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Drupal For Real Estate?

By Matthew Pellerin

Real Estate Agent with Realty Executives - PhoenixHomes.com

July 11, 2007 09:30 AM

I am proud to announce that www.PhoenixHomes.com is now a fully custom site using the Drupal platform.

A special thank you to my Director of Marketing, Max Chirkov, for helping to make all of this possible!

We went live with the new version back on 6/20/07. I was a bit nervous about the move and possible loss of leads (revenue) since the domain has been hosted with Advanced Access for a lot of years. But using 301 re-directs we were able to maintain our positioning in all the major search engines and even gain a few spots! So, our transition from Advanced Access to our own custom site went very well.

Here's a snapshot of how the site looked when it was with AA (keep in mind that this was also semi-custom):

Phoenix Homes W/Advanced Access

Now, here's a snapshot of the current custom design on our own server:

Phoenix Homes New Custom Design

Not only did we switch from left to right hand navigation, but now our IDX is fully integrated on a sub-domain http://Search.PhoenixHomes.com provided by Killer IDX. This enables our visitors to search the entire Arizona Multiple Listing Service without ever leaving our site, or giving up any personal information.

My favorite sections of the new site are our homes for sale and the Phoenix Monsoon. They are my favorites because of the images and the way they load. Go to one of the above links and navigate to the listing details if viewing our homes for sale and click on any picture, or click on any picture if viewing the Monsoon pictures. Well... what do you think? I think it is sweet how the image appears and you can move to the next one, or back, etc. yet you never lose the exact place you were at on the site. In fact you can still see the site under the transparent black background.

My next favorite part is the ability to search for homes the way YOU want to. We offer the ability to search homes for sale by school district, or find homes for sale by maps of city boundaries, or by using one of our preset searches by price range in each of the following city's we serve: Carefree, Cave Creek, Central Corridor, North Phoenix, Paradise Valley, Pinnacle Peak, Rio Verde or Scottsdale. Not to mention the basic search on http://Search.PhoenixHomes.com!

So, what do you think about the new vs. the old? What's your favorite part or page of the new site?

Posted in the Ramblings From Phoenix blog.

Comments(28)

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San Diego, CA

"hot pink"

Hey, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Charles, I have a drupal site that's up that I wont be using in its present form. If you want to play with it on a different domain, you're welcome to make it your own personal sandbox. We can send you the zipped files.

Let me know.

Jul 11, 2007 10:49 AM

Anonymous

Susi Leis

This is great! I haven't seen a site like this in Santa Barbara! Good job, bro!

Jul 11, 2007 10:50 AM

#10

. .

San Diego, CA

Maybe you should animate the cacti like the "Dancing Baby", or integrate Matt's face into one like a cactus transformer. Then when people click on it, you'll get a recorded welcome. People dig that stuff.

Thanks for the laugh Max. That was great.

Jul 11, 2007 10:52 AM

Anonymous

Matt,

The site looks great! You may want to add in Flash though. We catch up to again sometime at Kokomo's.cya

Jul 11, 2007 10:55 AM

#12

Anonymous

Darrin

by Darrin

Jul 11, 2007 10:56 AM

#13

Matthew Pellerin

Realty Executives - PhoenixHomes.com - Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix Homes Team

"I haven't seen a site like this in Santa Barbara!" Thanks sis... you're making me blush.

I'm glad to see that Max, Bob and Charles are having fun with this. :-)

Darrin Fox (manager of Russ Lyon in Scottsdale and good friend since 1982-ish), strange bumping into you at Kokomo Joes in Cave Creek the other night. Especially since I hardly ever go there AND I went there with your wife's brother. Weird... small world heh?

Thanks for all the comments guys! <sarcasm>Please feel free to write up your own post on your own blog and give me hundreds of backlinks if you want to.</sarcasm>
Everyone did rate this post with a #5 thingy, right?

Max, we'll need to talk about that 51% raise... <sarcasm>when you said it in the office and I agreed, I thought you meant 0.51%!</sarcasm> LOL

So, no one has a favorite section or page? Or, some constructive criticism?

Jul 11, 2007 12:07 PM

Anonymous

Thomas Capaldo

Looks great to me of course I am easy so i would have liked what evar you came uo with. Great job Max. Keep up the great work guys. Tom

Jul 11, 2007 01:10 PM

#15

Anonymous

Gino

Very easy to navigate. You two make a great team! You 2 would make a great couple. Just kidding..

Big Congrats!

Jul 11, 2007 05:40 PM

#16

Anonymous

Tracy

The site is great (of course I am a little biased being your wife and all). From a non-webbie viewpoint it is really easy to use and clean looking. Sometimes websites get to cluttered and it is not worthwhile to even stay and look - this one (like the last rendition) is clean and user friendly. I also like that the navigation bar is now on the right. It's all in the details!

Jul 12, 2007 06:20 AM

#17

Matthew Pellerin

Realty Executives - PhoenixHomes.com - Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix Homes Team

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Hopefully our current and future clients will like the new site as much as everyone here so far.

Jul 12, 2007 06:53 AM

Anonymous

Vasa Spurling

Matt & Maxx,

You obviously have put your extensive talents and BS&T into this website and it shows!

It is really an honor and pleasure to have such a well thought-out and informative website to represent our team of professional Realtors.

This site will help people understand and appreciate the quality of life to be found in the Great State of Arizona while assisting them in finding the home of their dreams!

It has been said that "Personal success is the result of helping others achieve their goals".

Keep up the good work!

Vasa

Jul 16, 2007 12:11 PM

#19

Anonymous

Jackie

Nice site. I'm working on a Drupal site for a real estate company in Brooklyn, NY. Can you share any tips on configuring the software for real estate-specific needs? Thanks.

Sep 03, 2007 09:18 AM

#20

Casita Cash

Casita Cash Network - Phoenix, AZ

I love Drupal!

Jan 30, 2008 11:57 AM

Jeff Kessler

Austin Homes, Realtors www.OwnAustin.com - Austin, TX

Broker,CLHMS,GRI

I just got on Drupal yesterday. So far okay. How is your site going? Was it hard to get going?

Mar 10, 2008 07:22 AM

Max Chirkov

Phoenix Homes Team - Scottsdale, AZ

Well, it was our first Drupal project, so there was some learning curve to it. But now it's all good :)

Mar 10, 2008 07:33 AM

Barry Cox

Realty Executives - Scottsdale, AZ

I have a criticism regarding all of your websites. Please redesign them so that the user experience suffers. I could use a few days off. :-) If you need some ideas for the redesign feel free to check out my website. :-)

Sep 26, 2008 01:26 PM

Max Chirkov

Phoenix Homes Team - Scottsdale, AZ

LOL :) If you're tired of leads I'm giving you - just say so, I'm sure there are a few around here that would like a piece of your pie ;)

Sep 29, 2008 04:18 AM

Anonymous

Jessica

he legal arrangement for the right to occupy a dwelling in some countries is known as the housing tenure. Types of housing tenure include owner occupancy, Tenancy, housing cooperative, condominiums individually parceled properties in a single building, public housing, squatting, and cohousing. The occupants of a residence constitute a household.Thanks.

Regards,

Scottsdale Real Estate

Oct 25, 2012 06:51 PM

#26

Anonymous

Scottsdale Homes for Sale

Superb Post! That's really great read for me. I hope you will continuously provide this type of post.Good Luck...........<a href="http://www.phoenixrealtyfinder.com">Scottsdale Homes for Sale</a>

Jan 01, 2013 03:23 PM

#27

Rodrick Branum

Drupal is a performance oriented website building platform and best suitable for projects that requires complex functionalities along with maintaining the beauty of the site. No doubt, it can be easily employed for making real estate projects with all the ease by making correct use of splendid Drupal templates for the same. Pick your template smartly and create site of your choice on this platform.

Feb 08, 2015 02:02 PM