We have just released a few interesting updates for our Google Map Search targeted at making the search experience more fluid for your web visitors and more configurable for you. The new features include:

• “Drag-and-search” on the Google Map Search: now when you pan around the map, it will automatically update with found listings in the displayed area. (To make this experience more logical, this works only if there are no painted areas within which the visitor chose to search).
• Auto-show listings on the Google Map Search as soon as the form is shown. This feature can now be enabled from your Properties Pages Weblet (see screenshot further below) or in Embedded Listings codes, when configuring your listings for 3rd party websites. When enabled, this will automatically run the search and show the listings on the map when the form displays on your webpage.
• Added a nifty “View as List” link to the map toolbar to make it easier to switch the map view to the list view without the need to click the “Search” button again.

You can easily enable your Google Map Search to auto-show the listings on startup through the Properties Pages Weblet:

We hope you like these updates. We would love to hear from you: please leave your comments here or drop us a line to feedback@myrealpage.com

Since the release of our Embeddable Listings product in 2009, it has been used by many REALTORS® in their 3rd party websites, such as WordPress, custom, or even websites from other vendors. Combined with the portable Listing Showcases, the powerful VOW, predefined searches and a mobile search, this product offers a compelling value.

Today, we would like feature an example of an effective use of our embeddable listings and showcases: a WordPress-based website run by Jacob Krause and Jacky Levi: EastVanHouses.com

Here is a little information on their website and business in their own words:

Jacob Krause and Jacky Levi with TRG Realty, East Vancouver Realtors helping clients buy and sell houses, townhomes and duplexes on Vancouver's Eastside. They've been selling real estate for over 10 years in the neighborhoods of Cedar Cottage, Cambie's Douglas Park, Renfrew, Grandview, Killarney, Knight, Mount Pleasant, Victoria VE, Collingwood and Main St. Offering home sellers the most advanced real estate website and giving them direct access to local and international buyers from all around the world. Buyers have the ability to view houses for sale in all of the East Vancouver communities with brilliant interior photos, property descriptions, real estate video tours and Realtor contact details.

For those that run WordPress blogs out there, be sure to also check out myRealPage fully indexable WordPress IDX and Listings plugin for our supported regions in Canada and US.

If you are interested in finding out more, give our sales a call at : 1-888-478-8797 or drop us a line to sales@myrealpage.com

We are very thrilled to publicly release the first beta version of our IDX and Listings WordPress plugin. This plugin is designed to give your WordPress blog or website the full power of myRealPage Listing solution, including support for Reciprocity (public searches*), Virtual Office Website (VOW*), Predefined Searches* for your niche listing pages, and much more.The plugin is specifically designed to inline the listing content inside your WordPress pages in order to make it fully visible to search engine crawlers and make it SEO friendly. We have taken special care to generate descriptive dynamic titles for pages that you don’t directly control, such as Listing Details pages into which your visitors will navigate by browsing listing.

Currently, the plugin provides IDX WordPress integration in select regions in Canada and the US, including: Greater Vancouver area, Edmonton and Calgary areas, Saskatchewan, Victoria, Vancouver Island, San Diego, Greater Phoenix area in Arizona, Chicago and some others (call us for full details: 1-866-512-3876 or drop us a line to support@myrealpage.com)

myRealPage WordPress plugin utilizes the power of WordPress “shortcodes”: special placeholders which are dynamically turned into useful content by the WordPress rendering engine. Our plugin comes bundled with a very flexible and powerful Listing Shortcode Wizard which will help you create all sorts of listing configurations, including functional and visual options, such as custom width for the listing content, basic color theme, custom sort order, and much more. The Listing Shortcode Wizard also includes a Preview button to make sure you got your configuration right.

Use the Shortcode Wizard to include such listing content as:

• Your and your office listings, including your listings optionally split by status and custom defined categories, as well as combined with other hand-picked listings
• Any predefined search, on its own or combined with hand picked listings
• A number of hand-picked listings which you can look up in Shortcode Wizard by MLS® numbers
• An individual listing, including specifically details, photo, video or map view (great for building single property websites)
• A standard or custom configured search form

We have also bundled out-of-the-box support for twentyten theme which comes as the default theme in new WordPress versions, as well as Thesis 1.8 theme which appears to be one of the more popular ones out there. If you are CSS-savvy or work with a designer or developer, you can also adapt this plugin to work with other themes: read more on our technical blog.

We have also published a full HOW-TO on the installation and use of the plugin on our Tech Blog.

Here are some screenshots of the myRealPage WordPress plugin in action on our demo website with Thesis 1.8 theme:

myRealPage WordPress Shortcodes Wizard:

We hope you will find this product useful. Let us know what you think: you can leave your comments here to send them to feedback@myrealpage.com

-- brought to you by myRealPage.com

* For availability of Reciprocity and VOW in your region, please contact us at sales@myrealpage.com

We are very pleased to publish a very large update to the myRealPage Listings product. The update covers a pretty wide area and introduces new functionality, boosts existing features, and improves user experience. myRealPage has been long offering a very powerful set of listing tools and features; and today’s updates are designed to let you take advantage of these easier and faster.

When you login into your Private Office, you will notice the new changes in the “Listings” section:

Here is a quick look at these 5 main sections:

Embeddable Listings and IDX wizard:

Embeddable Listings and IDX is an advanced toolkit from myRealPage which allows you to embed a powerful Listing Search engine (IDX) and a fully featured Virtual Office Website (VOW) in a 3rd party website, such as WordPress, Joomla, or even if a website is with another real estate website provider that lacks these features. It has proven to be a flexible option for many who want to take advantage of myRealPage listing functionality but continue running their existing websites.

The new Embeddable Listings wizard is a veritable powerhouse of options now. If before, you had a limited set of embeddable listing scriptlets, now you can configure very exactly what sort of listing content you would like to embed, including:

• Your listings, including custom categories, etc.
• Predefined searches
• Hand-picked listings combined with your listings or searches
• An individual listing
• A search form

You can also fine-tune how your listing content will appear by setting a theme, template, custom width and many other options.

We have also made sure that this wizard allows you to create and edit your Predefined Searches and Search Forms right in place, without needing to go to the Private Office to do so.

In addition, we have “webified”, this wizard so that you don’t need to login into the Private Office to access it. If you prefer to use this wizard outside the Private Office, simply follow this link to login into your wizard in your web browser.

Mobile Links and QR codes:

myRealPage has always taken mobile very seriously and has been offering free mobile listing tools for all its customers, those that do and don’t have myRealPage websites. myRealPage also released powerful, simple to use, fully editable Mobile Websites which can be tightly integrated with your regular website.

We have also created easy tools for our customers to access and use QR codes for listings and contact information. QR codes are a great way to publish mobile friendly content to smartphone users.

We have now combined all the mobile links and QR codes into one coherent interface where you can get mobile links to:

• Your listings
• Office listings
• Mobile listing search
• Individual listings
• and a QR code for your contact information

Predefined Searches:

Predefined Listing Searches have been very popular with myRealPage customers: they allow you to create “canned” search pages with listing results matching a particular set of criteria. You can create searches, like “Luxury Downtown Condos”, or “Core Area Lofts”, etc. The new interface allows you easily browse, create, edit and preview your predefined searches.

Note the new “Preview results” button in the Predefined Search wizard: it should allow you to easily verify that the search is producing desired results.

Search Forms:

Search Forms are a great way to create a specially pre-configured listing search formes for your website that accurately reflect your niche market and audience. For example, if you specialize in a particular neighborhood or types of properties, you can easily configure your search form to have those types of properties and neighborhood areas pre-selected, so your visitors start interacting with your listing searches right away.

The new screens allow you to quickly and easily manage your Search Forms:

Listing Showcases:

Listing Showcases are a great way to publish and advertise various groups of listings or individual listings via a variety of formats, such as:

• Listing slideshow with and without Flash
• Listings on a Google Map
• Listing grids
• Horizontally sliding listing bands
• Simple featured listings

These showcases can be created based on your listings, a predefined search, or a combination of hand-picked listings. They can be embedded in your website or any other website.

The new interface allows you to quickly and easily manage these showcases:

We hope you will find these updates useful and easy to use. We would love to hear your feedback: simply leave a comment here to drop us a line at feedback@myrealpage.com

-- Brought to you by myRealPage.com