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Which CMS do you prefer?

By Jacqulyn Richey

Real Estate Agent with Prominent Realty Group

June 15, 2008 03:40 PM

With so many real estate agents jumping on the blog bandwagon, the number of platforms to pick from keeps growing. But which platform is right for you? Really most of them come down to personal preference and your own level of technical knowledge. Let's take a look at some of the more popular content management systems out there.

Blogger. Everyone has heard of it and there are a ton of real estate blogs using this platform, like this self-hosted Arizona Real Estate News blog and there are some being hosted for free by blogger, as this Las Vegas Homes Blog is. On the plus side, you have complete control over the html, whether you are hosting the blog or not. There are tons of templates available or you can simply create your own if you have the html skills. However, the platform is only moderately search engine friendly and there aren't a lot of free plug-ins readily available for it compared to other platforms.

Wordpress. Probably the most popular blog platform ever created. Because it is a free, open source program, there are lots of hybrid creations out there being used. Like blogger, you can have a free hosted wordpress blog or you can host your own creation like this modified Wordpress blog about Paradise Valley real estate or this one about Scottsdale Real Estate. Both are using Wordpress as their backbone, but the coding has been modified by the provider. There are hundreds of free plug-ins available as well as thousands of templates. Community support for Wordpress is unsurpassed and new releases are put out on a regular basis. You can also generate static pages as well as regular blog pages. Currently it seems that Wordpress is the platform of choice by most real estate bloggers. It is extremely search engine friendly.

Drupal. This popular CMS powers quite a few corporate and public sites due to its extreme flexibility. Like Wordpress, there is a lot of community support and hundreds of free plug-ins available. However, you can't get a free hosted drupal site at this time, you have to have your own hosting. Set up is more complicated than a WP or blogger site, so there is a learning curve involved. Our Las Vegas real estate site runs on it which was done by the same person that created this Phoenix real estate site. You can set up Drupal to be a regular website, blog or any combination you can think of in between. Like WordPress, Drupal sites are extremely search engine friendly and you can control every aspect of the site.

Typepad. This blogging platform powers thousands of real estate blogs. You can sign up for a free trial, but after that you will need pay for the service. The interface is hosted by typepad and you are given a subdomain for your blog. You can forward your own domain to it, but the site will still be visible at the original subdomain name you picked (according to their FAQ). Its a great choice for someone with no technical expertise and very little time (and inclination) to learn how to set up a site. The platform is moderately search engine friendly and has a full corporate support.

Rsspieces. This custom blogging platform is relatively new to the scene and is designed specifically towards real estate bloggers. In addition to being very search engine friendly, owner Mary McKnight and her company provide additional blogging training and seo advice. There are several member of Active Rain who have Rsspieces blogs and are doing quite well in the search engine results. AR member Ines' site Miamism is a great example.

Joomla! Another open source CMS, it powers everything from websites to blogs. There is large community support for the platform and hundreds of plug-ins or extensions available for download. Like Drupal, there is a bit of learning curve.

There are of course, many, many more out there. I haven't include many other popular real estate blog providers, not because they aren't good products, I just wanted to hit the mainstream only. I know there are several members here who have a tomato blog (which seems to be a great product) or a dakno blog. If those of you with those sites would like share your experience in the comments, that'd be great. -Charles

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Judy Greenberg

Compass - Long Grove, IL

Compass- Long Grove -Buffalo Grove

This is great... I'm just going to park myself and learn from everyone. Are you saying that Active Rain is not good enough as your only blog

Jun 15, 2008 03:57 PM

Jacqulyn Richey

Prominent Realty Group - Las Vegas, NV

Las Vegas Real Estate

Not at all. For a free platform, its pretty darn good. BUT you don't own it. Say AR it sold to another company and they decide to change things and you don't like it, you're kind of stuck. The old saying about having all your eggs in one basket very much applies here. -Charles

Jun 15, 2008 04:08 PM

Matthew Pellerin

Realty Executives - PhoenixHomes.com - Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix Homes Team

@Charles, thanks for the mention. :-)

@Judy, no way is blogging on someone else's site "good enough" to compete these days.

My personal favorite is WordPress, using your own domain and hosting. While Drupal is an excellent CMS, it is really for the more serious Webmaster because it is a lot more complicated than WP.

Jun 16, 2008 08:10 AM

Real Estate and Mortgage Websites and Internet Strategy

Found By Design - Charlotte, NC

Great post and good descriptions of these systems.

IMHO, Wordpress takes the cake. The flexibility and overall useability of Wordpress just can't be beat. Too many options to list and highly customizable (if you understand PHP code.)

Even if you don't use it as a blog, the ability to create and manage pages / posts is just too easy.

Jun 16, 2008 08:23 AM

Anonymous

Gabe Hoggarth

Great break down of the available blogging options. I agree with you on almost every point but am curious why you say Blogger, being a Google product, is only moderately search engine friendly.

Jun 17, 2008 10:31 AM

Toby Barnett

KW North Sound - Marysville, WA

Toby Barnett

I like Wordpress alot but havent used to much of the other CMSs. I would like to try Ruby on Rails just for kicks. Typepad, from a user standpoint, is my least favorite as it as alot of extra junk and it is not as easy on the eyes.

Jun 18, 2008 06:01 AM

Toby Barnett

KW North Sound - Marysville, WA

Toby Barnett

A friend of mine is letting me play with Joomla tonight...woot!

Jun 18, 2008 09:19 AM

Gena Riede

Riede Real Estate, Lic. 01310792 - Sacramento, CA

Real Estate Broker - Sacramento CA Real Estate (916) 417-2699

Charles, naturally I prefer WordPress. Love wordpress and the fact that it is not proprietary. Been there done that and never again. So, I'm a fan of Word Press.

Jul 17, 2008 07:08 PM

Anonymous

Sean Stoops

I stumbled across this post when I was looking at content from around Las Vegas and thought I'd post a little into I know. I'm a web developer by trade and through my work have heard about a number of CMS's for various purposes.

I attended an event at Google a month ago or so and a fellow there was talking about a real estate CMS he had been working on. I don't think it's complete and ready for launch at this point, but it looked very promising.

http://lincolnloop.com/blog/2008/sep/19/introduction-gondola/

That post mentioned 'Django' several times, which is the web framework (based on the Python language) it is built with (which is what I use and the reason I was at Google).

This CMS may not be something you can toss up as simple at WordPress, but it does come with a number of features that you might have a tough time finding in WordPress. The killer feature that the author was showing is the geo-location abilities. You can see these under Local Info > Neighborhoods on this page: http://demo.gondolacms.com/home/.

If you happen to have a programmer (or team of), then I think this should be very high on your list if you want to customize. Python and Django are extremely easy to learn and that makes customization a cakewalk.

Oct 14, 2008 03:00 PM

#10

Bill Pryor

HELPMESELL.com - Clearwater, FL

I use Joomla!, wordpress and not so keen on drupal.

HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT I DID TO JOOMLA

I did this site over the weekend and just wrapped it up about 10 minutes ago.

Take a look at my new beta site. Everything works except for the webmail in the CRM. PLEASE give me your feedback.

Public pages: http://beta.financethishouse.com
Username: admin
Password: demo

You can login as admin on the public pages or in the back office area. Only because this is a beta site you'll find an admin link at the top of all the website pages that goes to...

http://beta.financethishouse.com/administrator

Username: admin
Password: demo

Dec 29, 2008 06:04 AM

real estate web design

imoria.com - Orlando, FL

It's drupal by a slight margin over Joomla, both are leading the way in web 2.0 but Drupal was just voted most likely to change the business world. The options are endless with drupal...Imoria buids all real estate websites with Drupal CMS and we talk about it at this link:

https://imoria.com/content/drupal-imoria

if your interested in getting a CMS by Drupal for only $29/mo and transforming your online presence visit imoria.com

Dec 29, 2008 06:19 AM

real estate web design

imoria.com - Orlando, FL

We could make you a site just like the financethishouse.com listing above for only $29/mo - It's very simple and you would be able to log in just like he states on his website. Instead, you would be logging into your own website and changing content, adding blogs & pages and more!

Dec 29, 2008 06:24 AM