I noticed all of the custom blogs appearing on AR.  At first I thought they were outside blogs but the domains didn't seem to justify that.  So I thought there must be some website to get different code to create the customization.  Then I recently read a post about the new customization button.  Not only can I customize my AR blog whenever I want to, but it is so easy.

My main Chicago area real estate website from Real Estate Webmasters (REW) is going through a tweak right now.  Unfortunatley, I can't do design changes myself, I have to pay to have it done.  But it's worth it as it's a site made for search engine optimization and it has certainly panned out.  I kept the same colors and everything but I had the template widened, cleaned up the left sidebar menu and added the Featured Listings section.  There's more to be done with the site but I wanted to see how it looks before I continue with changes.

My first website (geared towards real estate, I had tried a few site creators in the past but they looked pretty plain) is my Chicago Suburbs real estate site from Point2 Agent.  I can customize the template, header, menu buttons/graphics and colors.  I like trying different things and I'm ready to create a more autumn looking color scheme.

Two of my main sites have built-in blogs and I also have a SW Chicago suburbs real estate stand-alone blog that is a simple Wordpress template.  I have changed this up a lot and more and more real estate related skins are being created.  I downloaded a few that just didn't seem to work but my newest one fit well and I like it.  So this one will probably be around for awhile, but if I find something else I like I will definitely give it a try.

EDIT:  I just changed my blog mentioned in the above link back to an older template because I found out that the template pictured to the left has questionable code inserted into the footer and the sidebar.  I tried removing the code but it seems to be copyrighted and the site didn't work correctly after I removed it.  I have read that others consider it malicious code so be careful when downloading templates from sites other than Wordpress.org.  This was one of those sites you can find by doing a "free Wordpress template for real estate" search on Google.  Be sure to go through the code before you start using it.  I'm hoping it didn't do any damage as I've been using it for a few months.

Some of you might think that we should keep our sites looking the same all the time to create our branding and recognition.  As I mentioned, my main sites stay the same and any changes I make on them are tweaks probably not even noticed by anyone else.  I truly believe that many of our website visitors are pretty transient. 

Let's face it, once a buyer buys and a seller sells, they're not going to be coming back to the site to keep looking around and searching the MLS.  Of course, I would hope I could snag some prospects to keep reading my blogs, but that's the only reason I could think of for people to keep coming back to any of my sites once they've reached their goals.  So I'm not all that concerned about some of my multiple sites getting a full facelift once in a while.  As long as they offer what new and repeat visitors want, it shouldn't matter if some of these sites are sporting a new skin.  

And for me, it's just fun and I like switching things around.  To me, getting a new look to my sites is like getting a new pair of shoes!