My real estate WordPress blogging clients are quite happy with the fast-track startup of their WordPress blogs for real estate. They are working toward retiring old static websites that never performed as lead generators.

I’m not a programmer, coder, CSS manipulator, or any of those background software type consultants. I do sometimes dip into the code of WordPress for simple fixes or addons, but it is rare that it’s necessary.

WordPress, with thousands of themes and tens of thousands of plugins, is capable of doing just about anything you want with a website. And, it doesn’t have to look like a blog at all. However, taking advantage of the content management power of the WordPress platform, as well as the love of blogs that is demonstrated by the search engines, is why I believe it’s the only way to go for any consulting, real estate, mortgage or other professional.

My “WordPress How To” posts here will help anyone to get a great start on their blogging with WordPress. I consult for independence of my clients, using online screen collaboration and training so that they are able to chart their own course quickly, ending up with a highly successful blog in a few short months.

You’ll start to see a number of links on the bottom of posts on this blog that are shown as Zemanta Related Articles.  This is a free service provided by a plugin in WordPress.  Once I’ve begun to type a post, Zemanta analyzes the content and suggests relevant links.

All I have to do is choose those links that I think are appropriate and might be of value to my readers, and they are placed at the bottom of the post by Zemanta.  There are also images available, with an easy one-click image placement in the post.

A new feature just introduced by Zemanta is an addon for Firefox that will allow the same abilities in Gmail and Yahoo Mail.  I just installed it, and it seems to work perfectly in allowing me to insert a relevant image and links into my outgoing emails.  Check out the additional links below provided by Zemanta.

After the related links sections, I’ve placed a short video in Premium Content to show how Zemanta looks in WordPress and Gmail.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Zemanta: Real-Time Semantic Discovery & Blogging Tool (andrewapeterson.com)
• Zemanta: Making Blogging Easier (webbugnet.wordpress.com)
• Content Made Easy With Zemanta by Dianne (frugalwahmstalkradio.com)
• ScribeFire Adds Zemanta Integration (techguyandstuff.wordpress.com)
• Zemanta Helps Write Rich Emails in Gmail and Yahoo Mail [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)

[important]There’s more on this topic, plus a video, in the Premium Content below the Related Artciles.[/important]

Related Articles:

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The plugin is WP-Invoice, and it’s great.  I installed it and set it up in just 10 minutes on the road.  I mean literally on the road, sitting in the right seat of the car working on my cellular broadband connection.  Setup was a breeze, and I did a sample invoice to check it out.  It emailed the invoice link to me, and I pulled it up, with a button to pay via PayPal.  It even handles recurring payments.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Get Your Money: Best Invoicing Practices for Freelancers (freelanceswitch.com)
• 10 Resources for Beginning Freelancers (lifehack.org)
• Zoho Adds Online Invoicing Application (becoming-a-writer-seriously.com)

Add Post Footer     1.1

Automatically add the ad code, related post, optional custom paragraph or technorati tags to the end of every posts. All options can be fully customized though Add Post Footer tab in the option panel within wordpress admin. It’s also possible overide the setting for specific post by adding custom field key and value. Please refer to the tips and addtional info provided at the Add Post Footer Page. By freetime.

Advanced Category Excluder     1.3.2

This plugin helps you to manage your content, and fine tune where you want to display your posts, or hide. By DjZoNe.

Akismet     2.2.3

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

All in One SEO Pack     1.4.6.16

Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By Michael Torbert.

Angsuman’s Permanent Redirect     1.0

Permanently redirects posts and pages that contains “redirect” custom field, to the value of the “redirect” custom field. By Angsuman Chakraborty.
Apture     1.0

A plugin for easily enabling Apture on WordPress blogs. By Apture, Inc..

cforms     9.4

cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. Please see the VERSION HISTORY for what’s new and current bugfixes. By Oliver Seidel.

Daiko’s Video Widget     2.0.7

Adds a sidebar widget to display random videos of your own choice. You can mix Google, Myspace and YouTube videos. Make your own videolist in the widget-control-panel. Syntax: [MySpaceID/Google video ID/YouTube ID]@[Title*]@[Link*]. * Is optional. Do not add a after the last video in the list. By Rune Fjellheim.

FAQ-Tastic     1.0.7

Create and manage FAQs. A short overview is given on the help page. By John Godley.

FirstRSS     7.10.18

FirstRSS is a simple RSS aggregator for posts. Insert “[rsspara:URL]” or “[rsslist:URL]” into the post for paragraph or list format respectively. Replace “URL” with the URL of the RSS feed starting with “http://”. By Chris Hatcher.

Geo Mashup     1.1.3

Tools for adding maps to your blog, and plotting posts on a master map. Configure in Options->Geo Mashup after the plugin is activated. By Dylan Kuhn.

Get Custom Field Values     2.1

Easily retrieve and control the display of any custom field values/meta data for posts, inside or outside “the loop”. The power of custom fields gives this plugin the potential to be dozens of plugins all rolled into one. By Scott Reilly.

Google Analytics     0.68

This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog and/or your BBPress forum. By Rich Boakes.

Google XML Sitemaps     3.1.2

This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.

Language Translator     1.0

Adds a multi-language sidebar widget which enables visitors to translate your blog in their own language. By Lancelhoff.

LinkedIn hResume     0.1

LinkedIn hResume grabs the Microformated hResume block from your LinkedIn public profile page allowing you to add it to any page and apply your own styles to it. It currently works with WordPress 2.0+. By Brad Touesnard.

MemberWing Premium PU Edition     3.32

Allows to use any WordPress blog/site as a Membership Site. By Gleb Esman, http://www.memberwing.com/.

No Self Pings     0.2

Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site. By Michael D. Adams.

Page SEO     1.0.1

Display Google Pagerank of each page of your blog in one page. By Neekey.

Photo Dropper     1.0.8

Lets you add Creative commons licensed Photos to Your Posts from Flickr. By activating this plugin you agree to be fully responsbile for adhering to Creative Commons licenses for all photos you post to your blog. By Photodropper.

PicApp     1.1

PicApp WordPress plugin. By activating the PicApp plugin you agree to the picapp.com Terms of Service. By Watershed Studio, LLC.

Podcasting     2.0b20

Adds full podcasting support. By Ronald Heft, Jr..

Post-Plugin Library     2.6.2.1

Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin. By Rob Marsh, SJ.

ProjectManager     1.7

This Plugin can be used to manage several different types of projects with redundant data. This could be athlet portraits, DVD database, architect projects. You can define different form field types and groups to sort your project entries. By Kolja Schleich.

Search Engine query in WordPress     1.0.7

If the visitor comes from a known search engine, the widget grabs the used search query and shows internal blog posts that match that query. By Francesco Castaldo.
ShareThis     2.3

Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. Configuration options are here. Questions on configuration, etc.? Make sure to read the README. By ShareThis and Crowd Favorite (crowdfavorite.com).

Similar Posts     2.6.2.0

Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags. Don’t be disturbed if it takes a few moments to complete the installation — the plugin is indexing your posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed. By Rob Marsh, SJ.

Weather Traveller     1.2

Gets weather information from www.geonames.org based on lat and long taken from wp-geo plugin (http://www.benhuson.co.uk/wordpress-plugins/wp-geo/) By Blair McMillan.

WordPress.com Stats     1.3.6

Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.

WordPress Database Backup     2.2.2

On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools → Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.

WordPress Google Calendar     0.8.5

This plugin allows for the integration of a Google calendar into a WordPress blog. By L1 Jockeys.

WordPress Popular Posts     1.3

Retrieves the most active entries of your blog and displays them on a list. Use it as a widget or place it in your templates using <?php get_mostpopular(); ?> By Héctor Cabrera.

WP-Note      0.2

Make nice notes with WP-Note in your post. By Luke.

WP Geo     3.0.5

Adds geocoding to WordPress. By Ben Huson.

WP Super Cache     0.9

Very fast caching module for WordPress. By Donncha O Caoimh.

WP Widget Cache     0.25.1

Cache the output of your blog widgets. Usually it will significantly reduce the sql queries to your database and speed up your site. By Andrew Zhang.

Zemanta     0.5.5

Contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again. By Zemanta Ltd.

That’s them for now!

Then, I started inserting videos and larger screen shot images to illustrate instructional material. They would bridge across columns, creating a really ugly site with poor usability. It was a theme-specific problem, but it could definitely show up in others. However, the cure for it is a plugin that has some great features for anyone wanting to use excerpts with some formatting ability.

The plugin is Excerpt Editor, and it solved all of my problems, plus gave me some flexibility I didn’t expect.  Once installed, you have numerous setup options, including how many characters of text to use from the beginning of the post for the excerpt.  Check it out.

The original post was asking about better ways to have more page navigation with limited top space for buttons or clutter of too many links in the sidebar. I recommend the Angsuman Redirect plugin, and dropdown page buttons at the top, as used in my real estate blog.

Basically, I have extensive dropdown navigation that consists of pages and sub-pages, but they are blank and redirected to WordPress category pages.  Well, as of an hour ago, I have a lot more information courtesy of Page SEO.  The pages that are redirected to categories have some of the highest page ranks!   Not the destination category page, but the blank page that was redirected, so it got the credit for the content on the category page.

So, you shouldn’t be too concerned about redirecting content in relation to SEO.  I never really was, and did all of these redirects to give my visitors a thorough navigation structure without clutter.  I’m glad I did.

Using real estate as an example, I wanted dropdown page navigation across the top of my blog, but there were some issues:

• I want to have pages for visitor access, but I don’t want to design and keep changing them.
• I wanted a lot of them, as I have a lot of sub-topics under which my visitors might want to access information:
  • Negotiation process
  • Transaction process
  • Building and development codes
  • Land use regulations

There are more, but you’re getting the idea.  I want the site visitor who is familiar with button page navigation to locate my information efficiently.  But, I also don’t want a lot of layout and page design to make it happen.

Solution – Using categories in conjunction with the Angsuman Permanent Redirect plugin got the job done.  By categorizing posts for main topics, such as one category for each of the bullet items above, I have all the related posts together when that category page is called for display.  By creating a “Page” and redirecting it to the category page link, I then can send the visitor to all posts about a topic with one Page Navigation Click.

Step-by-Step –

1. You’ll need to choose a theme that offers dropdown navigation along the top of the page.  There are some plugins out there that say they can create this dropdown functionality in most themes that don’t have it.  However, I’ve looked at a couple, and they require messing around in the header code, so I would rather just find a theme that’s already set up for it.
2. Install and activate the Angsuman Permanent Redirect plugin.
3. Post as you normally would to the blog, paying special attention to proper categorization.   Categorize your posts however you want.
4. Once you have identified categories that merit a navigation button in the dropdown at the top, just create a page.  Leave the body of the page blank, and use the redirect plugin in Custom Fields to point the page to the category.  Look at the Real Estate > Negotiations menu options at the top of this real estate site to see it working.

Using dropdown navigation and redirecting to categories allows your visitor a great deal of detail in how to locate what they want, but doesn’t use a lot of screen space.  It also, once set up, allows you to forget about it.  You just keep posting to the appropriate categories, and it all just works!

[important]There’s an instructional video in the Premium Content below the Related Artciles.[/important]

Related Articles:

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All navigation is via a left side nav bar, and I’ll be taking you through every item on it as WordPress Help posts in this blog.  This post, however, is just the very first box at top left, the DashBoard.  Also, you’ll see different things at times if you’re working with a free WordPress blog, as I only do full self-hosted blog instruction here.  Much of it is the same, but there is a great deal more functionality if you host your blog.  Since it’s usually less than $100/year to do so, I don’t recommend the free blog route for anyone who wants flexibility in design and functionality.

The Dashboard screen gives you a snapshot view of the current status of your blog, numbers of posts, comments, etc.  It also can show you statistics for visitors and pageviews.  There are boxes available for display of current WordPress news, plugin releases, new themes, and more.  Here is a a flash file of the Dashboard for my real estate site.  You can enlarge or print it with the >> at the top right of the box.

[important]There’s more on this topic, plus a video, in the Premium Content below the Related Artciles.[/important]

Related Articles:

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This video will show you how to rearrange your dashboard, plus some examples of configuring the modules available here.

Then go right into your other text, but you know the reader definitely read the item of importance.  It’s the wp-note plugin for WordPress, and I use it a lot on this blog.  [important]For more examples and the easy code that you insert to make it happen, look in the Premium Content below the Related Articles…[/important]

Related Articles:

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1. For a simple note, you just enclose the word note in brackets [ ], write the note text, and then enclose /note in brackets [ ] to end it.  [note]I can’t actually type the words in the brackets here, as it will create a note within a note![/note]
2. For an important note, same thing, but with the word “important”  inside the brackets [ ] to begin the note, and “/important” inside the brackets [ ] to end the note.  [important]An important note looks like this….[/important]
3. A tip is green and has a light bulb, and you’re using “tip” and “/tip” inside the brackets.  [tip]A tip looks like this, and you can give them some extra interesting help this way….[/tip]
4. For warnings, just use “warning” and “/warning inside the brackets [ ] to begin and end the note.  [warning]Be careful, finding and using fun WordPress plugins can be addictive….[/warning]
5. Help notes are just as easy, using “help” and “/help” in the brackets.  [help]A help note could be how to do these commands in your text, but omit the “”.  ["note"]note text here["/note"], ["help"]help text here["/help"]

If you blog, and you haven’t been using the Trackback feature, you’re missing a huge opportunity to actually build your own links back to your site from other blogs. WordPress, for one, has a box in the post writing screen where you can enter the URL of a site or blog post about which you’re writing.

Say you read a great blog post somewhere that mentions your area, and you’re a real estate blogger. You like the post, and write one of your own commenting on it, with a link to it in your post. However, you should do one more thing. Enter the URL of their post into the Trackback field in your post screen.

Many blogs will receive that trackback, and without any action on the part of the other blog writer, enter a small excerpt from your post into their comment field with a link back to your post. If they are moderating their comments, they will have to approve it, but they usually do soon.

Trackbacks are a way to interact with other bloggers with material related to yours, or even if it’s just of interest. First, you get a great idea for a post on your blog, then you get the value of an incoming link as well.