We just launched our community for REI a few weeks ago. We've had some positive reviews so far (check out the notes Truliablog, RealtyThoughts, etc.), but there is always room for improvement.

We're looking to improve SEO and perhaps UI. But we think, both should be pretty on point right now. Please let us know if you find anything that seems out of place.

Site: http://www.flippingpad.com

Feel free to drop us a line for any REI questions. We are also on the hunt for some potential moderators, strategic partners...

Thanks in advance,
Patrick

Any thoughts folks. We'd really like to hear your opinions.

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Patrick Teuscher
http://www.flippingpad.com

IMO, I think the skin/template looks like the REW blog design.

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Nicholas May | Creative Linking | Real Estate Webmasters

Really? I actually don't think so at all: Nick you are likely under that impression because of the use of CSS and tabs etc, but certainly I don't see the parody, in fact I actually think the design has a lot potential - I really like the active discussions piece. If anything I would say this site was more inspired by technoratti

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

I've become a proponent of lots of white space. Your site exemplifies all I seek in a clean, well coded site.

I do suggest that you make your propertie's URL and <title> tag more search friendly; i.e.,

http://www.flippingpad.com/pads/89-B...rice-potential

doesn't do much for me.

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Sorry I should have been more clear. I just find the fonts similar as well as the tabs on the top right corner. On top of that, it's clean and well put together.

Edit: I guess my first post came off kind of negative. It was more of a compliment as I think they are both really well designed sites

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Nicholas May | Creative Linking | Real Estate Webmasters

It is very clean - but I'd personally like to see a little more hierarchy.

Is there something specific that you really want people to do when they visit your site? Like login/sign up?

I'd emphasize that with a font that's a couple notches bigger perhaps. Give the viewers one obvious place to start from, you know?

Granted, they might go to the upper left and read through the welcome text anyway, since the upper left is traditional; but your tabs are on the right, and the middle column is a bit heavier (visually) so either of those might draw the eyes away right at first.

Other than that though, it looks good.

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-Dan
Oregon House Market - How to Buy, Sell, or Finance a Home

PCdoc,

Could you provide an example of a better way to show the url and title tag for SEO purposes.

As for the comments on the fonts / tab similarities to REW. Your gonna start noticing even more of this style design. Nearly every major corp. is leaning towards the blog styling. It's probably gonna be that way for a while. This is mostly thks to the folks at 37signals and the advent of rails / framework coding.

OHwebmaster -- I see your point about the signup in terms of hierarchy. We may attempt a fix for that, however we're not big proponents of pushing a user to signup. We think the site is compelling in other ways, or atleast we hope it is.

Any other SEO advance.

Great comments folks, thanks for taking the time to check it out. If you know anyone interested in partnering with us. We are on the hunt for industry pros and sites to team up with.

Cheers -- Patrick

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Patrick Teuscher
http://www.flippingpad.com

Patrick,
I always like seeing real estate on the front page. Users come to a real estate site to see real estate not to click on links.

In general it looks good. I would increase the white space by about 20%. Its slightly cluttered.

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Neal M
Jackson MO Real Estate, Cape Girardeau Missouri Real Estate, Cape Girardeau Real Estate
HouseViewOnline™ is southeast Missouri’s leading site for touring real estate online. See 100’s of properties from Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Perryville & Sikeston Missouri. Properties are displayed in photos taken by our professional photographer. We are proud to work with Realtors and real estate agents through out SE Missouri.

I think it looks great but it could be a bit less cluttered.