and make sure you do not fail!

The post Why Real Estate Websites Fail Podcast appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

We’ve been working on Easy Property Listings 2.1.11 which includes a number of improvements and additional languages thanks to the WordPress community. In this release we have updated several CSS classes for better use by prefixing the classes with epl- which helps with the author box and widget and its responsive effects. You can now hide the author box on a per listing basis too.

The grid/list view is now persistent during the user browsing so when page through listings the selected view remains and this also works when viewing each listing type too. Further improvements have been made to the Sold label which is now customisable in settings allowing the use of Sold STC or other variants.

Let us know what you think of the changes in the comments below.

New Languages

Danish language thanks to pascal.
German language thanks to ChriKn.
Ukrainian language thanks to Alex.
Swedish language thanks to Roland J.

Full Change Log

• Tweak: Removed sub titles “Property Manager” and “Real Estate Agent” from the single listing template for better language support and to facilitate the hiding of the author box.
• Tweak: Added epl- prefix to all author-box and widget css.
• Tweak: Renamed author-box container with epl-author-box-container as it was harder to target the author box content and adjusted JS for tabs.
• Tweak: Improved author box responsive CSS.
• Tweak: Updated extension updater for multisite and other improvements.
• Tweak: Leased label when adding a property will use custom label.
• Tweak: Wrapper class for property category.
• Fix: Undefined status if importing listings not using current status.
• Fix: When user selects grid/list option and pages the user selected view is retained.
• Fix: [listing post_type=”rental”] shortcode price sorting for rental.
• New: Author box is now able to be hidden on a per listing basis.
• New: Added filters for author box social links.
• New: Inspection filter to adjust the inspection date/time format.
• New: Several author widget filters added to enable additional content through extensions or custom functions.
• New: Sold, leased, under offer label filter which uses the label setting and label changes dashboard widget, admin category filters and search widget.
• New: Sold label making Sold STC possible or other Sold label variant.
• New: Danish language thanks to pascal.
• New: German language thanks to ChriKn.
• New: Ukrainian language thanks to Alex.
• New: Swedish language thanks to Roland J.

The post 2.1.11 Released with a number of improvements appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

The support forums on WordPress.org and on our support forum are rather busy. Having reached over 20,000 downloads with support requests increasing dramatically, where some are simple, others are harder and require going back and forth a few times. Some are just plain bugs, but are hard to reproduce. All of them together cost more time than we can spend on it while continuing to improve the plugin and keep it free at the same time.

I’m saying officially now what’s been the case for quite a while already: we are unable to offer support for this advanced real estate plugin for free. It’s easier to just state it like that than to hop in every once in a while and get people’s hopes up when we might not have much time.

We have introduced premium support which is valid for one site for a year, and to make it even better for you, we have decided to include our most popular extension, Advanced Mapping as part of your premium support purchase. So now you can enhance your real estate website with a dynamic map that can display 300 listing on a single map with a simple shortcode. It also adds tabs to the map on a single listings, showing bike, transit, satellite, street view, comparable listings and much more.

The post Premium and Priority Support appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

Logged in view

We’ve just released an update to the Market Research extension which dynamically displays sold information on your listings in the same location as the current listing.

This is a great lead generation tool as as visitor will only get limited sales information unless they register with your website by providing you an email. Great for building up your email list.

Once they have an account and view a listing they will get full access to sales information and be able to see how the market is doing all from your website.

Market Research Demo

This extension also integrates with the Location Profiles extension so you can create location specific pages to show off a lot of great information on your Suburbs, Citys, Towns. Here is a demo of a location profile with the market research data integration.

Full Change Log

• Tweak: Hovering over the bar or the list of sales now highlights corresponding bar/row.
• Tweak: Clicking a bar will scroll and open the corresponding row.
• Tweak: Horizontal graph lines now appear behind the bar allowing for CSS color styling.
• Fix: Currency support correctly handled in vertical price range ticks.|
• Tweak: Added Under offer variable for data importing.
• Tweak: Improved jQuery for graph generation.
• Tweak: Using a filter to output listing details to template.
• New: Filter for date processing during import.
• New: Filter for removing phone numbers from agency details during import.
• Fix: Missing closing span when not logged in effecting some browsers.
• New: Included WP All Import Script in plugin for REIWA export data.

The post Market Research Extension Updated to 2.0.3 appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

Since the last release we have been working hard on improving Easy Property Listings for your real estate listing website and have just released the Easy Property Listings 2.2. It contains hundreds of improvements, several key new features and will make your real estate website stand out.

Read on to find out about the changes and what is new.

Theme Compatibility Mode

We have been hard at work to improve theme compatibility in Easy Property Listings 2.2 which required a huge amount of new code and adjustments to make this possible. Many users were unable to get listings to display correctly on their WordPress theme without having to dive in and edit code.

When theme compatibility mode is enabled your WordPress theme will look fantastic and you will be able to use the most advanced real estate platform to power your real estate business.

This required the creation of additional templates specifically for theme compatibility mode. Once you enable theme compatibility mode you may get a double up of your featured images as some themes automatically add images and we have added settings where you can either disable the theme images or the plugin.

We have tested Easy Property Listings with hundreds of WordPress themes and it works great!

Powerful Search Remastered

We totally rebuilt the search capabilities of Easy Property Listings and added additional search fields for you to use on your real estate website. We have enabled an additional customisable City field and this is great for use in many countries that need an additional location field on their listings.

For power users you now can add any number of custom search fields to the search widget using the new filters and hooks. Along with the search improvements we have improved the widget display and improved the responsive display.

Additional Search Improvements.

• Multiple house category select.
• Search by city, state/province, postcode/zip and Country.
• Search by anything, add your own search fields in minutes.

Developer Features

We have taken the time to add many additional filters and hooks which will open the door for a whole lot more cool features and real estate tools.

Many under the hood improvements have been made to increase the extendibility of Easy Property Listings and allow for the creation of additional extensions and features.

Custom Templates

Easy Property Listings 2.2 introduces a custom template system allowing you to create any number of templates and use them in shortcodes and widgets allowing you and theme developers to create an unlimited number of templates and load them from your theme.

Additional Updates

Sold Price Display

With Easy Property Listings 2.2 you can now display your sold prices and show off your real estate success to your visitors.

Adjustable Image Sizes

Edit the image sizes and add more using the new filter allowing for endless possibilities with your WordPress theme.

Sort by Current, Sold and Leased

Sorting your listings by status is now possible and we have added additional filters to allow you to sort your listings by anything.

Listing Widget

Listing widget now allows for the creation of additional templates that your can select and create your own custom look.

Meta Fields

We have added additional fields to better support other countries and improve on the widely used REAXML format.

Future Extensions

We have added a number of new features for the creation of more advanced real estate tools and have big plans for the future.

Updated Extensions

Along with the release of Easy Property Listings are a number of improvements to the extensions that help you make your real estate website even better and they will be released alongside Easy Property Listings 2.2.

More Filters Added

Dozens of new filters have been added allowing you to customise every aspect of Easy Property Listings quickly and easily.

Loading speed improvements

Changes to only load scripts and CSS when they are needed. Many other optimisations to the code to reduce load times. Dashboard widget loads much faster.

Full Change Log of Easy Property Listings Version 2.2

• New: Search shortcode and widget rebuilt to enable adding additional fields through filters and hooks.
• New: Search shortcode and widget added additional search fields for City, State, Postcode and Country.
• New: Search shortcode and widget allows for optional multi select of house category.
• New: Search shortcode and widget improved responsive CSS.
• New: Grid styles included in main CSS for use in extensions.
• New: Upload button added for use in custom plug-ins and extensions to upload files.
• New: Filter to adjust tour labels.
• New: Filters to adjust Floor Plan labels.
• New: Filters to adjust External Link labels.
• New: Sold prices now display when set on front end and manage listings pages.
• New: Label function for returning meta labels.
• New: Ads on settings no longer display when there is an activated extension present.
• New: Locked and help cases options for use in extensions and custom plugins.
• New: Theme compatibility mode which enables all themes to display correctly with options to disable featured images for themes that automatically add featured images.
• New: City setting to allow addresses in countries that need more than a suburb Label is customisable from settings.
• New: Country setting to allow the country to display with the listing address.
• New: Able to adjust or add more registered thumbnail sizes through a filter.
• New: Function to get all the values associated with a specific post meta key.
• New: Replaced the_post_thumbnail on archive pages and shortcodes with a customisable hook allowing for additional customisation with themes.
• New: Specific templates for theme compatibility mode for archive and single listings.
• New: Template loading system allowing for additional templates to be added to shortcodes and widgets from themes, custom plug-ins and extensions. This allows you to create an unlimited number of templates and load them from your theme.
• New: Sorter allows for sorting by current/sold leased.
• New: Ability to add additional sorter via filter.
• New: Post counter function for use in extensions and custom plug-ins.
• New: User fields re-built which allows for adding on new fields through filter.
• New: Help meta type allowing for better internal documentation in extensions.
• New: City meta field added to all listing types when enabled.
• New: Rental display or hide rental price.
• New: Check-box single field type.
• New: Actions added to enable extensions to better hook into listings types and optimised functions for admin column details.
• New: Dashboard widget now displays other extensions content counts.
• New: Listing widget now allows for additional selectable templates to be added through custom plug-ins, hooks and themes.
• New: Replaced widget image with a dynamic action.
• New: Filter added for Gravatar image.
• New: Replaced widget and author box image functions with actions.
• New: Uninstall function to remove all Easy Property Listings content.
• New: Get option function.
• New: When saving settings on extensions sub tabs you are no longer taken to the first tab.
• New: Customisable state label.
• Tweak: Improved under offer, sold and leased labels.
• Tweak: Improved install function to reduce code and allow for new settings to be added.
• Tweak: Removed redundant code and streamlined templates.
• Tweak: Improved reset query function.
• Tweak: Removed old functions improving plugin code.
• Tweak: Rebuilt address function to allow for city and country.
• Tweak: Improved sorter function in all shortcodes.
• Tweak: Improvements to Commercial and Business listing types to better comply with REAXML format with business takings, franchise, terms and commercial outgoings.
• Tweak: Reorganised settings page.
• Tweak: Translations updated and additional tags added.
• Tweak: Search button default label changed from “Find Me A Property!” to “Search”.
• Tweak: Applied custom suburb label to EPL – Listing Widget.
• Fix: Listings house categories correctly display labels instead of values.
• Fix: Listings with carport, garage or values set to zero no longer display.
• Fix: Shortcode compatibility for WordPress 3.3 thanks to codewp.
• Fix: Saving listing when in debug mode and ticking hide map or hide author box.
• Fix: New Zealand currency now displays a dollar sign.

The post Easy Property Listings 2.2 Released appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

• Tweak: Set padding for search tabs for better display on some themes.
• Fix: Search function fix checking for empty option when using custom filters.

The post Easy Property Listings 2.2.1 Maintenance Release appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

• Tweak: CSS tweak for image size to retain proportion on certain themes.
• Tweak: Adjusted position of show/hide suburb on Commercial/Business listing types.
• Fix: Archive image correctly loading 300×200 image.
• Fix: Listing address display settings fixed.

The post Easy Property Listings 2.2.2 Maintenance Release appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

• Tweak: Adjusted new sorter function to work on lower than PHP version 5.3.
• Tweak: Moved old template functions to theme compatibility, will be removed in future version.
• Tweak: Set sorter list style to none to prevent some themes from displaying a list bullet.

The post Easy Property Listings 2.2.3 Maintenance Release appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

This release addresses several issues with the re-mastered search functions and we have made improvements to the pricing of Commercial, Commercial Land and Business listings.

Full Change Log

• Tweak: Improvements to Commercial/Commercial Land/Business pricing when set to Lease type to display free form price text.
• Tweak: Bar graph in dashboard will no longer cover address if set to low.
• Tweak: Added sticker CSS styling for single listing.
• Fix: Search Widget/Shortcode display house category value instead of key.
• Fix: Search Widget/Shortcode Property ID correctly searches numeric listing ID.
• Fix: Search Widget/Shortcode excluded non searchable fields from land, commercial, commercial land and business post types.

The post Easy Property Listings 2.2.4 Maintenance Release appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

We are upgrading our hosting to a Faster, better, super awesome server hosting powered by NetOrigin. This will take place from 6th August 2015 at 8pm AWST. (Australian Western Standard Time)

Just before the migration begins we will disable the support forums and comments until the migration is complete.

We have been using NetOrigin hosting for several years now and they provide an outstanding service and fantastic support for website hosting.

Easy Property Listings will now be on their Magento Accelerate plan which is excellent for WordPress websites especially in Australia. The speed improvement that their SSD drives provide are excellent and we are looking forward to the improvement.

NetOrigin hosting have a number of different plans to suit all your website hosting needs.

Note: Migration complete

The post Easy Property Listings is moving to a bigger, faster, SSD server on 6th August 2015 at 8pm AWST appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

We are pleased to announce after a few hundred hours of programming and testing that the much anticipated Sliders extension is available. If you have already purchased the Developer Bundle that we are pleased to let you know that the Sliders extension has been added to your account and is ready for download and use on your real estate websites.

With this extension you can create unique listing galleries for your listings with the many options available for you to personalise the Slider for your website.

Sliders Demo

The post Sliders Extension Released appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

It’s been a hectic few weeks here for us since the release of the five star rated and fastest growing real estate plugin on WordPress.

Along with the release of Easy Property Listings 2.2.4 we have finally completed the Sliders extension which has now been released. We have been working on the Sliders extension for several weeks and its been a hell of a challenge along with the major release of Easy Property Listings 2.2 which happened only 11 days ago and we hit our highest downloads per day at 453, up from our previous peak of 285 on the release of version 2.1 which you can read about here.

We have also had a huge number of new support requests from WordPress developers and real estate agents on the forum discovering Easy Property Listings and it shows we are growing which is absolutely fantastic! However we have had trouble keeping up with basic/free support so we encourage you to sign up for priority support so we can allocate resources to handle your questions promptly, thoroughly and with better detail and detailed tutorials.

Along with the continued upgrades to Easy Property Listings we build real estate websites for end users and developers who need a website. If you need support, we are here and can help you get going with your new or updated real estate website.

Easy Property Listings has been a totally new experience for me coming from a real estate sales background. I’ve learned a lot and hit many highs and lows for over 2 years now.

Launching a full featured real estate plugin for WordPress has been an experience and I love the feedback and support we get every single day. If you are using Easy Property Listings on your WordPress real estate website(s) if you have a minute please leave a review.

Read the release notes of Easy Property Listings 2.2.4

The post What’s new with the fastest growing free real estate plugin for WordPress appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.

With the Brochures extension for Easy Property Listings you can create printable brochures and stock lists for your listings. There are several options to control the brochure styles and templates. Or create your own!

This extension also integrates with the Staff Directory extension allowing you to add custom staff images instead of using a Gravatar image.

Brochures Demo

Brochure Extension Settings

Brochure Extension Examples

Stock List Demo PDF*
Brochures Stock List Saved as PDF
* PDF was saved using Google Chrome browser, this extension does not output a PDF file.

Change Log

• * Fix: License key not saving. Manual upgrade of this extension is required as we have corrected the error which prevented the license key from saving.
• New: Adjusted CSS for better display on some themes.
• New: Shortcode [epl_brochure] to output a single brochure by post id or property unique id.
• New: Shortcode [epl_brochures_list] to output a stock sheet/list of listings and select a default template from the extension settings.
• New: Ability to load your theme stylesheet on the brochures.
• New: Ability to load custom CSS from themes/your_theme/easypropertylistings/css/
• Tweak: Adjusted brochure buttons and brochures to noindex no follow to prevent duplicate content.
• Fix: Corrected image output on default brochure style. * Fix: Removed testimonials from outputting on brochure.
• Fix: Corrected staff directory extension author. * New: Added custom template loader to load template from theme.

Purchase Brochures and Stock List Extension
Brochures Extension Documentation

The post Printable Stock Lists and Brochures Extension Updated appeared first on Easy Property Listings WordPress Plugin.