Starting back in August, Upside Down Websites meet up with Rawlinson & Brown Real Estate about a new web site,  after getting started on the project we got some not so good info, Realestate.com.au changed there policy and had told there customers that they where ending the Iframe display of properties to the R&B web site.

As i had done 2 other real estate web sites (Elders Lennox Head and  Miller & James Temora) i also had informed them of the changes, mid Dec 2011 they where informed officially that this feed was ending, We now had 3 to change over to the new way to display there properties on there own web sites – this is done by entering the data into the My Desktop  program.

So that all said now we had to develop the back end to parse the data supplied from My Desktop  so this could be put in to a data base and displayed in real time on the companies web sites.  Knowing i needed help with this, it was time to call on Ronan from  IT Integrated Business Solutions to do the back end data base design.

On Monday we where able to go live with  Rawlinson & Brown,  the first of the 3 web sites needing the change as well as in the mean time developing a plugin data based system to take all this work so now it can be used by any real estate to change over to the new way of display there properties on there own site.

You can find more info on this over at Real Estate Data Solutions where we have a dedicated site to show all the info on how we developed this product, or so your web developer can implement this for you.

Today we released a new website, so if you are a Real Estate we can help you to display your properties via your own website, My Desktop is a platform that allows you to post this info on to your internal site.

So where does Real Estate Data Solutions come into the big picture?  Real Estate Data Solutions is a combined effort from Upside Down Websites and IT Integrated Business Solutions that have designed a solution to get the data from My Desktop data feed and publish that to your internal company website.

My Desktop pushes out an XML file to your web server and Real Estate Data Solutions have designed a data base and front end to install so you are able to convert that XML file to display  properties on your website.

This allows you to update/post/remove the same way as it would if using  Hub Online or Realestate.com.au.  You can display  Rentals, Land, Commercial, Sold and  Residential as well as adding Youtube, Google Maps and Agent photos.

You can contact Real Estate Data Solutions for any info related on this topic, in the next week there will be a couple websites going live with this solution installed (Elders Lennoxhead, Rawlinson Brown Griffith and Miller and James Temora) as well as a demo on the REDS web site.

If you are not using My Desktop for entering your data, than you should also contact them for more info as well.

Work Flow

Tony from BlairAeroSport did another fantastic aerobatic routine this year on both Friday and Saturday at the yearly Natfly flyin at Temora Airport.

Keep your eye on Tony’s web site as we have some great new images going to be added the the slide show that where taken by Naemick Photography.

you can see a full collection of some great Natfly 2012 images at Naemick’s  Natfly 2012 image set here http://www.flickr.com/photos/naemick/sets/72157629751040623/ 

Tony’s next event is the 2012 Air Force Airshow, which is next month in Pearce, Western Australia.

There is a customer site just getting tweaked now and should also be mobilized by end of next week 

So how does all this work ?

If you were feeding the iframe into a web site that would be removed and new code would have to be placed in that page to show your real-estate properties, there would have to be a data base set up to parse (convert) the XML  file from Commerce Australia (My desktop) to allow you to push this info onto your existing web site pages, Commerce Australia use great software called My desktop to give you that ability – this also allows you to still publish to Realestate.com.au, Hubonline and Domain.com.au like you always could.

Once set up on the web site its an automated process that’s handled in the background by the data base, we do customize the page to match your existing layout and colors.

Wow this is huge, 6 month’s ago i was asked to have a look at another web site to help out an old customer with some issues they where having with another web developer, so with an open view i tried to be fair to both parties, first thing i noticed was the crappy code – Yes it was being built of shore from India. Now thats not all that bad, you do get what you pay for. after a couple weeks i was just asked can i do some thing to get Felton Industries back on the right track. With a big project that was getting bigger by the day and more and more wanting to be done, it was quiet clear a normal web site was not going to cut it here, I looked at all the options and when it all can down to it – it was dial a friend time. I had done a few small jobs with Ronan from IT Integrated Business Solutions and knew this was right up his alley, with many talks with Felton we come up with a great layout and plan.  First objective was find a frame work which was bullet proof and easy to work with – Along came SeyDesign with one of there new themes just been released CRE4MY and being on the beta team and testing it – i knew we got the foundation correct. You will notice it has had a lot of mods from the demo on the display site, good testament to what you can do with a great theme.

Time for Ronan to do some magic, 3 months later a heap of sleepless nights  (Im in Australia and MrR is in Spain) we got up some of the backend /database/java script and the customer was starting to add products and content, The customer has full control over pricing, content, images, and descriptions as well as all email templates, they can add remove change any product as they wish any time they want, this not only goes with the product area, this also goes with a lot of the other pages, most places out side the product and shopping cart environment are driven by Pulse CMS a great light weight solution i use for most sites where customers need access.

Last 2 weeks of late minute changes, a server swap from cold fusion to php servers to get it all happening and test to find any errors last monday we got the green light to go live friday after 5pm, we might find the odd broken link, but a quiet friday night and a beer  to relax – this should not be an issue, A great end to some hard work. but is that bitter sweet?

So whats the twist ? there has to be one right ? Felton Industries is run out of Condobolin NSW and today they have to evacuate because of the flooding in the town and good chance they will miss it going live,  hope you guys are all ok!

 This would have been the biggest learning curve that i ever had to deal with and thanks to a great team of developers this all came together to show off some great work normally dedicated software has trouble doing (Shopping cart, CMS, Web site) 

Yes thats 1 down 3 more to come in the following weeks, with also some great backend and data base work. Watch This Space!!! We now taking on the Real Estate Market.

This was a pretty challenging task with the colours, have to ask a good friend from some help there Alison from Alirat Web Design in NZ stepped up to the plate and got that sorted.  

Brief was, keep it simple clean and supply the information to the customer !! -

Once that was over, time to do some in house clean up with there email system – Today Google Aps from small companies are a dream, to give a great experience like running a full blown mail server for free, you can do email from any device, mutiple computers and still have full control of what you see and do. Presently Temora Computers has swapped over 5 companies in last year and totally changed how they use to do email – from massive savings in server costs and maintenance and with Googles  99.9% uptime  and a seamless swap to this service this is a no brainer. 

We only had 1 day a week to design, edit, work on this web site, but in the end it all come together. I always like to meet the customer and have visited StockPro^TM at Condobolin a few times and can say they do awesome manufacturing work,