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How to Build a Real Estate Agent Website

Posted on by Bob Wilson

If you want to take your real estate agent career to the next level, then you need to have your own real estate agent website. You don’t want to rent it and pay a premium subscription fee in perpetuity. You want to learn how to build it yourself or have a pro build it for you.

You Should Use WordPress to Build Your Site

WordPress is free, open source, and it rules the web development market. In other words, it’s reliable, and it will be around for a long time. Also, you will want a content management service that you can use to manage your listings. And WordPress will be able to facilitate all of that.

Building a Profile Page for Your Real Estate Agent Website

You want to start with a simple page that says who you are and the services that you provide. Don’t overdo it. Keep in mind that people may look you up while they are in their cars, so you will want to be mobile friendly. You can check out the video demo below to get an idea of what your home page should look like. The video also includes a listings section. I’ll refer to that later.

Click on the image to open a video demo in YouTube
Get a Realty Template

Avoid Embedding Too Many YouTube Videos

Since you just saw a video, now is a good time to discuss videos. You may want to embed some videos of your listings.

You want to minimize the use of video on your website. If you do embed a video, then you don’t want to use more than one. And make sure that you test it for mobile compatibility. Remember, people may look up your website on their phone while they are on the road looking for homes, and you don’t want them to become frustrated because your website takes too long to load. If you want to use multiple videos on your site, then create images that link to your YouTube page.

It’s important to understand that a website running on a mobile browser won’t be performing in an optimized environment and network such as a YouTube or Facebook app. So you need to set reasonable expectations. You need to design your website so that it runs well on any miscellaneous mobile browser.

Keeping People on Your Site and Off of Your Competitor’s Sites

If people know you through your social media accounts, then you shouldn’t remove that as an option for communication. But ideally, you want to keep people from considering options other than you. And the best way to do that is to provide as much information as possible on your website. It’s good to keep links to social media so that various clients will still have the means to communicate with you using the means that they are most comfortable with. But your website should have the ability to answer most of their questions.

Building a Listings Page for Your Real Estate Agent Website

The original function of WordPress was it was designed as blogging software. These blogging features can be easily repurposed as a listings page. You want a page that hosts your listings that doesn’t connect with your competitors’ listings. When you market your listings using the WordPress blogging software, you can tailor your marketing strategy exactly how you want. You don’t have to defer to any standards of the MLS or any other listing services.

Managing the Listings Forum

One of the best parts about using WordPress is you have a comments area for every blog post. That means that you can create a comments area for every listing. That means that people can post their questions directly to your listings. And you can have a conversation in which you have full control over the forum.

Updating Your Listings to Sold

You can use your blog/listings post as a resume of your sold homes. You can then market this in a sticky sidebar on your website. That means that whenever somebody goes onto your site, they’ll see a constant advertisement on the right side of the screen of your best work whenever the screen is sufficiently wide.

Customization Options

Using WordPress blocks and the right theme allows you to use your imagination to create original content for your website. And if you have something that you want to create, but you can’t figure out how to do it, then you can always contact a pro.

Future Proofing Your Real Estate Agent Website

You want a website that will still be running well ten years from now. Building with WordPress and the block editor is a great way to facilitate long term sustainability. All websites require updates, so you want to pick a framework that makes managing your updates and content as hassle free as possible.

Questions?

If you have any questions the please post them in the comments area.

Hosting Definitions: Choosing Between Shared, Cloud, VPS, Dedicated, and Managed Hosting

Posted on by Bob Wilson

Shared, cloud, VPS, dedicated, and managed hosting are five different hosting definitions that you should consider when deciding how to host a website. Understanding these definitions can be really confusing and time consuming, so I decided to write this article for anyone who is looking for an efficient set of definitions that will allow them to make an informed decision.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

Here is the short version of this article. You will probably be able to get by just fine if you use a solid shared web host. You can use this blog to figure out how to set your site up properly, or you can hire a pro to set it up for you for a modest one time flat rate. If your site needs more power after it becomes popular, then you can switch to a managed cloud hosting service.

If you want hear why you should do this, then keep reading.

Hosting Definitions: Defining Shared Web Hosting

Shared web hosting means exactly what it sounds like. Your website will share server space with other websites. The downside of doing this is the performance of the other sites can impact your site’s performance. The upside is you share the cost of using the server with the other website owners.

Hosting Definitions: Defining Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is hosting your site through a network of servers. It can be more complicated than shared hosting, and it will probably cost you more money, but it tends to have a better performance potential, especially if you are getting a lot of traffic. It is also worth noting that you will probably still need to use a CDN even if you choose cloud hosting.

Hosting Definitions: Defining VPS Hosting

VPS hosting can be basically defined as shared hosting without the sharing or cloud hosting without as much scalability. I could write a lot more about VPS hosting, but I want to keep this post as simple as possible. All you need to know is I don’t imagine that you would choose VPS hosting given your other options. However, if you don’t want to take my word for it, then feel free to dive into the weeds.

Hosting Definitions: Defining Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting means that you get the whole server to yourself. It’s expensive and complicated. Even if you know a lot about servers, this will probably still be way more power and responsibility than you will want or need, so it really isn’t worth considering.

Does Shared Web Hosting Suck?

Shared web hosting gets a bad rap. It’s not perfect. And it’s not always an adequate solution. But if you know how to set up a site properly, then it will probably give you the results you need to build a high performing website. Conversely, although other kinds of hosting are sometimes a good choice for certain circumstances, they are often unnecessarily expensive. Too often people choose other kinds of hosting to fix mistakes that don’t actually require changing their hosting package.

Hosting Definitions: Defining Managed Hosting

Unless you are running your website on a private server on your private property, you will always be paying your host for some level of management. Therefore, the term management can be somewhat confusing. When something is advertised as managed, it can mean different things for different purposes. And even if the hosting package doesn’t advertise itself as managed, there were will be services managed for you such as the server itself or software such as CPanel. When a hosting package is specifically advertised as managed, it tends to refer to installing and managing site specific software.

Is Managed WordPress Hosting a Good Deal?

I would never turn a customer away for using managed WordPress hosting, but it’s really hard for me to recommend it in good conscience. The difference between managed WordPress hosting and setting up a WordPress site yourself on a shared web host is kind of like the difference between buying a car and leasing a car. Just like leasing a car, over the life of the product’s use, getting a managed site will probably just cost you more money without any improvement in quality.

Managed WordPress Hosting is Often Shared Hosting

You should consider that a managed WordPress service is often performed on a shared server. Basically what web hosts do is charge you to set up software that you could set up yourself for free. If setting up this software seems daunting, then it might not seem like a bad deal. But if you consider that you could pay a professional web developer a one time fee to set it up for you, the deal from the managed hosting company might not seem so good. Why? Because the managed service provider will keep charging you a premium subscription fee in perpetuity.

How Good Are the Services Provided by the Managed Host?

You should consider the possibility that the managed host will actually produce a performance that is worse than something that you could set up yourself or have set up by a professional web developer.

Managed hosting has to figure out a standardized way to set up your website. This will often (but not always) produce good results. But this method will have a lot harder time producing great results because a website only has to use one idea that the standardized method doesn’t know how to handle for a significant performance detriment to be triggered.

Hosting Definitions: Defining Cloud Hosting

There are reasons that you may want a server that is higher performing than something that shared hosting can provide. If you’re site is getting unusually high traffic and/or if your site needs to run a lot of server side operations, then you may want to choose something more powerful than a shared server. However, if you just switch from a shared host to a managed shared host, then you are unlikely to see any improvement. In most instances, if shared hosting isn’t cutting it, then cloud hosting is the solution.

Hosting Definitions: Defining Managed Cloud Hosting

There are some circumstances where certain kinds of managed hosting may not be a bad idea. For example, if you have an e-commerce site with a lot of traffic, then you may want to consider using managed cloud hosting with a managing service like Cloudways because cloud hosting can be complicated. However, if you are just starting a new website, it is unlikely that you will need cloud hosting to run your site.

What is the Value of Your Time?

There are those who would be dissatisfied with having anything less than full control over their own dedicated server. However, if your goal is to get a quality server performance without spending too much time or money, then an unmanaged shared hosting package is the way to go most of the time. Once you set up your software properly, you can let your shared hosting provider do the rest of the heavy lifting. Most standard web host packages deal with most of the real hard problems of server management. So if you pay for a “managed” hosting package, then you will probably be just getting upsold into purchasing frivolous options that you could acquire for free.

How Much Power Do You Really Need?

Paying extra money for an average page load time that drops from an eighth of a second to a fifth of a second probably isn’t worth it. There is an endless sea of data to show how paying more will facilitate a faster page load. But if your visitors can’t actually detect the difference, then what is the point of the extra expense? So if you are considering a legitimate managed hosting option like for cloud hosting, then you should first consider the needs of your visitors relative to the content you are providing.

How Much Do You Want to Spend? And How Much Do You Need to Spend? How Long Should You Stay With the Same Web Host?

If the value of your time is worth much of anything, then you don’t want to nickel and dime yourself by constantly looking for the best deal. You also don’t want to slowly crush your overhead by paying a bunch of expenses that are totally unnecessary. When you pick a hosting provider, you should consider how much you are spending up front. And you should consider how much you will be spending after your initial offer is over.

Yes. You can keep jumping from one host to the next to keep your expenses down. But you should really figure out how much time that it will cost you. What is your time worth? How much do you think you ought to be getting paid per hour? Even if you think the value of your time to make the transfer is going to be worth less than the savings, then you still have to ask yourself, “Is the added stress worth the discount?”

Be Willing to Upgrade if You Need To

If your site starts taking on more traffic that it can handle, or if you need to provide features that your hosting package can’t deliver well, then you may want to consider updating to a more powerful hosting package. This may also be a good time to consider reorganizing your site. Often times ideas for sites come together in an ad hoc fashion. If you have to change hosts, you may want to consider separating your content from your content management and think about ways you can make improvements to your site.

In most cases, starting with a solid shared hosting package will probably be all that you will ever need to do. The volume of competition is such that prices tend to stay low with whomever you choose. However, if you do start to feel exploited, then switching to another hosting provider should be reasonably feasible. VPS hosting is more niche and is probably something that you will never need. Dedicated hosting will almost never be a good idea. And cloud hosting is good if you need to get big.

Questions?

If you have any questions, then please leave them in the comments section. If you would like me to review your existing site or build you a new site, then please read about my services.

Page Caching PHP to HTML and the Latest Versions of WordPress

Posted on by Bob Wilson

It used to be that if you were using even moderately sophisticated PHP programs, then you wold want to convert your PHP pages to HTML on your local server so that users wouldn’t need to wait for your pages to be processed. But is that still necessary? Anecdotally, I have been removing local page caching plugins from many sites, and whenever I have done it with the latest version of PHP (8.2 as of this post) and WordPress (6.3 as of the post), I have noticed that the page speed performance has improved with the version updates, even though I had removed a caching plugin. In fact, I have seen some caching plugins that have actually caused the page speed to slow down.

How Do These Plugins Work?

Caching plugins can do a lot of things. The particular plugins that I am referencing are plugins that create a folder, then they run the PHP program that creates the page for your visitor, then they store that page as an HTML file in the folder so that your users don’t have to wait for your PHP program to be run when they request the page. It is also possible for a plugin to use hashing, but the principle is still the same.

WordPress and PHP Processing Speed

When WordPress and PHP are capable of processing your programs faster, storing a ready copy as HTML can have an undetectable influence. However, other factors can make PHP to HTML caching useful.

Server Impact of Caching PHP to HTML

It is also important to realize that the server that your site is being hosted on will also have an impact on how fast your PHP programs are processed. Higher quality servers can process information faster than lower quality servers. Think of how much your PC improved the last time that you got a new laptop. The same principle is true for servers and their operating software.

WordPress Theme and Plugins Impact

How your WordPress theme is written is another factor that will affect how fast your PHP is processed. The quantity and quality of your plugins will also have an impact. However, you may find that themes and plugins that used to be a little bit slow will now load about as fast as a lot of the so called “lightweight” themes if they have been updated to the latest versions of WordPress and PHP.

Traffic Impact of Caching PHP to HTML

The number of people that are using your site will also have an impact on how fast your page is loading. If you are on a shared server, then other websites that are being hosted on your site will also present an impact.

The Advantages of Not Caching PHP to HTML

The primary advantage of not caching your HTML locally is you have less to manage. Anytime you add a plugin to your WordPress site, you make it more complicated to manage. You need to make sure that the plugin is set up properly, and it is actually working. And you need to make sure that the HTML files are not out of date. So you may be required to manually refresh the cache after updating content.

Don’t Neglect the Use of a CDN

It’s important to realize the impact of not caching HTML pages on a local server is distinct from other forms of caching. Eliminating local HTML caching will not offset the need to use a CDN. It is also worth noting that if you know how to cache your HTML into a CDN, that may still cause a detectable performance enhancement.

Try It and Test It

Do you want to know if you can ditch your page caching plugin? All you have to do is try it and test it. First run your web page and see what page speed score you get. Then disable your page caching plugin and run the test again. Try this on at least several pages of your site. If the performance of your page is as good or better than before you disabled the plugin, it probably means that you don’t need a local page caching plugin anymore.

My Experience

My experience has been pretty consistent. WordPress websites that run on traffic appropriate servers and run the latest versions of PHP gain less benefit from local PHP to HTML page caching than they used to. But a significantly large volume of traffic will produce some noticeable benefit. And I have noticed that there is still a slight benefit from caching the HTML into a CDN. It should be noted that most of my testing has been done using the Big Themes. It is also worth noting that WordPress 6.4 is currently being advertised as being even faster than WordPress 6.3.

Questions?

If you have any questions, then feel free to post them in the comments sections below.

How to Build a Website for a Bar, Tavern, Pub, or Brewhouse

Posted on by Bob Wilson

If you own a bar, then you need a website. You can’t make excuses that you don’t have the time, or a website isn’t important because you have social media. Unless your goal is to have a reputation for owning a dive bar that won’t last very long, then you need to set up a quality website that doesn’t look like it was hacked together in about an hour. So let’s learn how to build a website for a bar.

I realize that my previous paragraph has a bit of an attitude, but anecdotally, I have seen a lot of bars (not so much restaurants) that have some of the most consistently lousy websites that I have seen. Your website is the most accessible statement you have about the quality of your business. If your website is dumpy, many people will assume that your bar is dumpy, and they won’t want to show up. Like it or lump it, this is something that you will have to put some time into, and nobody will be sympathetic if the results turn out bad.

Keep It One Page and Simple

You need images of your bar displaying its ambiance. You need a little section explaining what makes your bar special. And you need to make it easy for people to figure out how to get to your bar.

The easiest way to get an idea of how your website ought to look is to view a couple of examples.

You can build a website like this using one of the Big Themes. If you don’t have time to deal with all of this, or you don’t consider yourself to be tech savvy, then consider hiring a pro.

Two versions of a bar template built with the Big Chill WordPress theme. Click on the images to see video demos.
Get a Bar Template

Don’t Embed a Map on a Website for a Bar

Embedding a map will slow down your webpage’s page load, and map embed’s frequently break and cause security vulnerabilities. Conversely, you can link to Google Maps and outsource all of your problems to your visitor’s browser or your visitor’s Google maps app.

Page Load Speed

Make sure that you page loads fast on mobile. If someone is on the road and looking for your bar, you want to make it easy for them to get a map to your bar with GPS. All you have to do is add a Google map link for your bar’s address. If this is difficult for you to figure out, then you should hire a pro.

No Need for a Navbar on a Website for a Bar

If your website is one page and short, then adding a navbar is unnecessarily complicated. Removing the navbar from one of the Big Themes is easy. If you decide you want to expand your site in the future, it’s easy to add the navbar back.

Use a Blog as an Optional Events Announcer.

The advantage of using a blog to announce events in addition to social media is people who don’t have accounts with any of your social media platforms will still be able to see the announcement.

Contact Section for a Website for a Bar

Contact information should just be an address, a phone number, social media links, and maybe email. Don’t waste your time with a contact form. They attract more spam then anything else, and even if they are maintained and updated properly, they can still serve as a security vulnerability.

Software Updates

Don’t forget to update your software every once in awhile. A simple website is easy to set and forget. But if you forget it for too long, then your website runs the risk of developing security vulnerabilities.

Questions?

Feel free to to post any questions that you may have in the comments area.

How to Build a Take Out Pizza Website

Posted on by Bob Wilson

You may know a lot about pizza, and you may know a lot about business, but you still might not know anything about websites. This post will teach you how to build a take out pizza website.

The Two Keys to a Take Out Pizza Website

You will need to learn:

  1. How to Set Up a Website specifically for your restaurant
  2. How to Add an Online Ordering Service

Don’t Have Time to Read All of This?

Contact me and ask me about my professional services.

Building a Homepage as the Foundation of Your Take Out Pizza Website

You want a homepage that is your own. This means you should create an open source website that you have full admin privileges over. You’ll want to avoid services like managed web hosting. The difference between setting up a website yourself and using a managed solution is like the difference between buying a car and leasing a car. If you buy a car, you may pay a bit more up front. But just like buying a car, when you set up a site yourself, you will save a lot of money in the long run and yield a higher quality product.

A Cheap Full Service Solution for Your Take Out Pizza Website

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on a website, then you can usually get a cheap yet high quality solution if you have a one page website built for you.

Using a full service solution will give you the peace of mind of knowing that everything was set up properly, but you will still have all the control you need to manage your website whenever the need arises.

Anecdotally, most local pizza restaurants I have seen have websites that simply aren’t very good. They look terrible, are difficult to navigate, and load bad on laptops and horrible on mobile devices. If you don’t consider yourself tech savvy OR you don’t have a lot of free time to build a website, then you should really consider spending the money necessary to have a website set up for you.

Before you decide to try set up a website yourself, you should probably take some time to see what some good professional websites looks like:

A Bootstrap template. Click on the image to see the live demo.
Two templates built with the Big Chill WordPress theme. Click on each image to see video demos.
Get a Pizzeria Template

A Cheaper Partial Service Solution

A lot of what makes a website costly is paying to make sure that it loads fast. Most of the solutions to these problems are fairly generic. If you are patient and pay attention to what you’re doing, you can set up a website that loads about as fast as a web page can load while still using a reasonably priced shared server.

If you want to develop your website’s page speed yourself, you’ll need to know,

The Cheapest Solution Without Doing It All Yourself

If you have never built a website yourself, then setting up a foundational template can be one of the most time consuming processes. Meanwhile, a professional developer can often resolve this problem in an hour or less.

Page building plugins and premium themes often give people the impression that setting up a great looking website is easy, but when you try to actually set up the page, the results are unimpressive.

If you are trying to do the most you can to future proof your website and make sure that it is still viable in ten years, then you will probably want to avoid using a page builder. WordPress block editing has been controversial, but it is making the use of page builders increasingly questionable. Block editing is part of the WordPress core, and it’s use expands with every update. Block editing has a higher probability of being around in ten years. Page builders seem like more of a gamble.

If you want to add your content yourself, you should learn

Doing It All Yourself

It’s not uncommon to fail the first time that you try something. If this has happened to you, then don’t beat yourself up. You may have set up part of your site in such a way that it will save you money. It’s okay to reach out and ask a pro for help. It’s your business. Make your sure you have everything set up right the first time. Once you have a solid foundation set, you can use this blog to make updates in the future. Even people that like to work on their own cars like to buy them from other people.

Once you have everything set up right you can learn how to do everything yourself. This allows you to have control over the maintenance of your site.

However if you still think that you would like to set up absolutely everything yourself, in addition to knowing everything above, you will need to know,

Online Ordering Services

Any online ordering service that you should choose, you should consider as a distinct entity from the rest of your website. Think of your ordering system as being like a third party contractor that you have the discretion to hire and fire as you see fit.

Using More Than One Ordering Service

It’s not unreasonable to use more than one ordering service to help you. It’s as simple as signing up for each ordering system and creating a list of links on your website. This will have the benefit of better serving customers that already have an account with an existing service. You can see which service or services work best for your business and your customers, then you can add and drop each service as you see fit.

A List of Ordering Services

I don’t have any stake in the ordering services that you may choose, but if you want some fast links that you can try, then check these out. These have been listed without regard for preference, and the list should not be considered comprehensive:

There are many other ordering services available to you, so if none of these suit your needs, then keep looking. Then again, maybe you should consider not using an ordering service at all.

Consider Not Using an Ordering Service

I don’t like to tell business owners how to run their business, but if an ordering service isn’t good for your bottom line, and your customers don’t have a great demand for it, and you can service your orders without one, then why use one? Dominoes built an empire over the phone. And retro technology is considered cool. It’s real easy to set up a link on your website that automatically dials the number on your visitor’s phone app. If you can’t figure this out, then contact a pro.

Need Help With Your Take Out Pizza Website?

Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help. I can build a website that fits your budget. If you have any questions, then feel free to leave them in the comments section.