Hi all — I’m new to REW in my current role as broker/owner, but I previously worked extensively with REW years ago while at Realty Austin. At the time, we had a highly customized build and didn’t use subdomains for our agents. Most of the key content — bios, testimonials, listings, etc. — was integrated directly into the agent pages.
Now that I’m setting up a new brokerage site, I’ve been trying to find documentation or articles on how to add testimonials, active listings, and sold properties to agent bio pages. I’m not having much luck and it seems like REW is steering more toward using subdomains for this functionality.
If that’s the case, I’m wondering — do I need to enable IDX/VOW separately for each subdomain in order to display that data per agent? Or is there a way to keep everything on the main domain without having to manage individual subdomain setups?
I’d love to keep things centralized if possible. Any insights or best practices would be appreciated!
Hi @JoleneW! Welcome back to REW – let me try to answer your questions below:
On the agent bio page the agent’s listings will show as a snippet below the agent’s photo and bio. This pulls the listings that are linked to the agent’s id(s) which need to be set up on their preferences page just under the Professional Title field:
As long as the agents id(s) are added here, all the related listings will display here, this includes sold listings if it’s a VOW feed.
However if you want to add testimonials on that page it would require custom work.
Subdomains do offer more flexibility for agents as they can create their own content without being limited to their bio page.
That’s correct, when you enable a subdomain for a given agent, you just need to check the feeds that you want to give them access to. For example, here I have both an IDX and VOW feeds and I can choose which one (or both) will be used by the subdomain:
Just to confirm on the IDX/Vow feeds, my agreement that I’ve signed will work then for agents subdomains. I just want to verify that the agent does not need to sign their own agreements and pay for the feeds? Thanks for your help.
I’m not familiar with the MLS process but I believe every feed is different, when you check a feed for a subdomain you will see the following disclaimer:
By selecting these feeds you have acknowledged that you have done the necessary paperwork with each MLS for this agent
I would advise reaching out to your account manager to discuss the details.
I’ve been through something similar recently. You can keep everything on the main domain—bios, testimonials, active and sold listings—but it usually takes some custom setup. REW does seem to push subdomains now, but it’s not the only option.
For listings and solds, you can often pull those in by filtering with the agent’s MLS ID. Testimonials can be added to the agent page too—it just might not be built-in by default.
I’d suggest reaching out to REW support to ask about filtering by agent ID on the main site. That way, you don’t have to mess with subdomains or separate IDX setups.
Best answer for the IDX paperwork issue is “it depends on the feed” - some MLS’s require paperwork for each sub domain (and some ever charge per sub domain like Denver, other MLS’s only care if the broker has signed for the main site and sub domains are already covered under that agreement.
If you’re ABOR - just check with Stan and the crew over there and they will give you the correct answer.
I just checked your profile and it looks like you have in fact moved to Porchlight / Denver, is that correct?
If so, absolutely you should flag the feeds with MLS as from my recollection they do in fact require payment on “each subdomain” (one of the few MLS’s in the world that do this) and it’s quite high (like $15-$20 something like that per agent per month)
REW (and all vendors I’m aware of) pass this cost through as an additional cost to the broker if charged to the vendor, as it is a cost “from the MLS” - I don’t know if they have a pay them directly option or not, so best to check on that as well.
I was with Realty Austin for 13 years, ended as COO - Spent the last year at Porchlight as President. I just started my own company “Intege Realty.” I live in Denver, and eventually my business will host 3 Cities - “Austin, Dallas, Denver”. I hope this helps you. On the feeds, I will check on that but honestly I am not a fan of creating subdomains. I would prefer agents having a domain that points to their bio page on company website and with the use of “T-Links” and “P-Links” their personal leads are captured for them. I don’t really see the reference of these types of links in your forums. I am starting to wonder if that was an RA thing and not an REW. Would love to know.
As for RA on REW of course they were! (For quite some time, I think it was from 2009-2020 (so over 10 years) - however as you know, Jonathan and Gabe do a LOT of custom work, so the Realty Austin site from then was nowhere near standard.
As for using agent pages instead of sub domains - I like that too, and it will save you some $ (at least in Denver)
Showing your agents listings and sold listings is default behavior as Fernando suggested, so no issues there.
Can you explain what a T and an P link is though? I have no idea what those reference.
Note - the “current” Realty Austin site is no longer at REW, and has not been since at least 2020 thought we remain great friends with Gabe and Jonathan. As I’m sure you know, they are Compass now.
Thanks Morgan, what we did is take a url “like mine” Jolene Weinstein - put a /t/ in there so it would become https://www.integerealty.com/agent/t/jolene-weinstein/ | This link was then on all newsletters and other social media marketing materials. As a result - if this was used by a consumer, the site knew to automatically assign it to that agent as a lead. Later we added /p/ on properties so if we did marketing on properties - the same would happen. Funny, I heard it referred to as a feature of REW, but I realize that this was most likely paid development. Guess, I might need to call Carly.
Nope you don’t need to call her (Thought that is a very odd, custom way to do that).
We actually have default functionality in our system that does that for “any” URL (at least I’m pretty sure we do lol) - @FernandoOrtiz can you please confirm the appending syntax?
I “think” it’s something like adding ?=agentid1235 but it’s been a while since I looked into that.
Basically sets a cookie that makes sure users that register if that link was the originator goes to that agent id.
Yes, I am familiar with those, caveats. I use to teach heavily on how the links worked. It was not a perfect world, but using the links made agents 99% happy - most don’t want to mess with a subdomain or their own website upkeep. While I know RA moved from REW, I was just VP of sales at that point - I always loved it… so here I am, wanting to take over that #1 Indie Website spot in Texas one day. (LOL). I know just enough to make me dangerous.
Hi guys! The syntax is ?agent=XX after the URL, where XX is the agent’s id in the CRM. So for example, if I look at my agent preferences in the backend, I can see my id at the end of the URL:
If I were to share a link to my website adding this at the end, something like https://MySiteURL.com/?agent=2, any new leads that register after clicking this link will be assigned to myself!
– let me try to answer your questions below:
