The Website Trap: Do You Lease or Own?

Gabe, Great points.  Many not so tech savvy people are in websites with little or no control over content and not happy with the response or lack of response they are getting from it. 

How the heck did you get 12000 links to that site so quick? That is a good site for sure. It must have been hard ranking for that keyword.

Lots of good points that you brought up Gabe, and it sounds like you know what you are doing! I tried to go to your Seatle website and the internet went down.  I will try again.

I do like WP. I used Joomla on my site and it was a bit of overkill. WP would have done the trick well.

Wow, really nice sites Gabe.  I really love WordPress but you'be taken it to another level.

Good points, but I have to say that I would not let my customers have full access to the web files. It is even difficult to find web programmers that won't mess up or break a web page. We have given ftp access to some of our clients who said they were capable, and instead of saving money, it cost us all more time and money to fix what they trashed.

Nearly all of our pages have data driven dynamic content, complicated css levels, and design elements that are fixed in a master template. Real estate web sites need dynamic content in order to tightly integrate agent, listing data and lead capture functionality.

We have in the past allowed clients to use Adobe Contribute, and I think this is a viable solution when content management is an issue.

The other really big issue that is outside of the immediate need to update content, is intellectual property. Nearly all of our code belongs to us, and it would be foolish to allow others access to code that we have spent millions to produce. Now granted some of the code is similar to everyone else's, but much of has unique and special value which enables us to serve our customers better than other companies can.

great points - I believe that Blogs are the new Website.  I just wrote a blog post the other day that you may find supportive of your post, feel free to check it out here:

http://blog.DreamDesignRealty.com/7-reasons-your-website-suck

Here is another link to a great site offering some cool "FREE" stuff to help Realtors setup a WordPress Blog.  http://www.Realty-Blogger.com

Have a great weekend

Drew

"TIP: Find a company that gives you FTP access to your website. It’s your own website and you deserve to have control. If a company insists that they can’t let you have FTP access, there are plenty of other companies that will."

For a general company website that needs to be updated often, I agree wholeheartedly - on the proviso the company or individual invests in some basic training to know what they are doing. I also appreciate the comments that allowing someone that does not know what they are doing, access to the code is a recipe for disaster - though perhaps with the ooportunity to generate more fees for the subsequent repairs!

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, plus couple that with the type of person that likes to flick a switch to see what happens, and a big mess can result.

Really nice wordpress install Gabe, are you using MU for those sites?

I agree with most of what you said, altough our websites don't have FTP access.

They are built using Rails and the CMS is internal.

As it's all running on amazon, we simply have not built in FTP support for our suites.

That does not mean that clients don't have access to the full site, they can edit each page of the CMS including renaming URL's and page titles and assigning permissions to each page.

We've also open sourced our entire application so if an agent wants to move, they can take the platform with them and manage their own hosting. 

They loose the benefits of our constant upgrades to the platform, but it gives them that "out" in case it's not working out.

I agree with your post regarding Template Based sites but having FTP Access is not enough. Also the sites that you posted above have made one huge mistake. The property component is wrapped into an Iframe which is a huge disadvantage when it comes to SEO.

Having ftp access only gives you access to your raw code. But what about the support and expertise to change the files. The best solution is one that offers the ability for customization, and full control over the property system. Owning and leasing makes no difference, as its very similar to owning a car. Technology moves at such a fast space that owning your own site would require you to become an IT professional. Wait I thought you were selling Real Estate ?

The goal is to partner with a company who has the expertise and who can lead you to success.

A few rules to Follow:

1) No I Frames in property system. I frames or fine in some instances but having a I frame running your property system is a huge disadvantage.

2) Be able to build custom functionality. Your system should be 100 percent customizable with support on doing so.

3) SEF URLS -You need the best URL structure in order to compete with the big boys. SEO is crucial

4) CMS - Content Management System - Make sure you have the ability to post your own articles and blog posts.

5) Use Open source and you will be able to tap into the thousands of free plug-ins available free.

Damian

www.galtlinedesign.com