When it comes to delivering custom websites at competitive pricing any good service provider should build and maintain an inventory of foundation design elements to help with rapid deployment of client sites. Such an inventory can take a great deal of time to acquire and maintaining the design elements or template foundations to be consistent with trends and front line practices can be a daunting task.  Thankfully there are a few good theme development platforms that eliminates many of these design frustration for a designer.  Once such theme is the THESIS by DIYThemes.

Over the past year, THESIS has grown exponentially in terms of its use by developers as a foundation framework for site design. Due no doubt to the lofty list of features that THESIS includes, THESIS makes the project development flow a bit quicker and easier to maintain.  Because of the popularity of THESIS, the ever growing list of people that wish to add our WordPress Menu Creator plug-in to a THESIS design has also grown.   Although THESIS has menu management features integrated with the themes options, clients and web designers often seek to employ our plug-in where much tighter and more CMS like control over menu management is desired. So I’m going to show you the quick and easy way to deploy Menu Creator in Thesis.

Thesis Hooks – Replacing Stock Menu with Menu Creator

Now, in order to begin this relatively simple process you must have THESIS 1.6 installed and you must have renamed the example custom folder to /custom/ in order to make the edits necessary for using the menu creator. You should also have the menu creator installed and activated. Optionally you should create a menu and title it as “Top Navigation” or something similar.

Now, before we begin the actual edits please keep the following in mind. It is very important to note that the generated code by the WP Menu Creator is simply an XHTML compliant unordered list. The < ul > will have an ID assigned to it based on the menu ID so the very first menu you create would be Menu ID 1, so the resulting markup for the unordered list would be < ul id=”mc_menu_1″ > As such, we will address the styling options toward the end of this article.

Simply navigate to the THESIS settings menu and select custom file editor. Then, select from the drop down list the custom_functions.php to add the necessary code.

The default custom_functions.php looks like this;

function custom_bookmark_links() {
global $post;
?>
<ul class="bookmark_links">
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://delicious.com/save?url=<?php urlencode(the_permalink()); ?>&amp;title=<?php urlencode(the_title()); ?>" onclick="window.open('http://delicious.com/save?v=5&amp;noui&amp;jump=close&amp;url=<?php urlencode(the_permalink()); ?>&amp;title=<?php urlencode(the_title()); ?>', 'delicious', 'toolbar=no,width=550,height=550'); return false;" title="Bookmark this post on del.icio.us">Bookmark this article on Delicious</a></li>
</ul>

<?php
}

Just after the closing bracket, assuming your custom_functions.php file has not been previously edited, you will enter the code as follows. Make sure you change the menu ID to be consistent with the actual WP Menu Creator ID.

The following code tells thesis to remove its “thesis_nav_menu” and add the menu creator. If the displayMenu function exists (if the plugin is activated) it will display menu ID 1. If not I have this example to show the categories.

function menucreator() {
	if (function_exists('displayMenu')) {
	displayMenu(1);
	} else {
		echo '<ul id="mc_menu_1">';
		wp_list_categories('title_li=');
		echo '</ul>';
	}
}

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header','thesis_nav_menu');
add_action('thesis_hook_before_header','menucreator');

Alternatively you could replace the section where wp_list_categories exists and show the actual thesis navigation if the menu creator is not active or a menu is not created. The code would look like this.

function menucreator() {
	if (function_exists('displayMenu')) {
	displayMenu(1);
	} else {
		thesis_nav_menu();
	}
}

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header','thesis_nav_menu');
add_action('thesis_hook_before_header','menucreator');

The final result should look something similar to this.

function custom_bookmark_links() {
global $post;
?>
<ul class="bookmark_links">
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://delicious.com/save?url=<?php urlencode(the_permalink()); ?>&amp;title=<?php urlencode(the_title()); ?>" onclick="window.open('http://delicious.com/save?v=5&amp;noui&amp;jump=close&amp;url=<?php urlencode(the_permalink()); ?>&amp;title=<?php urlencode(the_title()); ?>', 'delicious', 'toolbar=no,width=550,height=550'); return false;" title="Bookmark this post on del.icio.us">Bookmark this article on Delicious</a></li>
</ul>

<?php
}

function menucreator() {
	if (function_exists('displayMenu')) {
	displayMenu(1);
	} else {
		echo '<ul id="mc_menu_1">';
		wp_list_categories('title_li=');
		echo '</ul>';
	}
}

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header','thesis_nav_menu');
add_action('thesis_hook_before_header','menucreator');

Some Final Notes

As mentioned above, the Menu Creator renders the UL with the menu ID so each menu can be individually styled. Since it will render the menu without any CSS reference at all you can opt to include the existing CSS for the THESIS menu in the custom css file by changing the directives or you can add your own CSS. There are countless examples of CSS navigation using this markup so the possibilities are endless.

Please feel free to ask for help if you need it.

While Missouri will always be home, Columbia simply did not offer the advantages necessary for our coming expansion efforts.

Las Vegas offers a much larger labor pool of individuals with the necessary skills to become a Member of the UltimateIDX Team. We are now located on minutes from an International Airport making travel for meetings much more convenient for staff and Clients alike. And since the move there has been an increase of Clients wanting to visit us.

Although we are now located in the most exciting city on earth we will never forget our humble beginnings in a sleepy little town in America’s heartland.

Mission Impossible

There are hundreds of local MLS Boards nationally. Each Board owns and maintains their own data and therefore all have different data fields and formats. So it would be necessary for a developer to develop not 1 but hundreds of plugins. Additionally, most MLS Boards constantly change their fields. So each of these plugins would have to be maintained to ensure service interruptions would not occur and the proper data was delivered to the end users. This would be a maintenance nightmare not unlike those experienced by Open Realty users.

An excellent technical article about why this will never happen was authored by Ron Goodman on his Denver Real Estate Blog. Ron goes into depth about the issues involved in data migration and how attempts to build a magic plugin thus far have been nothing short of lacking.

Compliance and Policing Nightmare

In addition to the maintenance headaches, Local Boards and the National Association of REALTORS® would find it difficult if not impossible to police a Wordpress Realty plugin for compliance. In addition to redistribution issues many local boards have, each have their own compliance rules and regulations. The Boards may require submissions of search templates for compliance reviews prior to displaying publicly. A prime example of this Metrolist in Denver. Violation of compliance rules and regulations for display of data can lead to fines as much as $1,000 per occurrence. Since the site owner can change template layouts on the fly so to speak, this could lead to costly compliance issues.

Many Local Boards have implemented security protocols to protect “their” data. Any so called Wordpress Real Estate plugin that would import data for redistribution on a Broker/Agent site would need to store the data on servers used by the Broker or Agent’s website. Not all dedicated servers would meet the stringent security requirements of many Local Boards.

With these compliance and policing issues it is only reasonable to expect that NAR and the local boards to enact policies prohibiting such plugins in the not so distant future resulting in the loss of any time and money spent chasing this myth.

Misunderstood Plugin Functionality

There are a couple of Wordpress plugins out there for real estate that are completely misunderstood when it comes to functionality. There is NO WP plugin that will import the MLS data directly into your real estate website. The process for the listings data to get into your website is as follows:

1. Receive the MLS Data from the Local Board that owns it with its permission.
2. Map the raw data to the fields within the Wordpress plugins parameters.
3. Follow all rules and regulations imposed by the Local Board and NAR when it comes to display and/or redistribution of MLS data.

I recently ran across a competitor that claims to have a Wordpress Real Estate Plugin in beta. This competitor makes no mention of the fact that in order to use the plugin you must first be an IDX/RETS client of theirs. Is this deceptive advertising or an oversight? That is for you to decide.

Joomla and Drupal

Before I get slammed with anymore emails about a magic real estate plugin to import MLS data into a Joomla or Drupal website let me state that they do not exists for the same technical reasons as Wordpress.

Summary

In addition to all the reasons above you should rethink any attempt to locate or use a Wordpress Real Estate plugin. Those REALTORS® that have pursued the magic WP Real Estate Plugin Myth have wasted a great deal of time and money in addition to most likely breaking a few compliance rules along the way.

For the REALTORS® that have managed to use one of these plugins with some success after paying the vendor’s data mapping fees, constant maintenance fees, extra server storage and extra bandwidth fail to understand they end up with only part of a system and the search functionality is the simplest part of any IDX/RETS solution for MLS. The heart of any RETS/IDX solution is the CRM for lead management and is powered by the capabilities of the system to effectively capture and manage leads.

With all the years of training and experience dealing with FSBO vs. REALTOR® services you would think this article would NOT be necessary and that I was just “Preaching to the Choir” about “do-it-your-self” professional services however, the calls and emails for the Wordpress Real Estate plugin just keep coming in.

What new features are in the new Menu Creator?

• You can add your page or post to a menu while in the WYSWYG editor. Simply select the menu, title it, and publish.
• A new page / post look-up feature will provide you with an easy way to get the page or post ID while in the Menu Creator panel. No more need to go searching.
• Better image support for menus that will provide you with quick edit features.
• The ability to reset the menu ID and the ability to edit the menu name. Requested dozens of times so its going to be a feature.
• Saving the best for the last, the Menu Creator will have a CSS feature where you can save and edit the CSS for each individual menu.

I’ll post more when it is available.

Theme developers that distribute the Menu Creator

Since we make it super easy to distribute the Menu Creator in themes, we decided to create a category that will feature details and links back to those theme developers. The theme developer simply submits a few short paragraphs about their theme, a screen shot, the link they want us to publish and we are going to start providing links to those in support of the WordPress Menu Creator. Our only requirement is that the short summary you submit must state that it employs the WP Menu Creator.

Why distribute WP Menu Creator in your theme? Simple! Its void of any link back requirements, we do not advertise or solicit products or services in the plug-in, there are no heavy branding or other types of “thou shalt worship us” phrases in the plug-in, its super easy to implement into your theme for distribution given the code we provide and there is no cost to you. You gain by providing the absolute best possible menu management solution available for WordPress which is so flexible it can literally accommodate any type of CSS / XHTML compliant menu system. We already have many theme developers publishing themes with the Menu Creator for you to examine their solutions.

Site owners and developers

We get requests to help theme designers and webmasters implement the WP Menu Creator several times a week. After having provided technical assistance and even examples of the code to many of our plug-in users, we decided that we are going to start publishing summary details and links to those projects or developers that use the Menu Creator. Like the category above, when we publish the details, we all also publish a one way link back to the project site and even a screen shot of the menu system being employed.

The idea behind this is simple. When we first built the WP Menu Creator we knew that it would need to be so flexible that it would literally accommodate hundreds if not thousands of different types of CSS / XHTML compliant menus for WordPress. Like our new WP Form Creator or the WP Zillow plug-ins we also publish, we decided that maybe the best way to make our products truly flexible is to simply not deliver any CSS markup for styling. We didn’t want users of the products to think that these were the only possible styling options thereby giving us a poor rating on the power of the Menu Creator or Form Creator for instance.

Third Party Themes Implementation

Almost daily, we receive about a half a dozen requests for help in using the WP Menu Creator with third party themes like those published by Thesis or StudioPress themes among many others. Although we are happy to provide assistance to users of our plug-in, the number of requests at times becomes a bit high and difficult to keep up with. These types of themes differ from the average site owner or developer of custom works in that these themes are most often commercial and are usually quite popular with literally thousands of bloggers using them. Because of this we have published code snippets and instructions on how to modify some of the more popular themes for use with the Menu Creator and will begin publishing those examples today in the new section we have setup. The number one problem with WordPress Menu Management is the requirement that most theme developers essentially require you to manage your menu by managing the way you publish your content. This is neither effective or consistent with proper menu management.

For the most part, menu management in WordPress is largely handled by the themes coded features that display links as a result of posts, pages or other types of navigable elements within your blog. As WordPress grows in its use as a CMS solution, existing menu and navigation methods become quirky and un-natural in following the true essence of a CMS solution. In order to be a true CMS, content and the navigation must not be inner-dependent and should not require even casual manipulation of your sites content structure in order to achieve the navigation structure you desire. With WordPress as either a blog or a CMS solution, navigation for any effective website must (or should) follow the principles of guided navigation and should have a URL structure that is as shallow as possible in order to be truly user friendly. Navigation links should also be able to be controlled in a way that allows for inclusion of keywords in the title, alt tags, and even an option to control which links are followed and which are not by the site manager.

With most themes being published today, methods being used are not befitting of good site navigation or design and can actually be counter productive to your objective. Many themes present the three primary issues that bloggers suffer most in regard to website and menu management; The number one problem with WordPress menus is that they are literally not easily managed, therefore the subject of this post. Subsequently WordPress Menus generally do not follow good principles of guided navigation, and last they require modification to the content structure to achieve even casual structuring. You can examine each of these three issues as we continue below.

Principles of Guided Navigation in WordPress or any CMS Solution

Guided navigation is articulated best by comparing it to good goal planning or task list practices. With any truly effective goal setting process, the goal planner will almost always start out with broader more generalized final goal or end result, and then identify the steps to be broken down into smaller more manageable tasks. One of the primary goals for any website owner should be to get the right information to their visitors as quickly and painlessly as they can. It may also be the goal to lead your client to the products and services quickly enough as to capture the lead or even the sale and in order to do so. Studies indicate that the faster you do this the more likely a person will stay on your site and the more likely they will make a decision to contact your or purchase a product. Well organized sites are not just perceived as being better, they literally are better in terms of effectiveness and user friendliness. With that in mind we can summarize the elements of Guided Navigation as being the identification of the goal, the steps or tasks in which to reach the goal and the methods you use to guide the end user through the tasks as painlessly as possible.

Goals in the case of a website are actually identified by more than just the site owner. Visitors to your site have their own objectives in visiting you and may have their own ideas as to how to find what they are seeking. Because of this, a good site manager will always keep in mind that the entry point into the site will rarely be the front page. When someone Googles a term, locates a page within your site, the point of entry will not likely be the front page. Good guided navigation suggests that if you are conscious of this, your site will at bare minimum feature general topics in the navigation that can then be narrowed down to finder points. A sort of general to specific navigation structure really does make up the ideal example of how guided navigation should work. Lets look at how many themes miss this principle.

Content Structure Limitations With Most WordPress Themes

Nearly every WordPress theme I’ve examined, has menu navigation based on categories and pages with posts being displayed in some manor of “latest” something or other. Although many WordPress themes are exceptionally fine at presenting the aesthetic appeal side of a blog or CMS, they tend to lack heavily in the management of good overall structuring of a CMS type solution. Your menu should not be dependent on the structure of your content. With many themes this is the common way of structuring both navigation and content.

Studies indicate that the more shallow your URL structure is the more likely it will be referred to others and remembered by end users.

The Best WordPress Menu Management Solution

Menu management should be simple, quick, user defined, and most important guided. In order to achieve this there is only one tool available for Guided Navigation, that fits the bill of true menu management and that is our tool the WordPress Menu Creator. The tool or plug-in as its known, is essentially a generator of sorts that renders an XHTML Unordered List of link elements that you can style and modify according to your sites design. The Menu Creator can be applied to most third party themes with little modification. What does the Menu Creator provide? This list can answer that.

• CSS / XHTML Compliant Output
• XHTML Compliant External Window Popup, not the old target=”_blank”
• Supports the use of images as menu items
• Supports additional inline wrappers such as the SPAN tag.
• Supports full drag and drop sortable functionality
• Supports three REL options; external, canonical and nofollow.
• Can be distributed free of charge with your commercial or non commercial themes.
• Has inline integrated tutorials and guides
• Can be used externally from WordPress to control menus in static HTML or even Joomla, Drupal or OpenRealty sites.
• Can support literally thousands of potential menu designs and styles.
• Supports cascading suckerfish type menus including the MooTools and jQuery configurations
• Supports Accordian Type Menus
• The list goes on and on.

After receiving so many code submissions and snippets from users of the WP Menu Creator, we have setup a new page to provide a one way link back to the project site so that others may see how the plug-in is being used. I wrote a brief announcement about it here and you can examine the new categories and examples from around the web as we publish them.

A quick note, keep an eye out for our Form Creator which will be released today on WordPress.org as a full production release.  Having struggled with countless issues in the DOM library in order to make it compatible with so many of the different types of themes, we finally got the plug-in whipped into shape in order to get it published. You can look for the plugin on WordPress.

Is rel=”canonical” a suggestion or a directive?

This new option lets site owners suggest the version of a page that Google should treat as canonical. Google will take this into account, in conjunction with other signals, when determining which URL sets contain identical content, and calculating the most relevant of these pages to display in search results.

Can the link be relative or absolute?

The rel=”canonical” attribute can be used with relative or absolute links, but we recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties. If your document specifies a base link, any relative links will be relative to that base link.

In using this feature within the Menu Creator it is a good idea to pay special attention to how you are using it, why you are using it and where you are using it. Since we built the Menu Creator to function on sites that may include shopping carts, OpenRealty, and even other CMS solutions, you have the option via our code library to not only manage menus externally of WordPress but even on external domains. If you are using these features it is ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT to note that this new REL element is for a specific local domain and not remote or multiple domains as is the case with 301 redirects for instance.

If you have questions, please either contact us directly or simply post a comment below that we may answer publicly for others to see as well.

From time to time we do check out the Real Estate Webmasters forum just to see if the former Canadian porn webmaster turned Real Estate sales evangelist is slamming UltimateIDX or PREN.

Today I forgot to turn my Fire Fox DoFollow link checker off before I went to the Real Estate Webmasters forum and low an behold I noticed a Member with over 500 posts had “nofollow” tags on all of his signature links. I remember hearing something about REW Members with less than 300 posts would have the “nofollow” tag on their signatures but had no idea that was implemented or substantially raised until today.

It now appears that the figure to achieve before REW Members get any credit for posting is over 650. Please don’t take my word on this. Check it out for yourself. Now that seems like one hellofalot of work on Morgan’s website BEFORE you get any link love.

My question is what will REW raise it to the next time 1,000 posts, 1,500 posts or??? And do New REW Members know about this?

The Rest of the Story

OK I admit my curiosity kicked in and I really needed to know “the rest of the strory”, so I started checking further. Right off the bat you can see that REW places a “nofollow” tag on any text links within a post and it is obvious that Google has substantially devalued REW Blogs and any inbound links from these blogs.

So then I wanted to know what kind of link juice the Real Estate Webmasters forum generated for the “Uber Real Estate Webmaster” Members (aka “Kool Aide Drinkers”). I targeted a Members website that primarily only had REW inbounds. This REW Member joined back in 2005 and had in excess of 1,100 posts and a multitude of blog posts. The Member’s website displays a dismal PR1 for all the hard work and effort.

Conclusion

Now if the same REW Member had posted over 1,100 blog comments on 1,100 different websites, posted to his/her own Blog the same amount as he/she posted to the REW Blog the Member’s PR would be significantly higher. This is a no brainer folks!

Now you can call me bias all you want (and yes I am). But do the research yourself. Please don’t take my word for it. Regardless or whether you are a new REW Member or a Kool-Aide drinking “Uber Real Estate Webmaster” the Real Estate Webmasters forum is nothing but a huge waste of your time.

What was most shocking is that Morgan Carey even applies the “nofollow” tag to REW Clients!

Admittedly, Morgan Carey is one of the BEST self promoters I have ever come across, however his loyalty is strictly to himself and enjoys the fruit of his Members labor to glorify and promote who? Not you!

Today we submitted our new WP Form Creator to WordPress for inclusion into the extensions directory and once approved you will be able to download the plugin as a beta application. This release includes all the foundation features we wanted to add in from the onset of the project so bloggers using our free plug-in can have a way to quickly, easily and effectively add in a fully XHTML compliant forms. Initially designed as a tool for clients of the UltimateIDX this plug-in will take all of the guess work out of adding compliant forms to your WordPress blog in a simple drag and drop style environment making it super easy to implement. From entry level bloggers to experienced professional designers, the new WP Form Creator makes form creation and design a snap.

Built with the same forethought and planning as our other free plug-ins, we always approach each of these projects with several important questions and a wide range of perspectives before we commit the development. In that regard, WP Form Creator solves problems. Experience had demonstrated that after looking at literally dozens and dozens of methods for including common forms such as a Competitive Market Analysis or even a basic contact form, were proving to be a challenge and confusing for novice bloggers. Our WP Form Creator does what no others currently do and that is add in truly easy to create forms and functionality to any blogger regardless of skill level and yet keep it fully XHTML Compliant.

What is an XHTML Compliant Form?

Site validation for compliance is more than just a buzzword or trendy way to bolster a coders character or ego (all though it may include such). Compliance standards help designers and developers demonstrate a level of competency and quality by adhering to a preset base line standard of rules for good coding. The XHTML standard as outlined by W3C states;

XML was conceived as a means of regaining the power and flexibility of SGML without most of its complexity. Although a restricted form of SGML, XML nonetheless preserves most of SGML’s power and richness, and yet still retains all of SGML’s commonly used features.

In essence, XHTML forms are built upon a foundation of structural and semantic tags suitable for authoring well formed documents that can be displayed with relative consistency for all modern browsers. A quick inventory of modern browsers would include all of those that adhere to the standards compliance with exception of Internet Explorer 5, 6, 7 and 8 as Microsoft browsers have never been “modern browsers”. To get an idea what XHTML markup for a form looks like, I’ve generated generated an example for your examination.

<form action="action.php" method="get" id="wpmcdemo">
<div class="row">
	<label for="txt_Tryitout!Typethefieldnamesoutfirst,e.g.:">Try it out! Type the field names out first, e.g.:</label>
	<input id="txt_Tryitout!Typethefieldnamesoutfirst,e.g.:" name="txt_Tryitout!Typethefieldnamesoutfirst,e.g.:" type="text" />
</div>
<div class="row">
	<label for="txt_Firstname">First name</label>
	<input id="txt_Firstname" name="txt_Firstname" type="text" />
</div>
<div class="row">
	<label for="txt_Surname">Surname</label>
	<input id="txt_Surname" name="txt_Surname" type="text" />
</div>
<div class="row">
	<label for="txt_Town">Town</label>
	<input id="txt_Town" name="txt_Town" type="text" />
</div>
<div class="row">
	<label for="txt_State/Region">State/Region</label>
	<input id="txt_State/Region" name="txt_State/Region" type="text" />
</div>
</form>

Although the full release documentation is yet to be finished you are none the less more than welcome to post questions and issues with this release for assistance.