Convert Raw HTML/ CSS / JS to working pro site for new JoeHaydenRealtor.com

[Battler45]

Vihang & Vihar,

I know that both of you are working on several other tasks, but, as you have time, our next task will be to get underway on integrating the programming, etc. into the raw HTML / CSS / JS of the new JoeHaydenRealtor.com website.

Vihar, the reason I've included you on this ticket is that, as we've discussed, I believe we will need to create a set of duplicate content and blog posts for this new site, which we'll then be able to work with in development without affecting the current live site. Can either you or Vihang move forward with that when you have time? I suppose this will also involve duplicating the current Sites record to a new record, and then also duplicating the site's current AdminUser to a new user.

Vihang, I've also configured a new working website for the new site. You can find it here:

http://joehaydenrealtornew.sierrainteractivedev.com/index.html http://joehaydenrealtornew.sierrainteractivedev.com/inner.html

You can access this site via FTP using the usual credentials, with the username, joehaydenrealtornew_dev

Once you log in to the site, you'll see that common files such as default.asp, content.asp, etc. have already been added to the site. I'm not sure how those got there -- I may have added them in copying the site, or it's possible that Arthur added them after finishing the site HTML. If you examine them and find that they don't belong there, or that you prefer to proceed in a different way, it's fine to remove or change them as needed.

In configuring this site, we are going to need to make some changes to the Communities page, by adding an number of new top-level Communities sections, and then assigning the (duplicated) pages in the content manager to the appropriate sections using the attached spreadsheet.

As you'll see in the attached spreadsheet, the client would like to add 15 new top-level sections to the new site, and many of the pages currently in the main Communities section will be re-assigned to these newly created sections.

Once that's done, the main Communities page on the new site (which includes the alphabetized list) will need to pull neighborhoods from all of these sections (similar to what we are already doing with MLSKY.net).

Can you get started with the programming integration there when you have time? Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks.

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

Please find below a few questions:

1-- I believe the new site will have sidebar navigation menu (similar to some of the standard sites) instead of drop-down navigation menu. Could you please confirm this?

2-- Could you please confirm that the Community Resources link in the footer would map to the "Community Info" section?

3-- Could you please let me know the corresponding page/section for the "Louisville MLS" and "Louisville Real Estate footer links"?

4-- There is a "Text HAYDEN to 87778" widget on the home page. Could you please let me know if the site would use our "Send us a text message" functionality?

5-- I believe we will not be using Chosen plugin in this site. Please let me know if I should try to implement the jQuery UI Autocomplete plugin in this site.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

Glad to hear that you're feeling better now.

I also thought about referencing the common programming for those sites but they have some differences in the way data is retrieved so I didn't make the change. I agree that it would be good to revisit this later.

As for launching the GLAR updater - the imported data appears to be in order so I'm confident about that. The only thing I'm concerned about is the photo migration. As mentioned earlier, the photo-migration app was built to process weekly photos so I'll need to revisit it once before we initiate the transfer.

That said, the new updater is needed to be launched so that the email-alerts contain correct links. As I understand we won't be launching the new JoeHaydenRealtor site for another few days so we can continue with the old GLAR updater for another couple of days. That will give us time to prepare for the launch of the new GLAR updater, which is critical considering the number of sites we have in that region.

The only change that would be needed for now would be to update the spInsertUpdateMLSListing and spRemoveListingByMLSNumber stored-procedures so that they start moving records to the OffMarket table. Pls let me know if now would be the correct time to update those stored-procedures. If the old updater has already started then perhaps I'll do that my early tomorrow.

In any case, I've changed the new JoeHaydenRealtor site to point to the live db and use the live search-tools programming.

Thanks. Posted by Shah Vihar(unfuddle username: vshah)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Also, can you please make a quick change to the new property listing detail page (both the current version and the updated version that you are working on)? Joe Hayden emailed to say he felt that the photos on the new detail page look a bit blurry -- not in the "view large photos" / overlay view, but in the default photo viewer that is part of the page itself.

I see this being true, and believe it's because we are displaying the "middle" size of photos, which are actually smaller than the size at which we are displaying them, and so need to be enlarged for display on this page.

So, on the new property detail pages, can you update this photo area to pull the large version of the photos rather than the middle version?

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

1 - Yes, that's correct.

2 - Yes, correct

3 - Louisville MLS will go to the Property Listings site map (which I believe will be "/louisville-mls/site-map/"), and I think that "Louisville Real Estate" will go to the main communities page.

4 - Good question. For now, please leave this as static content.

5 - Another good question. I believe we may need to implement jQuery UI Autocomplete because client wants address and mls # to be searchable from the main box along with city, county and subdivision. But let me get back to you on that.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I've created new Sites record for the new JoeHaydenRealtor site (340) and have also added a new AdminUser record for Joe Hayden (1026). Pls note that the user-name for the new AdminUser is joe_new so that it could be used for accessing new site. We've also created duplicated contents / saved-searches records and have associated them with the new site.

Pls note the following points:

1 -- New sections have been added as listed in the attached spreadsheet. They have been associated with appropriate pages. Pls note that the number of pages listed in the spreadsheet is 670 whereas the total number of community pages (associated with the Communities section) is 797. Pls let me know if we need to associate those remaining 127 pages with appropriate section.

2 -- For now I haven't created duplicate blog records for the new site. I believe it would be fairly straightforward to associate blog-records with the new site as and when we launch it. For now the client can continue adding / updating blog entries. Pls let me know your inputs.

Vihang will start working on adding programming for the new front-end site.

Thanks. Posted by Shah Vihar(unfuddle username: vshah)

[Battler45]

Vihar,

RE: #17

Yes, I do suppose we need to treat this as the highest priority task, because (in some ways) our ability to complete the Joe Hayden project depends on this getting done. The Manual Listings are also a priority (for the Huff Realty project), but the project is not as urgent for Huff as it is for Joe Hayden.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Last thing on this site for today, I promise!

On the Market Statistics page:

http://joehaydenrealtornew.sierrainteractivedev.com/louisville-ky-real-estate-market-statistics/

There is a display problem with the Cherokee Triangle box header text wrapping to two lines. Can you either decrease the padding at left and right in the header of these boxes so that this text fits on one line, or shorten the title of that box to "Cherokee Tri. Trends", so that it will fit on one line? Or, as another alternative, we could specify a different area -- perhaps Indian Hills (as already included here: http://www.juliepogue.com/communities/market-statistics/)

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have made changes in the site per comment #56. Please note that, I have not removed the previously added testimonials. Please let me know if I should remove the same.

Regarding adding 301 rules for the image links:

Please note that, we haven't yet copied the images to the new site and updated the image links in the page contents. Per our earlier discussion, we had decided to do so at the time of launch. So, if we add the redirect rules now, the images would not be displayed on the new site.

Also, I am not sure if you had a chance to review my response in comment #47 to your question (in comment #46) about merging the new/updated content pages/saved-searches into the new site. As mentioned, it would be quite difficult to merge the contents from the old site into the new site. If you think it would be good to stick to the old site and add new sections into the old site, then we will need to perform following steps in addition to the three steps mentioned in comment #47:

1-- Update the site-id of the newly added pages/saved-searches in the new site (340) to 182

2-- There are four old content pages that have been updated in the new site (340) so we will need to update these content pages in the olds site (182).

3-- Run the script to add community pages and subdivision associations on the old site (182)

I think this would be straightforward and less time consuming then merging contents from the old site into the new site. Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I hope you are feeling better now. This is to clarify about publishing GLAR updater (comment-31) - pls note that publishing the new updater is not a must. The changes are at stored-procedure level only (to generate unique-id and move record to OffMarket table) so it would be fine to continue with the old GLAR updater by updating those stored-procedures. In that case however the old updater programming will need to be updated to create search-tool page links based on the UrlStructure and SearchToolsRootDirectory values (Sites table). This will ensure that correct links are added to the email-alerts.

Pls let me know if I should go ahead and update the stored-procedures and old updater programming for the same.

Thanks. Posted by Shah Vihar(unfuddle username: vshah)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have made changes in the site per comment-58.

Regarding new blog box, when I set the "li list-style-type" to square, square was not displayed on the home page and on the inner pages it was displayed outside of the blog box (please see the attached image). I spent some time on this but I could not fix the issue so, I have used the same triangle image that we have used in the content label widget (and on communities page). Please let me know if this would be fine.

Please check these updates and let me know your feedback.

Also, I am not feeling well for the last couple of days so I could not spend much time on other open tasks especially on the property details page. I should be able to complete the property details page in next couple of days.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

1 - Good question. On this site, though, I think it is fine to include sidebar content on all site pages (except for the new property listing detail page).

2 - Also a good question, but, no, in this case, I think it will be best to use the free_market_analysis_2.asp form in the /property-search/ folder, as on this site: http://www.buildingstapleton.com/property-search/free-market-analysis/

3 - Yes, that would be great. The programming will be slightly different because we will not have the tabs at the top of the box switching states as they do on the PWPrudential.com site, but, yes, the plugins will be the same and the basic functionality will also be the same. The links to the clients profiles are:

• http://www.facebook.com/LouisvilleKYRealEstate

• http://twitter.com/joehayden

4 - Yes, exactly, the functionality will be very similar to what you see on http://www.weselllouisville.com, and you can use the same code and the same style overlay as on that site. The client does not yet have the finished video ready, so, for now, please use this video as a placeholder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX0D4oZwCsA&feature=relmfu

5 - Yes, good question. For some reason, I had failed to notice that. We do not actually have several of the stats listed in that box. So, please use the following instead:

• Total Properties Listed:

• New Properties Today: [Linked to new listings]

Then, beneath the Averages header, please use:

• Days on Market
• Avg List Price (Res)
• Median List Price (Res)
• Month-Over-Month Chng

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

We've had some feedback from Joe Hayden on his new site, and so far he likes it a lot, but he does have a couple of requests:

1 - With the quick search, it seems to be agressive in auto-selecting the first option. For example, he says that if he starts typing in "Lake" with the intention of typing "Lake Forest" it jumps to "Boulders of Mallard Lake." Is there a way to make it function in this regard more like the Chosen plugin, where the first option is highlighted so that if they hit Enter or Tab it is selected, but that it does not automatically populate without that? Then, if they don't select from the drop-down list, the value would be nulled out? (Meaning, they would not be able to enter a value without selecting from the auto-complete list.)

2 - Can you copy over to the new site all pages that Joe has added or updated since you and Vihar did the original export of pages to the new site?

3 - Also, can you create a new spreadsheet of neighborhoods in exactly the same format as the original one, but this one picking up with neighborhood pages added after the last one was created? (I believe the cutoff date was November 28.)

4 - On the customer-facing sitemap on the new site please include all site pages including those in all community sections.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I will work on point-1 and 4 tomorrow.

Regarding 2:

When we migrated saved-searches/content-pages to the new site, we thought this would be a one-time operation and the client would add/update saved-searches/content pages to the new site. So we created script accordingly. We will need to make changes in the scripts to migrate added/updated saved-searches and content pages to the new site. Please let me know if it would be fine to do so when we make the site live.

Please find attached a spreadsheet listing all the neighborhood pages added on or after 28 November 2011.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have completed work on the jQuery Autocomplte plugin integration. Please note the following points regarding this:

1-- User can search Address (Street Name or Street #), Subdivision, City, Zip Code or MLS # from the location box.

2-- We get number of matching results for the "Street Name" and "Subdivision" so for now, I have set a limit to return top 10 matching results of each of these location types.

3-- The first matching result would be automatically selected. This is a workaround to force user to select from the matching results since we allow search on multiple location type and it is important for us to associate selected result with the appropriate location type.

4-- The Autocomplete would be activated, that is the matching results would be shown only after user has entered three or more characters.

Also, please note the following points:

1-- I forgot to mention this in earlier comments; I have used same styling for the content label widgets as in the old site and the images are pulled from http://joehaydenrealtor.sierrastatic.com/res/images/sicm/.

2-- The content on the home page is static and I haven't yet included the /shared/global/sicm/content/content_body.asp file in the default.asp file as the content on the home page is quite large and different compared to the content in the template.

3-- The HTML Document type used for the template pages is Strict whereas for the site it was set to use Transitional as a result there were few issues in the quick search box and sidebar display. So, I have updated the HTMLDocType to Strict on the Admin Settings form in CAA and also updated the main pages and blog pages for the same.

4-- We haven't yet updated the search tool links and image/file urls in the pages/posts contents. That is we have not yet replaced /property-search/ with /louisville-mls/ in links and images/files would be pulled from the /userfiles/182/ folder. I think it would be good to update image/file urls at the time of making site live, we can rename /userfiles/182/ to /userfiles/340/ otherwise we will need to copy images/files from old site (182) to new site (340). But please let me know if I should update the search tools links in the pages/posts contents.

Please check these changes and let me know your feedback.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

RE: #26 - I've fixed the issue in newpanda, trulia and zillow feed-generation but I couldn't verify whether or not correct data is generated. Apparently all those files use the OfficeMLSID value (and most likely a few additional parameters which I couldn't figure out) for retrieving records. I tested the trulia and zillow feeds for joehayden and hometoindy sites but it didn't pull any records. Are these feeds used for a few sites only?

Thanks. Posted by Shah Vihar(unfuddle username: vshah)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have fixed issue on the site-map page and added styles for ordered list to fix formatting issue with the Terms of Use / Privacy Policy page.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

When you have time, we have a few more updates needed for the new JoeHaydenRealtor.com site:

1 - On the home page, please integrate the main content block with the content manager and change the content to: (H1) Louisville Real Estate with the Joe Hayden Real Estate Team (/H1) "Welcome to the premier website for Louisville Real Estate! It is our pleasure to share with you the journey of homeownership. You can perform a comprehensive Louisville MLS search, you can view all Homes for Sale in Louisville, including Jefferson, Oldham, Bullitt, and Shelby Counties. You can learn about Buying a Home and research Selling your Home. We are a highly-experienced team of agents ready to serve all of your real estate needs."

2 - Please add the following testimonials to the rotation on the home page: "The best part about working with Joe was that he was always more focused on answering our questions, giving us good advice, and finding homes that met our needs than he was on closing a deal. We would recommend him to anyone." John and Natalie Harris

"My wife and I have spent the past 12 years working in the Louisville area real estate market during which time we've met so many real estate agents. Joe is one of the very best and has the heart of a teacher. Joe's team is who we chose to sell our own home, and we would highly recommend them to anyone buying or selling a home in the Louisville area." Mike Roberts

"Joe Hayden is a very professional real estate agent who listened to our specific wants and needs. Since we from out of town his knowledge about East Louisville and Oldham County was most helpful. I needed handicap accessibility which is hard to find, and Joe did not waste our time looking at property that had no potential to meet my requirements. We highly recommend for all your real estate needs." Wayne and Becky Hartigan

3 - The client has finished creating the rest of the default pages for the community sections. Please update the Page Filenames for these pages from "/homes-for-sale/" to "/"

4 - For each of the community sections, the client would like to create "Featured Searches" as we have done for a few other sites (MLSHomesKY.com, MLSKY.net, etc.) The client would like the following searches for each section:

• Newest Listings (already created, and so are corresponding pages)
• Subdivisions (no search needed, and corresponding pages are already created)
• Price Reductions
• Short Sales
• Foreclosures

Can you create Price Reductions, Short Sales and Foreclosures searches for each community section based on the criteria the client has used for creating the active listings widget on the default page for each section?

The client is then going to provide us with default text for the corresponding pages for each of the above, and we will use that to create community pages once he has given that to us.

5 - On the property listing detail pages in Internet Explorer, the four buttons across the top of the page are not all displaying in one line, but are wrapping to a second line. I'm sure this is a CSS issue with something defined on a global basis in the stylesheet. Can you see if you can figure this out? If you're not able to, let me know and I will ask Evgen to take a look.

6 - On the property listing detail pages in Firefox, the tabs are not displaying correctly (Overview, Maps & Street View, etc.) Again, I'm sure this has to do with a definition in the stylesheet -- please see if you can figure this out, but don't spend too much time on it. We will ask Evgen to look at it otherwise.

7 - On the property listing detail page (both the old and new version) can you change the title text of the Neighborhood links to exactly match the text that is being linked? So, for example, if the neighborhood link said, "See all homes for sale in Academy Ridge" the title text on the link would say that same thing instead of "See all Academy Ridge Listings"

8 - The client asked about the photos / images in the content pages. I can't remember now whether we are going to stick with the new site ID (340) or revert to the ID of the current site (182) when we make this site live. If we are going to move to a new site ID, can you add a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file of the CAA that would redirect any requests for content-manager images / photos on the old site to the corresponding location on the new site?

So, for example, a request to the following URL:

http://client.sierrainteractivedev.com/UserFiles/182/image/Louisville_Real_Estate_and_Homes.jpg

Would be 301'd to this URL instead:

http://client.sierrainteractivedev.com/UserFiles/340/image/Louisville_Real_Estate_and_Homes.jpg

I think that's it for now. These changes would be highest priority at the moment, as the client is very anxious to get this site up and running, and he is one of our most important clients.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I hope you are doing well now. To inform you on the work-progress - I've updated programming on DEDN173 (Live site) to integrate custom-url changes. I've also modified a few files on the DEDJ198 server for the same. I'll update the rest of the files and update CAA (live) tomorrow.

A couple of points:

1 -- In order for the new Joe Hayden site to work correctly on the live database, we'll need to publish the new GLAR updater as soon as possible. The new updater will handle generation of unique-ids (spid). This will make sure that the new detail url-structure will function correctly.

Per our discussion in the last week, we had planned to initiation GLAR photo migration today (Friday). Unfortunately I couldn't start it as the ftp server (glarmls.com) contains daily photo files as well. Pls note that the photo-migration app was created to process weekly files only. A couple of workarounds are

a -- to download only weekly files from the FTP server and then process those photos. Once those photos are migrated, the new GLAR updater can be configured to process photos of last few days (starting from Monday).

b -- to publish the new GLAR updater without migrating photos. The front-end sites' programming uses the value of the PhotoServer field (MLSPhotos) to build photo-paths so we should be fine even if photos are present on both new and old servers.

Pls let me know your thoughts.

2 -- The disclaimer_text.asp file contents are different on DEDN173 and DEDJ198. Pls confirm if the file on DEDN173 contains the latest changes.

Thanks.

Posted by Shah Vihar(unfuddle username: vshah)

[Battler45]

Please place further comments into Basecamp, here:

https://basecamp.com/1767592/projects/354099-110-joehaydenrealtor

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Great, thank you.

1 - I see. Can you check with Vihar to see what needs to happen in order for us to be able to push the dev version of the search tools out to the live sites, so that we can switch the connection string on this site to point the search tools to the live server?

2 - Yes, that looks like a great idea. The Facebook widget at least fits within the box, but it is not very usable at present. Are there similar alternatives for Facebook that you have found? On the interior pages, you might also try making these containers a bit taller in order to allow a better presentation / more content to be displayed.

3 - I think this is a good approach for all but the community sections. Once we check with the client, he may want us to do something similar to what we are doing with the Archives links in the Blog -- display the first 3-5 links, with a More link below them that would display the rest when clicked.

And yes, please do remove the fixed height for the navigation box. If you have too much trouble with this, let me know and I will ask Evgen to look into it.

4 - Yes, please do remove the fixed width from such pages. And good question about centering the content / headers vs. left-aligning them. Let's wait and I will check with the client on that once we show him the site for his review. Personally, I think it best to left-align these types of things, but this particular client seems to have a passion for centering them.

5 - Also a great question. Because these styles are included in so many pages, I do think we need to preserve them in the stylesheet, but I think we are also going to want to update and change them to better match the look and feel of the new site. So, for now, please copy these styles as-is into the global.css for the site and also into the stylesheet used by the editor, and I will take a look at them once they are in place on the site.

6 - Yes, please do begin working on the jQuery autocomplete. However, before deciding to go with the standard autocomplete plugin that requires jQuery UI, could you take a look at this page: http://choosedaily.com/1308/15-jquery-autocomplete-plugins-tutorials/ and see if any of the plugins listed there seem like a better fit (and lighter weight)? I would hate to have to include the whole jQuery UI script just for the sake of having access to the autocomplete plugin.

The site is looking great so far, thanks for your help.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

RE #44:

I have updated the autocomplete implementation per point-1 and included all new section pages on the site-map page per point-4. Please check the same.

RE #46:

Yes, it would be difficult to merge the newly added/ updated content into the new site but we will try to find a solution for this. Thinking more about this, I believe it would be good to add new sections in the old site (182) and assign pages to the appropriate section per the spreadsheet when new site goes live. We can then discard the new site (340). This will require us to update the constants in the new front-end site but this would be easier compared to migrating newly added/updated content to the new site. This will also save us from re-assigning leads, admin-user and blog records and assets (images/files) to the new site. All we need to do would be to:

1-- Add new sections in the old site (182)

2-- Assign pages to appropriate sections per the spreadsheet

3-- Replace the "/property-search/" to "/louisville-mls/" in the post/pages contents.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Thanks for doing that.

Actually, the client is in the process of creating these default pages. However, he reports that he is not able to enter a "/" for the Page Filename parameter (it tells him he must enter a value). I'm not sure why that would be -- it must be a permissions setting of some kind -- so, for now, he is creating these pages with the Page Filename of either "homes-for-sale" or "condominiums-for-sale".

If you go into the Content Manager for this site and sort by Last Updated, you'll see the pages he has already created in this way. Can you go through these and update the Page Filename to be just "/", so that they will work as the default pages for these sections and connect with the links you created in the Search by Area box?

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

The rotating testimonials look good, thanks.

Regarding the section filenames, thanks for doing that. Can you also update the links in the sidebar on this page? http://joehaydenrealtornew.sierrainteractivedev.com/subdivisions-and-neighborhoods/ I believe I did not mention I had added that search by area box, and I think I also may have hard-coded the link values into that page. It would probably be better to reference constants for those from the shared constants_client_specific.asp file.

Thanks. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)