Best way to display listings on your website?

[20something RE Guy]

Is there any good method that agents who design their own websites use to display their listings?

I'm going to a team shortly, and in the past have just coded all the listings myself. Once I get the transition over, i'll have something like 15-20 team listings on my website, so I really would like to have something more automated.

I really don't want to go to a complete website vendor, as I really like my current website layout.

Thanks!

[BrandonSternfield]

You have a few options, if you want to avoid going to a designer or hosting provider:

1) The most up to date, and automated version : research how to do IDX, and pull the listings appropriate to your Agent ID, and your other realtor's Agent ID.
This solution is by far the hardest to do by yourself, but it's something that if you can manage to educate yourself, set up the ftp schedule, the download schedule, and the parsing, that you can set it up and forget about it (assuming your MLS never changes.. which they will).
2) Get a CMS system to handle listings. This could be creating a php template or scripting to pull in files separately, this is more of a C++ approach. Essentially, you have a listing page, and you have a bunch of .txt, or whatever type of file you want (could do it themed with .remax, or .21, etc). Essentially, each property would have it's own file, or each agent, depending how you wanted to display. The web page would parse the file(s) and display the data accordingly.
If you go the CMS route, you can create a mysql server, and create a back end to 'add' a listing to the database. And edit it. Then your page can pull directly from the server.

3) You can do each property by hand (or in notepad, or dreamweaver, or front page etc), by editing a template and uploading the file, and linking.

There are a ton more, but every solution depends on your knowledge and expertise, as well as your ability to learn. I highly suggest you NOT use my C++ method, as that works in executables, it would be bad potentially for web based applications/sites.

The best option is the centralized IDX feed using your agent ID's, but that's the hardest. That's basically asking you to research how to make an IDX, and as I'm sure you could imagine, that is quite the daunting task. You could always commission a group or company to code it out for you though, and ask them to theme it to your page, and simply frame it in, or if you pay more, ask for the code and upload the page(s) yourself.

Wow, this post is totally longer then I meant it to be, and is most likely causing more confusion then helping... point is, there are a lot of ways to get this type of deal done. If you can afford it, go to a company who specializes in this!

[20something RE Guy]

I have looked into the IDX route, unfortunately from what I can tell, our MLS does NOT allow agents to pull listings from IDX , only the brokers are allowed to have IDX on their websites.

I've been doing #3 for quite some time, and it's now getting very labor intensive.

I really wish there was a good way to get IDX on it.

[BrandonSternfield]

If only broker's can IDX, you might talk to your broker into working out a deal (i.e. have them work with you on the site enough to where it would work). I don't know the legal part of that side, so that's best done without my opinion

You could pay a php programmer to create a mysql database for you, create a form on the back end to enter properties, and a page to display them. Possibly even creating a category for each agent, and have a page be selected to display a certain agent's listings only.

[20something RE Guy]

Unfortunately my broker is VERY large and i've already emailed the technical support team. All i can do is frame their website (which is already 100% of the screen).

It's quite upsetting really, I'm finding that the ability to have IDX and displaying my listings from the MLS are both quite narrow.

[20something RE Guy]

*UPDATE*


Well , I FINALLY figured out what to do......


Postlets has a "Gallery" section , that you can design and use as a system to display all your listings, I was able to get it to Iframe well to my website.

It's a little akward, but much better than the rest


www.realestatecircleville.com/listings.html