Update Delta Template to New Pro Stealth Site for MammothRealty.com

[Battler45]

Vihang,

We have one more Pro Stealth site to get into production -- this one for the domain MammothRealty.com, which will pull data from region 1 (MLBOR).

I have created the site in the database, set it up in IIS on the dev server, and set up FTP access for the site with the username mammothrealty_dev.

However, I have not yet copied any files to the site folder in the Inetpub-DEV directory. The reason is that this site will look and function almost exactly like the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com site and I would like to make a couple of minor changes to the PanamaCity site before replicating it to the new MammothRealty.com site.

The changes I would like to make are to the quick search form that loads at the top of the home page when the site loads (and in the hidden div at the top of every page on the site).

Currently, there is one red submit button that says, "View 2835 Matching Listings." Rather than a single button, I would like to divide that into two buttons -- the first saying, "List Results" and the second saying, "Map Results." Rather than displaying the total matching listings within these buttons, the total would move to their left, and then there would be a "More Search Options Link" to their right. It would basically look exactly like the bottom line of the quick search area in the attached.

Can you see if you can make that change to the PanamaCity site? Please let me know if you have any problems with that.

Once that's done, that site can be replicated over to the Inetpub-DEV/MammothRealty.com site to be used as a basis for the new site, and the constants files can be updated to get it up and running. Tomorrow I will work on adding the community search sections that will be present on this site, so that the initial community pages can be built.

Thanks.

Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

My apologies for the delay in getting back to you as I had an exam yesterday so I could not spend much time on this.

I have updated the quick-search widget of the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com dev site to have two buttons "List Results" and "Map Results". The total matching listings count is now displayed on the left side of the "List Results" button. I have also added a link "More Search Options".

Please note that these changes are not pushed to the live PanamaCityHomesOnline.com site. Per our discussion in #85 (comment-50 onwards), the development site was updated to have consolidated CSS and a few changes were made in other include files. Also, we removed unused CSS, js and include files. Hence the development and live site have different code/include files. Please let me know if it is fine to push these changes to the live site.

Also, please note that the backup of the changes made to load predefined search-criteria is stored in the "InetPub-DEV/PanamaCityHomesOnline.com BAK 2011-12-28" folder.

I have copied the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com dev site to the MammothRealty.com and updated constant files, added new blog and default blog post and made couple of minor changes. Please note that the quick search is performed on All List types as this region has relatively small number of listings.

Please check the updated quick-search widget and let me know the next step in making the site functional.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

No problem on the delay -- I hope your exam went well. I am always impressed that you are able to get so much work done here in addition to keeping up with your studies!

On the site, all looks good. I made a minor change to the spacing of the bottom line in the quick search and also added a Google Analytics tracking code(and committed those changes).

In testing, I noticed that when I click the List Results or Map Results button, the search application does not actually find any results. I believe this is because the quick search is pulling data from the live DB, while the search application is pulling data from the dev DB but just want to make sure that's the case before making this live. If that's so, then please do go ahead and make these changes live for PanamaCityHomesOnline.com.

I'll get back to you regarding the MammothRealty.com site a little later today.

Thanks.

Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have updated quick-search widget per comment-3 and added content to the content page. Please check this.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Nice job on the MammothRealty.com site, thanks. I've made some modifications / customizations to the site and have uploaded them to the server and committed the changes. A few notes:

1 - For the Quick Search, please remove the "# Parking Spaces" drop-down and move the "Property / Lot Features" drop-down to its former location on the bottom row. Rename it just "Features" and make the options: Foreclosures, Short Sales, On Golf Course, On Lake".

2 - Then, in the middle row, add a new drop-down called "Listing Type" and make the options: Condos, Residential, Lots / Land, Fractional / Timeshare, and Commercial. Move this drop-down to the far left of the row, to the left of the Min Price drop-down.

3 - Then configure this so that, by default, the quick search searches all listing types (as you have it now) but, if the user selects a listing type, only that type would be searched.

4 - Please add contact info to the Contact page

Then, the only remaining task will be to create the community / neighborhood pages. I would like to make a few changes to further automate that process, and so I will post a separate ticket about that.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Yes, that looks great, thank you. Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Thanks for fixing this. Yes, please do push these changes to both live sites when you have time. Also, thanks for noticing the issue with the border color -- it would be good to update that as you suggested as well.

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I looked into the detail page display issue. The issue was mainly in displaying "Rooms" data (line 315). While formatting raw Rooms data the code was only considering "<br>" value. However there are number of MLS records having "<br />" in the Rooms value. I have updated the code for the same.

Please check this and let me know if I should update both the live versions for this.

Also, I noticed that the left and bottom border of various details sections like DESCRIPTION, ARCHITECTURE etc have same red color on all sites. We have created dynamic images for this borders,

http://images.sierrainteractive.com/sierra-images.axd?name=det_data_border_vert&ic=d95900

http://images.sierrainteractive.com/sierra-images.axd?name=det_data_border_hor&ic=d95900

Please let me know if I should update the new details page to use these images using "Listing Office Border Color 1" as input color.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

I spent quite a bit of time today adding content and making final changes in preparation for launching the new MammothRealty.com site. The only remaining issue we have is with the property listing detail page display, as you can see here:

http://mammothrealty.sierrainteractivedev.com/property-search/detail/1/104053/55-monterey-pine-rd-mammoth-lakes-ca-93546/

I have not had a chance to research this yet, but, as you can see, there are a few issues with the display of data on the detail pages. If you have time today, can you investigate and see if you can figure out the problem? If not, that's okay, I can pick it up tomorrow.

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have pushed the LouisvilleMLS.net changes to the live site.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

Regarding comment-2:

I forgot to push the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com dev site changes to the live site. I have verified that the search application finds appropriate results when List Results or Map Results button is clicked and pushed these changes to the live site. Please check the same.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

These changes look good. Please push the changes to the live site (and also update the SearchToolsVersion setting in the Admin Site Settings form at the same time).

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

The first option would be time consuming but the second option can be tried. I will check the same tomorrow and let you know if it is worth the effort.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

After testing the LouisvilleMLS.net site a bit more, apparently it is the Chosen plugin in the quick search form which is causing the problem -- I've asked the client and his team to test the site individually, and also a few other people, and everyone is reporting that the site and the quick search are loading extremely slowly, and that the quick search is actually not usable at all in Internet Explorer.

I believe this is probably because of the way the Chosen plugin works and the amount of information (subdivisions) it is having to preload.

So, can you plese revert the LouisvilleMLS.net site to the old quick search form? If you no longer have a copy of that code, let me know and I will see what I can do.

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have updated the /res/includes/detail_2/global.asp to use dynamic border images. I have pushed the updated details page and global.asp to both the live versions.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I checked the chosen plugin documentation, unfortunately there is no way to retrieve data on the fly. There are a couple of extension of this plugin which allows data retrieval via ajax but the searching would still be done on the pre populated data.

I spent some time looking for an alternative autocomplete jQuery plugin that would meet our requirement but apart from visualsearch.js library I could not find any.

I spent some time on the jQuery UI Autocomplete plugin. It allows us to use our own custom data formats and displays by overriding default functions. In the attached demo the results are grouped by location (City, County and Subdivisions), same way as in the Chosen plugin. We have used this plugin in the CAA for the leads search.

Please check the demo and let me know if I should try to integrate this plugin in the LouisvilleMLS.net dev or any other site.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Last request on this one, but when you have time, can you add "Condo Project" to the list of searchable fields in the Chosen box on the Area tab of the Quick Search on the MammothRealty.com site?

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

When you have time, can you please import the main sitemap, xml sitemap, and then also the property listings sitemap functionality to the MammothRealty.com site? (Actually, if you want to set this up first on PanamaCityHomesOnline.com, and then copy it over to the MammothRealty.com site, that would be great -- from that point on, we will have it as part of the site code).

Also, and there is no rush on this, but as you have time, can you update the LouisvilleMLS.net dev site to use the updated quick search functionality available on the Mammoth and Panama City versions of the site? (The LouisvilleMLS.net site will not have any of the sitemap files, however, do to restrictions I have on using this functionality in the Louisville market.)

Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

Thanks.

Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Looks great, thanks. Using content labels is a great solution. One other thought I had was to update the GetNavigationBySite function either to include a new parameter (ExcludeGlobalNav), or to make different use of an existing parameter (StatusID).

I'm not sure how much trouble it would be to add a new parameter, but if it is not a lot, we could add ExcludeGlobalNav and then use that to set the value in the SQL statement within the function.

If that would be too time-consuming, we might also put the StatusID parameter to this use. It occurred to me that, on the front end sites, StatusID is always going to be 1 in every case because we are always going to be pulling active pages for display on front-end sites. So, in effect, it is not really being used and could be converted to serve the ExcludeGlobalNav purpose described above.

But, it may not be worth the effort, either. Please let me know your thoughts.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Looks good. On the MammothRealty.com site:

1 - Can you add two sections to the site map, one for Mammoth Condo Developments and the other for Mammoth Subdivisions, each corresponding to their respective content sections?

2 - On the property search pages, the Condo Project portion of the quick search does not seem to be working properly to calculate the matching number of listings.

On the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com site:

1 - On the sitemap, can you pull all pages for all sections from the database? In each of the cities, in addition to the featured searches, there are (usually) also a number of additional pages for condo developments and subdivisions. Can you include those on the sitemap as well.

Once that's done, please do go ahead and push the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com changes to the live site.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Regarding the LouisvilleMLS.net dev site, the problem was caused by an outdated CName entry in the DNS Manager on DEDJ198 for the sierrainteractivedev.com domain. I've removed this and, when using Firefox on that server, I can see that the LouisvilleMLS.net dev site is now loading properly. However, it appears that the DNS entries have cached (at least for me, locally), and so I believe it will take some time for the new DNS settings to full propagate. You should be able to see the working dev site within a few hours, or, at the latest, by your morning tomorrow.

Please let me know if not.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

RE: #22

Thanks for figuring that out. Yes, please do go ahead and make the changes to MammothRealty.com live. Also, please update the site map on the Panama City city to list pages by section (as you are doing on Mammoth Realty), and then go ahead and push these changes live as well.

The benefit to doing it by section is that, if the client creates a new page, they may not always apply the appropriate content label to the page, and so the page would not appear in the site map if the content labels method were used. Whereas with sections, it will always pull all active pages.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

When you have a chance, can you please return the LouisvilleMLS.net site to the old version of the search tools, rather than the new search application? In the past couple of days since we launched the site with the new search tools, the conversion rate and lead generation on the site are way down over what they were on the old version of the search tools, and so the client has asked us to change it back until we can figure out what the problem is.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

The change looks good.

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have updated quick search form in the dev LouisvilleMLS.net site. I have added "Basement Type" options in the "Features" dropdown. Also, please note that the site is updated to have consolidated CSS and javascripts. I have also removed unused images, CSS, js and include files.

Please check the updated site and let me know your feedback.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have restored the old version of the LouisvilleMLS.net site. Please note that in order to restore old version I deleted new version specific files from the LouisvilleMLS.net folder but after sometime I was not able to access this folder. So the old version of the site is stored in the "LouisvilleMLS.net OLD" folder. I have updated site to refer this folder in the IIS Manager.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

I've gone ahead and made the site live (client was impatient). So, when you make the changes above, can you also copy them over to the live version of the site in Inetpub-LIVE?

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have upgraded LouisvilleMLS.net site to use new search application.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I noticed that the styling of the search application in the Pro Stealth sites (LouisvilleMLS.net, PanamaCityHomesOnline.com and MammothRealty.com) is slightly different than other sites like WeirProperties.com. Could you please look into this when you have time?

Also, please note that the SearchToolsVersion for the MammothRealty.com is set to "Full". Please let me know if I should change it to "New Search - Full".

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

When you have a moment, can you please change the MammothRealty.com site from using the new search application back to using the old version of the search?

The conversion rate for site leads is very low so far on the site, and I would like to see if it improves any with the older version of the search tools.

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

Please find below a few questions regarding updating LouisvilleMLS.net site:

1-- I believe the quick search form on this site would have City, County, Subdivision and Zip as searchable fields in the Area tab. Could you please confirm this?

2-- Could you please let me know if I should display property-type options in a dropdown instead of radio buttons?

3-- Also, please let me know if I should display "Show Only Foreclosures" option in the "Lot / Community Features" dropdown.

Also, please note that I am not able to access the dev louisvillemls.sierrainteractivedev.com site. Could you please look into this?

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

It's working properly, thank you.

On that note, some of our clients are requesting an auto-complete functionality that would allow us to return values not just for areas, counties, cities, but also for street address and mls #. So, it would be something similar to what you see here:

http://www.buysarasota.com/ http://www.michaelsaunders.com/

From what we've seen so far, the Chosen plugin may not be the best choice for this. Although I do prefer its interface, the fact that it must preload all values prior to the search / sort being done seems not to work. Could you check the Chosen documentation again to see if they have perhaps released an update which would allow us to retrieve data on the fly?

If not, could you spend a few minutes looking for alternative auto-complete jQuery plugins?

Thanks.

Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have updated the MammothRealty.com site to use old search tools. Please note that the Area tab of the quick search widget is not working properly on the old search tools pages in IE. There doesn't seem to be any error in JavaScript as the same functionality is working properly on other pages. I guess this is due to presence of Prototype code on the old search tools pages. However, we are already using no conflict version of the global.js and script.js on the old search tools pages so I am not able to figure out the exact cause of this. Please let me know if I should revert back to new search tools version until we have resolved above mentioned issue.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

RE: #32

Thanks for noticing the styling issues in the new search application on these sites. I have updated the stylesheet for the new search application to fix these issues.

Also, I've updated the SearchToolsVersion for MammothRealty.com to "New Search - Full"

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have already made the above mentioned changes. Please note that as the Mammoth Condos and Mammoth Lakes sections are excluded from global navigation, the code to get content pages by section was not working in this case. So, I have used the code to get content pages by content labels, "Mammoth Lakes Condos" and "Mammoth Lakes Subdivisions".

Similarly in the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com site I have used various content labels to get content pages instead of sections. Please let me know if this is fine.

FYI, when I tried to access live MammothRealty.com site, I was redirected to mammoth-realty.com site.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

That looks great, thank you. The last remaining step would be to upgrade the site to use the new search application, as on MammothRealty.com and PanamaCityHomesOnline.com. Hopefully that should be straightforward as there should not be any changes required in the HTML.

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

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have updated the LouisvilleMLS.net site to use old version of the search tools.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

The GetNavigationBySite function (in the Shared/global/sicm/content/content_functions.asp file) is already updated to get all active pages of all sections or sections which are not excluded from global navigation. The IncludeInNavigation parameter is used for this purpose. Also, there is an include file content_top_site_map.asp which is identical to content_top_site_nav_only.asp except it gets all pages of all sections. I have included this file in the site_map.asp of the MammothRealty.com and updated this page to list pages by section rather than content label.

My apologies for not verifying this earlier. Please let me know if I should update the live site for the same.

Also, please note that the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com does not have separate sections for condo developments and subdivisions so unlike current implementation all pages in a section would be listed to gather. Please let me know if this is fine and I should update the site_map.asp to list pages by section.

Thanks

Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have added sitemap, xml sitemap, and property listings sitemap pages in the MammothRealty.com and PanamaCityHomesOnline.com dev sites. I have added "Property Listings Sitemap Search" saved-search (Property Type set as All Types) in both these sites. Please let me know if we need to set different criteria for this saved-search.

I have also added "Condo Project" to the list of searchable fields.

Please check these updates and let me know your feedback. Also, please let me know if I should push the PanamaCityHomesOnline.com changes to the live site.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)

[Battler45]

Vihang,

Sorry I missed these questions.

RE: #21

1 - Yes, that's correct

2 - Yes, that would be good

3 - Yes, that would also be good

I am looking into the dev site issue now and will get back to you on this shortly.

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

[Battler45]

Vihang,

I've checked these updates and they look great, thank you.

Posted by Peskoe Ben(unfuddle username: bpeskoe)

[Battler45]

Ben,

I have updated the site_map.asp page on the live MammothRealty.com and PanamaCityHomesOnline.com sites to list pages by sections.

Thanks Posted by Shah Vihang(unfuddle username: vihang)