IDX/MLS Solutions

[hightide13]

Is there anyone here who has tackled custom IDX solutions who is willing to discuss it?

I have recieved access to our local MLS data feed but I need some guidance on how to proceed. I did a search on this entire site for IDX and it didnt return any results so I dont know if you guys arent using it or just arent talking about it.

I am trying to figure out the best way to pull the data (in a zipped TAB delimted file) off of the FTP server and then open the zip file, extract the txt file, upload it to MySQL on my webserver. That is the only hard part for me.

Thanks in advance for any support...


(ps. I just realized that IDX is too short of a search term...oops...)

[kyle422]

I just posted about this subject. Vlado can help you.
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread1815.html

[hightide13]

Thanks Kyle. I will give him a shout...

[MattL]

I would say it all depends on how comprehensive the web site is. Downloading and parsing the data into MySQL isn't that big of a job; I think it took me a day to write a Windows service that does just that in VB.NET.

The bigger effort (and I'll bet Vlado agrees) is making the Listing pages user friendly, print friendly, and every-screen-size friendly (right, Ken?), plus translating the tireless Realtor shorthand into some form of plausible English that the average consumer understands. PLUS, there's search intelligence. Man, even after a year of tweaking what was already a smart search engine (with proximity and soundex matching), people still find ways of "creative" searching that we hadn't considered when we'd designed the system.

As I said, the first part took about a day, the rest... well, we're still perfecting it. I think it'll be another year until I'm really satisfied that we're covering 95% of users' needs.

-Matt