Speaking with the developers last week I was pleased to learn that WPRealty 3.0 is on the horizon as an expected release date has been set for the first quarter of 2011. After examination of all the changes in the application I was surprised to see a greatly enhanced database structure and the complete migration away from any and all Open-Realty® code.

A little history on the application may shed more light as to why this upcoming release is so very important. Early on WPRealty was a WordPress plugin that simply bridged two popular open source applications together for nearly seamless integration. The first version of the plugin simply allowed you to install both WordPress and Open-Realty® in order to show real estate listings in your blog, both as posts and pages. After Open-Realty® updated their application to include a blog of their own, it became a bit confusing to end users who tried to draw the line between the need for such an integration. Why use WPrealty if OR includes a blog?

Recognizing that people still wanted real estate solutions for their WordPress blog, WPRealty’s team set out to fork a version of Open-Realty® into a stand alone plugin for WordPress there by becoming the first ever truly real estate WordPress plugin. That statement may offend some even though true since WPRealty suffered substantial bad press and resentment by Open-Realty® supporters hell bent on seeing the application fail. WPRealty was in fact the very first plugin that made the attempt to integrate real estate listings into WordPress almost simultaneously as the now popular “Great Realestate Plugin” was released.

WPRealty changed the approach a bit when it announced that they were migrating completely away from the bridged solution to a fully proprietary GNU/GPL compatible version they hoped to be in 2.5.  Since 2.5 had come and gone, the new code and structure is actually being realized in the version 3 of the application. Unlike the previous versions, the version 3 was tasked to solve several persistent issues with the 2.0 series of the plugin mainly in the area of search engine optimization and ease of use.  Although the plugin was my idea initially my capacity and involvement dwindled overnight as the development team was financed by long time magazine publisher Chad Broussard. My role even today is advisory and interface design related.

Even today, the team at WPRealty realizes that the emergence of so many competing plugins would put such a blur on the market as to which ones is best for each solution; they continue to revamp the structure to accommodate only a few unique business models which I’ll explore in a different post.

Here is a Calendar History of WPRealty

August 15 2007

The very first version was simply a bridge plugin that allowed the publishing of Open-Realty® listings into a WordPress page or post. The solution was first built and tested on two sites that are still in use today. http://napaforeclosures.net and http://lookforcoloradohomes.com In fact those two sites were the motivation behind the development of the plugin in the first place as each site was new both to WordPress and to the market. With SEO foremost on their minds, creating WPRealty was a test in essence to see if listings could be indexed faster if part of WordPress.

Both of the sites above mentioned are using newer solutions now.

November 13 2008

After several refinements I decided to publish it along with 4 other plugins on WordPress for the first time. My motive was of course link bait in hopes people would link back to my site.

June 20 2009

Version 1.0.6 was published to WordPress to solve dozens of bugs and issues including the iframe and CUrl features that broke on some host providers. At this point it was being discussed that the plugin should actually include a fully installable version of Open-Realty® in accordance to their license to save people the headache of having to configure each app to work together. The first versions of WPRealty that included Open-Realty® were released on a few blogs which was quickly received as a favorite among Realtors already using OR since they did not need to relearn the interface. For the next few months, the integration of a forked version of OR was where the development went.

October 10 2009

The first release of the 2.0 series was released and the paid support model was used to raise funds for development. The idea was that you can have WPRealty 100% free of charge where support and guidance would be given in the forums keeping with the OR license. But the paid support model was in increments of usage beginning with entry level support at $30 and moving up from there. WPRealty 2.0 was a night and day different experience from the 1.0 series since bridging was out and integration was the new process as a full forked version of Open-Realty® was added to the plugin keeping in compliance with the OR license naturally.

This is where the public assault on WPRealty began first by an employee of Home Depot named Abner “The Tico” failed multiple times to get the plugin to work in his awkward hosting solution.  WPRealty was already in planning for version 2.0.5 at this point to solve these issues when Abner rallied attacks from his best source of like minded people, the competition. This coupled with dozens of RSS, link, and setup problems, in addition to the lack of documentation was so bad that it lead many to believe WPRealty simply did not work. This was not the case in most instances.

The first true release version suffered horrible bad press and reviews and the team had spent a solid month tracking issues and updating as quickly as they could.  WPRealty early on was likely the most actively developed and updated app of its type. My opinion.

May 17 2010

Jealous of the successful response WPRealty was gaining in the market after multiple bug fixes; the developers of Open-Realty® cried foul ball. It was later discovered that the initial concern the OR people had was that WPRealty was making money for support fully unaware that Open-Realty® was secretly being prepared for commercialization.

Although the license was adhered to accurately, the developers at Open-Realty® felt the confusion between each application was such, that people would not be able to discern that they were not directly affiliated with the plugin and set out to pursue legal action. The assertions made in the claim was that unauthorized use of the Open-Realty® was being abused and that copyright infringement was taking place in addition to other petty and clearly bogus points. This poorly thought out claim essentially stated that the use of the word Open and Realty joined by a hyphen was a registered trademark that the owner thereby wanted any and all use of it on blogs or sites owned by Jared Ritchey and Chad Broussard be removed. In  addition there was demand to stop of further development of WPRealty. Both claims proved to be wishful thinking having no legal merit what soever.

Naturally since the license in Open-Realty® was unchanged since the early versions of the product, the opportunity to fork in compliance to the license was 100% legal to do so long as credit was given where credit was due. Next, people are able to write about programs and companies giving proper disclosure of trademarks so long as you don’t abuse it. Case in point is this very post in which I give proper formatting and disclosure of the OR trademark. Needless to say, the legal threats and countless attacks and extortion attempts by the developers of Open-Realty® quickly died as host providers, developers and even CERN recognized the attempts to be potentially fraudulent as well as malicious and frivolous.

October 2 2010

WPRealty is at version 2.5.6 and has solved nearly every issue that has surfaced from the beginning with new features being added frequently. A new feature recently added was better SEO tools and broad support for canonical URL’s in addition to dozens of short code templates.  WPRealty has moved away from the old support ware model to pursue one that works better by providing a collection of exclusive videos and license models beneficial to developers. More on this later.

Tomorrow – First Quarter 2011

WPRealty has finally tossed any and all Open-Realty® code including the database structure for a totally revamped one. The new DB structure takes into account changes that are on the horizon for the market in general as the team worked very closely with various Boards of Realtors and MLS providers to integrate its own RETS data loader.

The new version of WPRealty which makes a full version jump includes 3 commercially licensed products and much better export tools for things such as XML, SiteMaps and feeds in addition to a full blown client resource manager.  Previously it had been discussed that making WPRealty a CRM would be pointless since the bridging to vTiger or SugarCRM would be the ideal considering they already had the code being implemented.  Keeping the option for bridging available the new CRM features have a great deal more to do with lead conversion than anything else.

WPRealty handles listings management substantially different than its predecessor to better accommodate the multitude of MLS integration methods being employed. The team took all the lessons learned with the 2.0 series and simply made it better.