RPL, manually - Home - Realtyna

Guides and tutorials

RPL v.8.x Manual

Copyright

©2014 Realtyna LLC. All Rights Reserved.

1


Copyright


2

Contents 1

Introduction

2

Installation & Basic Setup

7

2.1

Installing RPL 8

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

2.2

Basic Setup

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10

2.3

3

4

5

2.2.1

Creating RPL Menu

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

2.2.2

Activating RPL Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

2.2.3

Installing the Locality Package

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14

Adding Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Frontend: Agent / Visitor / Admin

17

3.1

Add Listing

17

3.2

Property Details Page

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

3.3

Property Listings Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

3.4

Edit Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

24

3.5

Property Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

26

3.6

Agent Listing

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

3.7

Agent Prole

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

3.8

Saved Search / Bookmarking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

31

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Backend Administration

33

4.1

RPL Administration Interface

4.2

RPL Data Structure

4.3 4.4

4.5

4.6

4.7

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

4.2.1

Flex Add-on (RPL Hybrid)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

4.2.2

Room Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

Rank Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

User Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

4.4.1

RPL Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

4.4.2

RPL Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50

View Settings

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

4.5.1

Template Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

51

4.5.2

Listing sort options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

52

4.5.3

User Sort Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

Location Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53

4.6.1

Adding / Editing locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

54

4.6.2

Location Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56

4.6.3

Adding a Country/State named 'Other' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57

4.6.4

Disabling a Country for Properties or People . . . . . . . . . . . .

58

4.6.5

Removing Location Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Language Manager

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58 60

4.7.1

How to add a new language

4.7.2

How to change translations of certain keywords

4.7.3

How to add new keywords

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61

4.7.4

How to delete a keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

62

4.7.5

Load Language(s) & Create ini le

62

4.7.6

Activating Multilingual for Flex Add-on

3

. . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

60 61

63


4.8

4.9

Notications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64

4.8.1

Notication Basic Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

64

4.8.2

Edit Notications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65

4.8.3

Notication Settings in Prole Wizard

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

67

4.8.4

Notication Settings for Admin

4.8.5

Setting up Cron-job System

SEO

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

68

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

70

4.9.1

Diagnosis

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.9.2

Structure Title

4.9.3

Meta Data Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

4.9.4

Meta Data Keyword

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

4.9.5

Management URL

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71

4.10 Setting & Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

72

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.10.1 Check & Maintenance 4.10.2 Log Manager

71 71

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

72

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

72

4.10.3 Congurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

4.10.4 Payment Setting

73

4.10.5 Discount codes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

74

4.10.6 cPanel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

74

4.11 RPL Hybrid Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

4.11.1 Search Module and Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75

4.11.2 Walk Score Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81

4.11.3 Google Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

82

4.11.4 PDF Flyer Add on

83

4.11.5 Energy Tag

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84

4.11.6 Listing Stats Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86

4.11.7 QR Code Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

4.11.8 Craigslist Code Generator Module 4.11.9 RPL School Info Module

Copyright

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

90

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

91

4.11.10 Video Add-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

4.11.11 Carousel Module

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

94

4.11.12 RPL Links Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

100

4.11.13 Property Listing Menu Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

102


4

Chapter 1

Introduction Realtyna Property Listing (RPL) is a feature-rich, robust, scalable and exible property listing web application that allows you to build websites ranging from huge Real Estate Portals to single agent websites, depending to your needs. RPL as a stand-alone application provides you with hundreds of features and in addition it guarantees your future expansions with many useful add-ons such as CRM, Booking System for Vacation Rentals, Smartphone App, Facebook App, etc. RPL is designed and developed with the vision of serving both the US and the International markets. Flexibility is present in all aspects of RPL including the data structure, location system, multi-currency and measurement units, multi-lingual support and more.

5


Copyright


6

Chapter 2

Installation & Basic Setup 2.1 Installing RPL 8 RPL is a Joomla Component that includes a core of several modules and plugins. Some of these modules are internal and they are set automatically, while some need installation and further conguration. In order to setup RPL8, you must have the Joomla CMS package installed on your server. This free downloaded (plus more details about Joomla) can be found directly on the website: www.Joomla.org. Please note that RPL8 is only compatible with Joomla versions 2.5, 3.0 and later (all other versions cannot support RPL8). Make sure that your server or web-hosting servicesupports the PHP versions 5.3 or 5.4 (we no longer support versions 5.2 or older). To determine your current PHP version, follow these 3 steps:

1.

Login to your Joomla administration

backend

2. Select "System Information" 3. Locate the PHP version listed

||

Once you have conrmed which PHP version you have, you must now download the corresponding RPL licenses. Follow these steps: 1. Login to your RPL billing account [http://billing.realtyna.com] and select the LICENCES tab. Click only the download icons under your PHP version. This will activate a zip package download.

7


2. Return to the Joomla backend manager. Find the Extensions tab/dropdown menu at the top and select Extension Manager. Click on Install, which will prompt you to choose a package le to upload. Locate the RPL zip les , then click Upload & Install.

3. The RPL installer takes care of all necessary modules/plugins.

After the le is

uploaded and RPL installation is complete, an item will be added to your Joomla backend under the Components dropdown menu called RPL8. Click on it to begin the installation wizard.

Copyright


8


You will need to enter initial settings for running RPL for the rst time. If the installation goes without any problems you will see three green checks stating that the libraries, modules and plugins are installed and congured. The picture below is an example of what you should see.

Note : If any of the check signs are red, this indicates that the part(s) is not installed correctly, which could be for various reasons based on your server congurations. On the left are default settings that must be congured before using RPL:

Country:

Set the default country based on where your properties are located

Zip Code Parent:

Set the level in which the zip code belongs. For example, in

the United States, the zip code parent is the city. RPL handles zip codes dierently than other location levels as it has a exible 7+1 level location system.

This is

further explained in the location manual. You may also disable zip codes.

Currency:

Select a currency denomination. Additional currencies can be added

through the RPL currencies and measuring units under the data structure. There is no limit for the amount of currencies.

Area Unit:

Choose a measuring unit, such as square foot or meters. Additional

measuring units can be added through the RPL currencies and measuring units under data structure.

Copyright


9


Website Layout:

RPL inner views have two kinds of CSS (cascading style sheets):

dark templates and light templates. If your template is black/dark, choose the dark option. If it is white/light, choose the light option. This can be changed at anytime under view settings, then template manager. The dark/light CSS system can be expanded by customization to the template CSS. For further information, see the template manager manual. On the right side, some of your server congurations are displayed. The minimum requirements for each item are shown. For instance, your server PHP version should be at 5.2 so the server status of 5.2.4 is accepted. Below the status you may see a red circle warning icon, which means your server does not have the minimum requirements and RPL will not function properly. Some settings are not crucial for proper functioning of RPL, but are recommended. If your server settings are less than the minimum requirements then you will see this yellow triangle icon: (For example, settings such as CURL would produce this sign). Through the Joomla standard menu management system, you can create menus for RPL, including Property Listing Display, Add Listing, etc. It is also possible to do it with one click through the menu wizard on the bottom right.

You can select a Joomla parent

menu where sample menus are automatically created. After you submit the settings you will be directed to the following RPL dashboard: Congratulations, you have now successfully installed RPL8!

2.2 Basic Setup After the installation of RPL, in order to show its features on the frontend, some congurations must be done including:

Creating menus

Copyright


10


Activating RPL modules that are installed along with RPL

Installation of the related Locality Package

Uploading your company logo

2.2.1 Creating RPL Menu There are two ways to create a menu :

a. Creating Menu from RPL back-end: 1. Select RPL8 from the components top menu, in the backend of the Joomla control panel.

2.

Select Setting & Tools tab from RPL

admin interface.

3.

In the Menu Creation section of the

Settings & Tools tab, select the menu that you want to add RPL Menu (Main Menu, Top Menu, Side Menu, etc). This is dierent from template to template, so rst try to identify each menu on your template.

After selecting the menu location, click on Add Menu Items. This will automatically add RPL menus within the selected menu.

b. Creating Menu from Joomla Menu Manager Alternatively to the above method, you can also add RPL menus through Joomla itself. 1. Click on Menu Manger from Menus (Joomla backend) 2. Click on New to Add a Menu OR Menu Items and and set the menu type. Please note that you need to select the menu that you want to publish RPL menus on. Whether it is the Main Menu, Top Menu, etc.

Copyright


11


1

2

2.2.2 Activating RPL Modules RPL Core comes with many dierent modules. 1. Some of these modules will be installed and activated automatically along with RPL Core package. 2. Some of the modules will be installed but need to be activated individually. The module activation includes assigning the module to a 'module position', activating it and then congure it if necessary. 3. Some of the modules need to be installed separately and then go through activation process. Note: Please note that each template has its own set of 'module positions'. So a module will look dierent on dierent positions of your website. In order to see the positions of modules on your Joomla website, you can do it through adding /?tp=1 to the end of the url of your website: http://www.your-domain.com/?tp=1 If adding /?tp=1 is not working, you need to login to the Joomla backend, go to Extensions Menu and select Template Manager. Then select (check) your default site template without clicking on it. On top there is one button called 'Options'. Click on that and enable the 'Preview Module Positions'. 1. To activate a module, click on Module Manager from Extensions Menu. 2. Click on New and then select the module type. All RPL module names start with RPL. 3. After selecting the module type, you need to assigne it to a suitable module position on your website. Sometimes you need to redo this step and assign the module to dierent positions until you nd the most proper position.

Copyright


12


4. The next step is conguring the modules (if necessary). We will cover this in later chapters of this manual. The following modules will be installed, activated and assigned to positions automatically at the time of RPL installation. Title

Type

Property Compare

RPL Property Compare

Property Search

RPL Search

PropertyListing pictures

RPL Listing pictures

PropertyListing Direction

RPL Direction Module

PropertyListing links

RPL links Module

PropertyListing GoogleMap

RPL googlemap Module

PropertyListig AgentInfo

RPL Agent's info

Notication's settings

RPL notications settings

PropertyShow gallery

RPL gallery Module

OpenDates

RPL OpenDates Module

PropertyShow Direction

RPL Direction Module

propertyshow links

RPL links Module

Room details

RPL rooms

Attachments

RPL attachments Module

Agent's info

RPL Agent's info

Propertyshow GoogleMap


Propertyshow Property Tags

RPL Property Tags

propertyshow GoogleStreet


next/prev/edit on propertyshow

RPL On propertyshow edit/next/prev

The following modules are a part of

RPL Hybrid package.

They need to be in-

stalled separately and they need to be activated and congured separately. We cover the installation and congurations of these modules in the Modules chapter of this manual.

RPL Energy-tag Module (RPL Hybrid)

RPL QR Code Module (RPL Hybrid)

Copyright


13


RPL School info (RPL Hybrid)

RPL Walkscore (RPL Hybrid)

RPL Google Places (RPL Hybrid)

RPL Listing Stat Module (RPL Hybrid)

RPL Video Module (RPL Hybrid)

The following modules will be installed along with RPL but they need to be activated and congured separately:

RPL Currency Module

RPL Location Listing (RPL Hybrid)

RPL Dynamic Search (RPL Hybrid)

RPL Carousel Module (RPL Hybrid)

2.2.3 Installing the Locality Package Real Estate is all about "The Location", therefore one of the important features of any Property Listing application is having a complete location database containing State/Province, County, City, ZIP Codes for each country. Realtyna has made the database of a series of countries available for free. For downloading RPL locality packages you should login to billing.realtyna.com. Under downloads menu you should click on "Location" tab and then click on locality le name and download it to your computer.

Note: If you can't nd the database of your country, please refer to the Location Manager section of this manual.

Now you should install the downloaded package through the Joomla extension manager like any other Joomla extensions. However, for some packages you need unzip the package rst and then install the extracted zip les.

Here is the list of the packages that need to be unzip prior to the installation:

Copyright


14


1.

Brazil_33_packages.zip

2.

Canada_43_packages.zip

3.

England_277_packages.zip

4.

F rance_82_packages.zip

5.

India_113_packages.zip

6.

M alaysia_149_packages.zip

7. 8.

9.

P hilippines_195_packages.zip

10.

P ortuga1 98_packages.zip

11.

Russia_203_packages.zip

12.

Scotland_280_packages.zip

13.

Singapore_219_packages.zip

14.

Spain_226_packages.zip

15.

T urkey _246_packages.zip

M exico_159_packages.zip

16.

U nitedStates_254_packages.zip

N etherlands_175_packages.zip

17.

W ales_281_packages.zip

2.3 Adding Logo For adding your logo to the website, you need to: 1. Add a module with 'Custom Html' type from the Module Manager. 2. Click on the 'Custom Output' tab. 3. Click on the Image button and insert your logo.

Note: Make sure that your logo le is in correct size and format.

If there is an existing logo on your website and you want to replace it: 1. Search for the 'logo module' with type of 'Custom Html' in the Module Manager section. 2. Click on it and go to the 'Custom Output' tab 3. Select html from the editor

Copyright


15


4. Then connect to your websites' FTP and go to the same path as it shows in the html code (for example:images/template-18/). 5. Replace the previous logo with the new one (from FTP) logo with last logo.(ex: Logo-18. png)

Note: Before replacing the logo, please make sure that the new logo is same size (pixels) and name and format as last logo.

Copyright


16

Chapter 3

Frontend: Agent / Visitor / Admin The Frontend refers to the platform and functions accessed directly from the website/URL before or after login to the website. This ranges from performing property searches as a visitor to adding/editing properties and agents (based on access rights) listed on the site. In this section we will describe how each feature works and the varied rights of each member that access the site.

3.1 Add Listing Add Listing, also known as the Property Wizard, is included in the frontend interface to add new property listings to your website. This is only available to users with access to this feature. To start, you must login through the front end of your website (on the left). This will require your Joomla Username & Password.

Once you are logged in, click on the tools/settings icon on the upper right side (green arrow). Select the RPL Function dropdown menu, then select Add Listing (red arrow).

This will take you to a screen where you enter all of the necessary details of the property.

Note: This is called Add Listing Wizard or Property Wizard. The data elds of this form is exible and managable through the Flex Add-on in the administration (backend) section of the website. There are several section tabs on the left side and each has detailed information that needs to be completed for the property listing. Tabs shown are based on the add-ons you have installed. For example, the CRM and the availability calendar would each be an additional tab. RPL allows you to set elds based on the

listing type (for sale, for rent, etc) or prop-

erty type (home, apartment, oce, etc). Fields that are listing specic or property type specic will be shown after the listing type or property type is chosen. For example, if the property type apartment is selected, then the bedroom eld appears; however, if oce were selected then the room eld would appear. Dierent tabs will be shown based on the listing type or property type selected, such as the calendar tab, which is only

17


shown for vacation rental listing types. Please note that you can change these settings through the Flex Add-on in the administration section (backend) of RPL. The

Basic Details tab starts with the

Property words

Title

to

name

eld. the

Using property

descriptive is

recom-

mended. The following Listing Setting section has elds for basic property information, such as Listing Type, Price, etc.

In the Details section, there is a text box for a detailed property description. This includes a Toggle Editor button, which generates your plain text into an HTML code.

After

completing the property description, remember to click the Save Property Description button.

The last section is the Meta Keyword and Meta Description. There are two elds that

Copyright


18


will be automatically lled which are generated based on the information entered in the previous elds.

The metadata elds will be used for Search Engine Optimization

purposes, which results in driving trac from the search engines.

Address

The

Address the

Map

section

property

tab

where

address

includes users

the enter

information.

As the information is entered into the address elds for the rst time the Google Map section is automatically locate the property on the map. will automatically reect on the Google Map.

Any changes to the address

Users are also allowed to pinpoint the

exact location by moving the red map marker. If Google cannot retrieve the address, you

will receive the following response: Geocode was not successful for the following reason: ZERO_RESULTS. Simply move the marker by dragging and dropping it on the actual property location. The

Image

erty

Gallery tab allows prop-

photos/images

There

are

loading

process

(multiple Simple

two

tabs

to

options:

images

Uploader

at

be

uploaded.

available one

(single

Pro

for

up-

Uploader

time)

or

the

images).

An image title and description can be included. The image category can be assigned to Property Images or Floor Plan. Images can be dragged and dropped by the blue arrow icon to change the order in which they are listed, or deleted by clicking the red X. (Include suggested image size/format info)

Copyright


19


The

Features tab includes detail elds

such

as

room

sizes,

the

types

of

heat-

ing/cooling systems, and special features. Some elds have dropdown menus for additional specications. Fields can be disabled and added through the Flex Add-on in the RPL dashboard.

The

Appliances tab has options to dis-

play any appliances included with the property such as refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, etc. Some elds have dropdown menus for additional specications. The tab itself or its elds can be disabled or edited through the Flex Add-on in the RPL backend dashboard (administration section).

Copyright


20


The

Neighborhood tab shows how close

local features/places are from the property.

Each

ther

options

checked to

box

appear,

produces

fur-

such

dis-

as

tance time and mode of transportation to certain locations, such as Airport, Hospital, School, etc. Fields can be disabled and added through the Flex Add-on in the RPL dashboard. The

Video

tab

gives

the

option

to

add video links (embed code) from websites

such

eld

for

The

as an

YouTube.There optional

Video

is

a

text

Title.

Attachments tab works like the Im-

age Gallery, with tab options for the Pro Uploader

(multiple

documents)

ple Uploader (single documents).

or

Sim-

NOTE:

It will not upload any le with a picture

format

(for

example:

.jpeg).

Attachments can be a PDF or Word/Excel document and should be for public viewing, such as a oor plan or brochure. Attachments can be dragged and dropped by the blue arrow icon to change the order they are displayed, or deleted by clicking the red X icon.

Copyright


21


TheProperty

Tags tab oers tags that

can be selected for each property to highlight selling points on the listing.

Sim-

ply check the box for the tag to be inserted in the listing.

Additional property

tags and icons can be added through the Flex Add-on in the RPL dashboard. Open house dates can be chosen and agents can leave notes such as call before coming to the open house.

The

Finalize tab secures all the property

information entered in all of the other tabs and publishes the property to the website.

This process essentially checks all

the required elds and warns if they are not properly submitted to the system. It is important to understand that all property details that are entered are automatically saved ajaxly. This is useful in the event your entry process is interrupted or disconnected, as the data entered is not lost. You can return later and continue where you left o. This notice will remain below the Finalize tab until this process is completed: When your property as been nalized, this notice will appear:

Copyright


22


3.2 Property Details Page The Property Details page is where most details about a property can be seen by all visitors, including registered and unregistered users. There are several ways to view the details of a property published on the frontend of your website. As Admin/Super User/Agent, after entering and nalizing the property details in the Add Listing platform, select Click here to view this property from the nalized page (shown above). This will take you to directly to the property details page (seen below).

From the Home Page, (as any user) you can view the any published properties listed on the front page. Click the Details button on the specic property to display the page (as seen above) with the details of the estate.

3.3 Property Listings Page The Property Listings page is another way to view brief details of the properties. This is the page where all properties are displayed to all users by categories such as Apartments for Rent or Homes for Sale These categories can be created/changed in the backend platform of RPL. In addition the property listing page is also for showing the search results. From your main menu, you can select the category of properties you would like to show on the property listing page.

Copyright


23


Based on your selection, the next page displays brief description windows for all of the properties that t the criteria of the category selected.

You can click the View Details button to see the more information for the property of choice.

3.4 Edit Listing Edit Listing is a part of the frontend RPL Function menu for managing the added properties in RPL. It is important to limit the access of this feature to the Website Administrator/Super User and Agents (depending on permissions).

Copyright


24


If the access is granted to the agents, they can

only

manage

their

own

properties.

However the super administrator can manage all the properties. Starting

from

the

Home

Page

click

on

the tools/settings icon on the upper right side. Select the RPL Function drop-down menu, then select Edit Listing. (Note: may

depending on your template you

Hind

this

function

under

another

menu)

In Edit Listing, a module is added to the right of each property making it possible to manage properties and their data.

Across the top are the Mass actions buttons, which would apply each command button to all properties that has the checkbox selected. This way you can select multiple properties and edit them at once.

All of the same actions can be applied to properties by mass

action (except for duplicating a property). Next to the checkbox is the conrmation status icon.

If the property is conrmed it

shows a green check. If it is not conrmed, then a red circle icon is shown. To conrm or unconrm a property, you can simply click on icon to change the status where it automatically saves the change based on Ajax technology.

Copyright


25


The next icon is for editing a property. When you click on this, you can make changes to the property details. The restore icon returns all the changes made to the property to its original settings. Next is the red x icon is to delete the property (temporarily). Deleted properties can be restored later. The last icon is to copy/duplicate the property.

When a property is duplicated, the

building name in the new one is changed to Copy of + the original property building name. Also a new listing ID is generated for it. Except for property tags, Listing ID and the building name of the new generated property, all other items, including the images of the property, attachments and all other features are the same. You can use this duplicate feature to enter properties of similar features with a much time saving. The last action possible to do for a property in property manager is to change the owner of the property. This is possible if the logged in user has change-owner access. You can use Mass action to apply change the owner of several properties to a specic user.

3.5 Property Search By default, the frontend of RPL8 allows for several methods of searching for properties. From the Home Page, there is an extensive search engine eld that prompts the user to nd properties by the listing type, name of the city/state, or key parameters. RPL8 search system is very exible meaning that you can add/edit search parameters through the search module settings in the backend administration section of RPL. You can also change the ordering of the search parameters from this module. We will explain this in later sections of this manual. As you see the top box in the search is the location search.

While you type the lo-

cation name, the system suggests matching location names (auto-suggest feature). The auto-suggest only recommends the city names where there are properties in them.

Copyright


26


The

Quick Search

feature has a oating

search icon on the left side of the website's Home Page.

This allows for users to per-

form a simple and fast ltering among the search results by selecting some key features of a property for display. This quick search can be adapted to your requirements as well to include/ not include some parameters.

3.6 Agent Listing Agent Listing acts similar to the Property Listing, but this provides users a directory of all the agents on the website. To view the agent listing, select the Agent menu located at the main menu.

This will take you the screen with a list of agent prole overview.

3.7 Agent Prole When a user logs into the frontend and they have been activated in RPL and provided with the necessary access credentials, they will have access to the prole wizard found on

Copyright


27


the Home Page.

Prole details can be changed including notication settings, contact information, adding a personal image and a business logo. See the following example of a personal prole in editing mode:

Copyright


28


Once an agent completes a prole (click the Finalize button) it will be displayed in the agent info module on the property detail page. Any information in the agent prole will be displayed such as contact information and the languages spoken. This module is congurable through the Joomla administration module manager where you can determine which details are to be shown. Clicking the 'more details' tab opens another box with more detailed information.

Copyright


29


Copyright


30


3.8 Saved Search / Bookmarking Users can save their search criteria and receive notication emails if a new property within the same search criteria becomes available. They can also send their saved search to a friend. To save a search, enter the criteria or key words in the search eld from the Home Page. To save the results, click on the save icon and a shadow window will appear with a New Search name: eld.

Select the Save button to conrm the name and click on the X

button to close and return to the results.

Users can also bookmark properties for future reference.

Copyright


While open to the property

31


details, the user can select Bookmark from their web browser menu and save the page (usually the name is suggested based on the title of the property, but the user can change and save it as they wish).

Copyright


32

Chapter 4

Backend Administration In RPL8, the Backend is the platform that has everything to do with what is done behind the scenes of the website to add to its nal appearance on the Frontend. Backend functions help to create and expand the elds, categories, parameters, and content of the website.

Access to this area should be highly secured, therefore only webmasters and

website managers should be the only ones to have credentials to the Backend platform (not agents, guests, etc.).

This section will review all of the dierent functions and

features of the Backend.

4.1 RPL Administration Interface To get to the RPL Home, you must start with the login to your Joomla administration backend. This page usually can be found in a url like: http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com/administrator

From the Joomla control panel, choose the Components dropdown menu at the top and select RPL8 from the list.

This will take you to the RPL Admin Home Screen, which displays icons for commonly used RPL functions and a list of tabs along the left.

33


Also on the RPL Home Screen, to the right you will nd a Statistics section that displays graphs and charts of the property data on the website.

Underneath is a section called Updates & Change Logs, which list all recent changes that were made to RPL.

Copyright


34


Finally, the last on the right of the Home screen is the Help & Support section that oers access to either submit a support ticket or information materials for RPL8.

4.2 RPL Data Structure The Data Structure tab includes all functions related to managing and setting parameters of the content data for the front end. This section will review all the dierent features and how they work.

4.2.1 Flex Add-on (RPL Hybrid) Flex Add-on comes as a part of RPL Hybrid package and it is your key to making RPL your way. With the aid of this Add-on, you can customize the property elds of your RPL to your preference. You can add, disable, edit elds or even make them mandatory.

Copyright


35


As illustrated in the above picture for each data category all the elds of that section are listed in the center. On the top right there is Add new eld wizard which you can add new elds. The RPL standard eld types are:

Text:

Simple text elds (limited to 50 characters)

Number: Select:

Number elds like 1,300 / 2986.56 / 3.1415

Select box or elds with constant options like View (i.e. Garden, Sea, etc.)

Feature&Appliances:

Property special elds for features and appliances

TextArea:

Long text formats like property description or comments.

Separator:

Data eld blocks.

Neighborhood: Area:

A number eld with one select option for the unit.

Length: Volume: Price: 1 See

Property special elds for neighborhood details.

1

A number eld with one select option for the unit. 1 A number eld with one select option for the unit. 1

A number eld with one select option for the currency. 1

Currencies and measurements for more details.

Copyright


36


Date:

Date eld

PS_datetime:

Listing based property types: For adding property types for certain

listing types. For example 'Store' can be only under 'For Rent' listing type.

Formula:

For adding formulas in the Add Listing, where the variable values will

be added at the time of add property, and the nal result will be displayed in the property show.

Basic Functionality In the center of the Flex Add-on all the elds of a property (including any added elds) are available. You can move elds up or down simply by dragging them and move them up or down and then release them wherever you like.

You can edit or delete all the elds you add but some of the primary elds cannot be

2

deleted (most), but you can disable them as you wish.

Disabled elds are not available

in the Add Listing wizard (for Frontend data entry) or Property Listing (Data view). As shown in the picture, elds can be set as mandatory or not. Mandatory elds have to be completed/entered in Add Listing otherwise the user will not be able to publish that property.

3

On the top, you can browse to dierent data categories . If you want you can disable one data category completely.

Important remark: Listing Type and Property Type are crucial elds for the basic 2 Primary

elds (Fields which are part of the RPL default setting) cannot be deleted because of the compatibility necessity and importance of the elds, but as stated you can disable elds. 3 Categories are just a way to organize the property data. These are shown on the left of Add Listing, like basic info, gallery etc. Copyright


37


functionality of RPL and they are always enabled and mandatory. For this reason you should never disable the Basic Info category.

Editing & Adding new elds Editing and adding new elds are almost the same.

For adding a eld you should

proceed from top-right wizard (Flex add-on main page).

And for editing you should

click on the edit button.

Aside from this,

both oer the same options.

General Parameters Each eld regardless of their eld type (text, number etc.) has the same 'General Parameters' in common. Here are these elds explained:

Data Category: Keyword:

Species the date category the eld belongs to.

The raw keyword of the eld. These handled by Joomla and are crucial

for multilingual websites.

You can add translations for a keyword for dierent

languages from RPL language Manager.

CSS Class:

The custom CSS class you may need for display in Add Listing. (You

should load the style le containing these classes in your template)

CSS Style:

Here you can add CSS styles to be inline added to the style tag of the

eld element in the Add Listing. Please note that the above CSS elds are only useful when you want to show that specic eld with a dierent style from the rest of the elds. In most cases we rather the added elds look similar to each other (which provides a homogenous look to our website). In such case, leave these two elds blank.

Type-Specic Fields One of the special features of RPL is that you can set elds to be displayed only for special listings or property types. For instance suppose you have a eld named Apartment Description.

Apparently this eld is to be set only for apartments.

practical example is the price type.

Or another more

For rental properties we need to specify the price

type option like per month or per week and this is meaningless in the For Sale listings. So when adding a new eld, or editing an existing eld, you can set this eld to be displayed only for special listing type and this is possible from this feature.

Then au-

tomatically in Add Listing by selecting the Listing or Property Type, all the dependent elds are displayed accordingly.

Copyright


38


This will also reect to the search module settings in a way that when a certain property type or listing type is selected, the specic search elds related to those types will appear in the search module.

Note: If 'None' is selected, it means that the eld is a general eld and it is not depended to any specic property type or listing type.

Specic Parameters When adding new elds to through the Flex Add-on, if the eld type is selected as one of the following types, some extra parameters needs to be added in order for the eld to work.

Select:

If the eld type is 'select', you can add options. A 'select box' eld means

that the user needs to select between dierent options. So you need to add those options here. Once an option is entered, it can be edited in the future or disabled but not deleted. The reason for this is if an already existing property is using one of the options, then deleting that option could cause no data to display on the Property Details page. When a select option is disabled it can't be selected from Add Listing, but previously entered properties that have the disabled option will continue to show the selection.

TextArea:

If the new eld type is selected as 'TextArea', it means we need to

provide a text area in the Add Listing wizard (frontend) for the user to enter the requested information.

For example we may need to add a eld called 'Neigh-

borhood Description' and we should provide necessary space for the user to write down the description. However we may want to limit the amount of information each person can enter. The width and number of lines are parameters of the textarea eld type are working when the advanced editor use is set to no. In the case use advanced editor is set to yes the textarea

Copyright


39


will be shown with the TinyMCE of Joomla which is an advanced editor.

Important Remark: For advanced editor option to work, the TinyMCE defaut plugin of Joomla should be enabled (The default is enabled on Joomla installation).

Feature & Appliances:

If a eld type is set as 'Features&Appliances', it means

the eld will be used to show the building specications or the appliance details of the property. A feature or appliances can be simple as just a checkbox or having extra options. The 'Has extra options' parameter can have three values: o No o Single Selection o Multiple Selection

For the two latter, one can add several options, which are similar to select eld type. The dierence between the multiple and single is that in the multiple case, users can select multiple options in Add Listing and all the selected options are shown in Property Details view.

Separator:

Separators are the simplest way to group elds together under a certain

group title (which is a separator type). The group title usually has a dierent color and background as the rest of the elds. Here you can customize the colors and styling of the Frontend Add Listing.

As

illustrated in the right image there are four colors to set and width for the name eld.

Copyright


40


Listing Type Listings Types (Categories) are part of the core classications in RPL. Listing Types are congurable from its tab in the RPL backend.

Listings can be added/deleted or disabled. When you delete a listing type, all the properties belonging to that listing are deleted as well.

But when a listing is disabled, its

properties are intact and you can browse them from the Frontend, but no new property can be added to that listing anymore. Suppose your company was working with Property Sales and Rentals, but after some time you want to work exclusively in Property Sales. You would like to keep For Sale properties displayed in the Frontend. In this case you should disable Rental listings. The listings with keywords are translated in the language manager.

If you have a multilingual website when you add a listing, you should add

keywords like: Property Title: For Sale Keyword: FOR_SALE

Copyright


41


Then you should add the translations for FOR_SALE (And add the keyword if it does not already exist) in the language manager. Any listing type belongs to one of the main three types as follows:

Sale

Rent

Vacation

This is important because for example, calendar options (from the Calendar Add-on) are shown only for vacation rentals.

Or Price Type (Per month/per week, etc.)

is shown

only for Rental types. You can move the listings up and down (change the order they are displayed) and this brings them up or down in the Add Listing. You can add listings from the top left plus sign icon and set the type and name (keyword) in the light box. After it is added to the list you can set other options.

The GMarker (Google Map marker) is the Icons used to indicate properties of that listing on the Google Map (in Property Details or Property Listings). You can add more icons by uploading .png les and select your own markers from the Listing Type manager interface.

Listing caption images are the caption images which are shown on Property Listings when

4

Display listing tag is set to YES on Module mod_rpl_listing_pic .You can also add Listing caption images in Upload Listing Caption Image section:

You can also display Property tag icons for

FEATURED, HOT OFFER, OPEN

HOUSE and FORECLOSURE properties in Module mod_rpl_listing_pic. You have an access to the default icons at\components\com_rpl\img\property_tag. A Property Listing page with Property tags enabled should look like the following:

4 This

module will be installed automatically at the time of RPL installation.

Copyright


42


Property Types Property Types (Categories) such as Apartment, Studio, Oce, etc are almost the same as Listing Types with the exception that their types are Residential and Commercial.

Moreover, in addition to the type, there are other settings such as Sale Marker, Rental Marker and Vacational Marker. These signs will be used as marker of the location of the property on Google maps.

Copyright


43


For example if you choose sale.png for Sale Marker the place of property is shown with mark. Residential properties should have bedrooms and commercial properties should just have rooms.

Important Remark: If you add a property without specifying their property types, this will cause neither bedroom or room elds for them to show. As stated before, Residential properties can have Bedrooms while Commercials can have Rooms. The same applies for the search. If you do not specify the property type, users cannot select Room or Bedroom in their search. Property type and Listing type are not only for basic information of a property, but also they are important for categorization features of RPL.

Currencies & Measuring Units RPL has a very exible unit and currency system and with the use of the Currencies Module you can provide the complete exibility to your site visitors to view property prices (and almost any price rendered in RPL) to their preference. From the top left (Unit Type) you can set the type of unit such as Currency, Volume, Area and Length. Currency types are dierent from the others as seen illustrated below.

Currencies The default unit type when the currencies tab is selected is currency. Each currency has a notation [$,e] that can be edited. This is highly useful when you use currencies that have the same symbol. For instance for the dollar, you can distinguish between the US dollar and the Canadian Dollar by adding C before the $ sign.

Copyright


44


The next option is the 3-digit separator, which is a dierent symbol from country to country. This can be set for each currency. Then every three digits of any price in that currency will be separated with that symbol.

One of the most important factors of a currency/unit is its exchange rate. For currencies, exchange rates are relative to the dollar. So the dollar exchange rate is always 1. These exchange rates are extra important for the correct search, listing and currency changer module to work properly.

Suppose a user is searching for a property between $1000

and $2000 and a property is added as

e1000.

Then if the Euro-dollar exchange rate

is mistakenly set to 0.6 (which the hypothetical correct exchange rate is 1.3), then this property's price will be interpreted as $600, which is not in the search range.

So you

should always keep the exchange rates updated. For updating exchange rates there are two functions. One is at the top center titled Update exchange rates from Yahoo which updates all the exchange rates. The other function is the

icon, which updates only

the related currency exchange rate. It is highly recommended to only update exchange rates of the currencies you actually use in your website or use in the currency changer module if you have large number of properties.

The order of currencies is important in the sense that the rst currency on the top is the default currency of the system. The default currency of the RPL is the currency that will automatically show when adding the property through Add Listing. If you work with only one currency, you can simply disable all others except for the one you use and that will always set the currency of your properties to your selection.

Currency Convertor Module As stated before, RPL8 has a useful currency convertor module which is useful if your website visitors are familiar with dierent currencies and you want to simplify the process of calculating exchange rates and prices. This will be handled through Currency section in the Flex add-on, as well as the Currency Convertor Module. This module will be installed at the time of RPL installation. You can nd it through Joomla module manager system.

In the module settings you can set up to 16 currencies options by the website users. You should assign the module to a position in your template; it is best that it appears somewhere near the top corner so users can easily see it. A select box is shown with the currencies you set in the module parameters and the default option is Property Default Currency.It means by default, property prices are shown in the same currency they have been entered. After choosing another currency, all the properties prices are rendered and converted to the selected currency and the selected currency becomes default until the user leaves the website.

Copyright


45


After that prices are shown in the selected currency and an exchange icon is displayed near the converted prices.

By moving the

mouse over the price region the original price is shown

Length, Area, Volume Units have only sort options and enable/textbackslash disable features. Exchange rates are also shown and constant. Exchange rates are to SI

5

value for each type.

Like currencies, orders are important in the sense that the rst unit on the top is the default unit of the system (for that unit type).

4.2.2 Room Types Another special feature of RPL8 is its dynamic Room Types function. For each property you can add as many room details as you like. For each room type it is possible to set an icon for it. This icon is displayed in the Frontend Property Details page near each room.

5 SI:

Systeme Internationale (International System) units or KMS (Kilo,Meter,Second)

Copyright


46


For adding new room types you can click theAdd new room type button. Keywords are like other keywords in RPL and you can use them for multilingual websites. For adding rooms for a property you can use the interface provided in Add Listing below the features tab. Each room can have a width and height, and in the Property Details page of the listing, the area is calculated as the multiplication result of these two numbers and the same unit as the property area's unit is shown for it.

4.3 Rank Manager RPL has a very exible and powerful Property Ranking system that is represented by a number of stars. Property ranks are visible almost everywhere the property is listed (for example:

Property Details, Property

Listing, Carousel, etc.), unless you use a customized template in which you have customized the view, or layout not to show the property rank. The rank system is a tool that encourages the agents/textbackslash owners to enter full information about their property.

The higher the rank of the property, there will be more stars associated to that property. And by default the property appears higher in the search results. Rank manager settings are accessible from the Backend Data Structure tab. Rank Manager tab has two sub tabs: Basic Settings and Property Fields.

Basic Settings:

Number of stars:

The maximum number of stars to show for the ranking of the prop-

erty. If it is set to 8 for example, a total of 8

stars are shown when some

fraction is lled with highlighted stars.

Maximum rank of a property: The rank system can be set via a simple math. If you set the maximum number of stars to be 5, and the maximum rank to 5000, it means that each start represents 1000 points. If a property reaches this value, all of the stars will be shown highlighted. A property can have more rank than this maximum but all properties that have more rank than this maximum are treated the same.

Start Rank:

The starting rank of a property: Of course you would not like to

have properties with zero stars on your system So you can set the minimum value a property is set to have for rank.

For example if you set this number to 2000,

all new properties, regardless of the completeness of their details, will have 2 stars

Copyright


47


highlighted. If the property has all the information lled, depending on your rank settings (in this section) the property can start with 4 stars.

Please continue to

read for more details.

Has Image:

If properties have an image (at least one) this value is added to their

rank.

For each Property image:

The value is added to a property rank for each image

it has. That is if it has 9 images and the value is 30, 9*30 = 270 is added to property rank.

Has attachment, For each Property attachment: PerVisit, Per bookmark, etc.:

Same as the above.

Values are added accordingly

Important Remark: A Property visit time in RPL is calculated based on the visit of a property's Property Details page by someone other than the Property Owner. So when an agent is browsing their own properties while logged into the website, property visits counter is not increased. The same is true for Super Admin users. When they are logged in and are visiting their properties page, it doesn't increase the visit counter. This helps to generate a property's true visit number. In the second tab, it is possible to add rank increments almost for every ranking eld. Values are added to a property rank if the property has that eld value entered.

For

instance the below 140 in property description means if the property description is entered for the property this value is added to the property rank.

RPL properties' ranks are calculated dynamically so after each visit, the property rank is updated.

It is recommended to Save and update all properties rank after making

changes to preferences to sync all properties ranks. If you need your hot or featured properties to become signicantly ranked higher than other properties, you can use the ranking values on property tags and assign high values for hot or featured properties.

Copyright


48


4.4 User Management RPL has a very advanced and extendible user management system. It is not only based on Joomla user management system, but it adds lots of functionality to it, in order to answer RPL requirements.

4.4.1 RPL Users Briey,a RPL user must be a Joomla user, but a Joomla user may not have access to RPL (depending on the admin settings). In another words, Joomla users that have been activated by the RPL user manager or through the RPL AutoActive plugin are considered RPL users. Note1: For creating Joomla users there are two ways: 1- Super Administrator can add new users from the Joomla user interface in the backend of the website.

2- Users can

signup from the frontend of the website. The default user group in Joomla is registered users. Joomla registered users can be activated in RPL, manually or automatically (in order to have access to RPL functions) and they can even add/edit properties, depending to their access credentials, which will be further explained. Note2: You can congure your RPL in a way that all new Joomla users be automatically activated in RPL. This setting is available in Settings&Tools tab in the backend of RPL, under Plugins section: User AutoActive. Each property in the RPL has an owner (super user at least) who is able to manage and edit the property record. By default, it is the user that entered the property. It is possible to change the owner of a property and assign it to another user through the Property Manager feature (Frontend). A RPL user that has access and is logged in can only access their properties in the property manager. However, super users or admin users can see all properties and have full access to the entire site. Each user is granted or denied access to functionalities of the system. RPL users that have access can: 1. Add/edit/ delete/conrm properties 2. Bookmark favorite properties 3. Save search results 4. Have an editable prole 5. And more. . . Each RPL user has specic access credentials to RPL functions that can be edited. Each user can be assigned to a group and access can then be applied to all individuals within the group. Activated RPL users become a member of the RPL Default group automatically. See the image below of the User Management tab in RPL backend.

Copyright


49


Clicking on the 'see details' link will display the primary information of the user and the available access details. Each user can be limited to the access that is selected. Some add-ons have additional access that can be added to this list (such as the Membership or CRM add-ons). Access is very important and should not be granted or denied unintentionally.

If the

'conrm' access for a user is selected, properties added by that individual are automatically conrmed. Otherwise the admin must conrm the property from the property manager interface. The 'delete' access is meaningless if the access to the Property Manger is not allowed, since the interface to delete properties is within the Property Manager.

4.4.2 RPL Groups Users access credentials can be managed based on their group. When a user is assigned to a group, it will inherit all the access credentials of the group. However, the individual users access credentials can later be altered. In RPL, there is a default group.

All new RPL-activated users, whether they have

been created from the backend or they have signed up from the frontend of the website, will be automatically assigned to the default group, unless the Membership Add-on is installed. If the Membership Add-on is installed, the users will be assigned to the groups related to their purchased membership package. Groups can be added by clicking the 'add new group' icon.

Group access is just like

user access. The only dierence is in the save function. The Group Type is used in the system and cannot be changed. Group Type is a way to recognize the role of the user in the Real Estate industry. With some add-ons such as Broker add-on, new group types will be added to the system such as broker and company.

Copyright


50


It is possible to change and save the access of the group so only users added to the group will have the changes, or you can save and update all the users with this group. See the image below.

There are two main groups that cannot be deleted: Guest and Default. Their presence is crucial to the system. The Guest group is needed for reading access for visitors of your website or users that are not activated in RPL, but need to browse the properties. The Default group is needed because when a new user is activated in RPL, it must be assigned to a default group.

Important Remark: Do not allow the Guest user group (membership) to do data entry or change RPL features such as adding a listing, property manager, prole wizard, or the CRM add-on.

User Access with the Membership Add-on When the Membership and Payment gateway Add-on and the multi-level user plugin are installed, the User Management tab on the RPL dashboard is renamed to the Membership Add-on tab. It will allow even more features and the ability to dene access levels for users. For example: the number of properties, images, listings available, locations, property categories available, etc. Furthermore the membership package details can be dened. The Membership Add-on also provides a payment function for the purchase of memberships, etc. Please see the Membership and Payment gateway add-on manual for further information.

4.5 View Settings RPL has a very exible design system. You can easily edit CSS/ HTML les to match them with your requirements, without jeopardizing the automaitc update system.

In

another words, the RPL update system will not touch your design changes provided that they have a dierent name than the default CSS/ HTML les of RPL. View settings section consists of two tabs: Template Manager and Listing sort options.

4.5.1 Template Manager RPL has made customization really easy. You can easily create your customized template for internal views and select them in this section. As you can see in the picture below, this section consists of 4 columns. The View column shows the internal RPL8 view. In front of each view, there is a drop down list of available templates for that view. The

Copyright


51


Template column includes templates that are automatically read from the tmpl folder of each view.

So if you create a customized template for one of the listed views, that

template will be automatically listed here.

Next column is used to set the CSS le for the customized template.

The name you

use here will be used in the system to load a CSS le for each internal template. The le will be loaded from: / components/ com_rpl/ view_name/ tmpl/ template_name/ css_name.php and /components/ com_rpl/ view_name/ tmpl/ template_name/ css_name.css. If you need to customize this, please check the codes that are already on the system. If you change the value of the CSS textbox, you need to either hit Enter on your keyboard or click on the Save icon in front of it. The nal column is used to show a preview of the template by moving the mouse over it.

Note: Some templates go not have a preview image.

4.5.2 Listing sort options In this section you can modify the sort options that appear on the top of listing pages on RPL8 Frontend. You can see the possible options in the picture below: Sort option view type can be set as Detailed or Select-box and you can see a sample of the result in the pictures below:

Detailed

Copyright


52


Select Box

4.5.3 User Sort Options This feature sorts the agents who show up in the agent listing page. On the frontend of the website, we can sort those agents by name, country or state.

4.6 Location Manager RPL has a very powerful and exible location system. The system can be congured as a combination of a very complex database system with 7 location levels plus Zip Code, and a text-based location system.

Copyright

Each of these types of location system is useful in


53


certain conditions and countries. And in some scenarios it is even required that a mixture of the two systems be used. We will explain all this in details and via clear examples. The location of a property can be congured up to 7 levels (Locations1 to Locations7), which can be named according to your country convention. For example in United States

6

you can name them: Country, State, County, City, Zone, etc.

In a country like France,

the location could be set as Country, Province, Department, City, etc. (Please note that the locations are hierarchical.) Once RPL is installed it asks you for one Default country.

That default country is

enabled in your website. You may check the downloadable section of your billing account to download locality packages and install them for your country. If the locality package for your country is not available, there are 3 ways to setup the location system: 1. Adding the locations of that country manually, via the location manager in the backend of RPL. This generates a database system for the specic country. 2. Importing the locations through an external database. 3. Using Text-based location system The 8th level of location is the zip code, which is handled dierently. Again in the RPL installation wizard asks for a zip code parent location. It is possible to set it to any of the seven location levels or disable it completely.

This completes the exibility of the

system. Zip code is dierent from a simple location level because it is handled dierently by search or in data entry of properties.

Note: For the installation instruction of the locality packages, please refer to the Basic Setup section of this manual.

4.6.1 Adding / Editing locations

Through this interface, you can:

6 The

keywords are LOCATION1, LOCATION2, etc., which you should add translations based on the system levels you use. For instance one can name it as Country, State, City, Zone; and some might set it as Country, State, Country, City, Zone, District, etc. Copyright


54


1.

Enable more Countries (a) Click on 'Show All Countries' button and you can see the list of all countries. You can click on the red mark in order to enable that country. Please note that when you enable a country through this interface, the locality database of that country is still empty and should be uploaded separately. However the country name will appear in RPL. (b) After enabling desired countries, you can click on 'Show Enabled Countries'. (c) Now if the locality database of a particular country does not exist in Realtyna Billing download section, you can add the locations (states/provinces) and then the cities manually. Just click on 'Load Next Level' for going to the State level and start adding locations by clicking on 'Add Locations'. After adding the states/provinces one by one, you can click on the 'Load Next Level' for individual states/provinces and add the next level, for example the city names within that state/province.

Note: This process is time consuming when your website is supposed to cover a large area.

In such case, either you can nd a complete database of that

country and contact Realtyna for a customized data import.

Or you can

select the Text Type for that country that we are going to explain shortly. 2.

Sync with Languages This option is useful in a multi-lingual website.

As you have noticed from the

previous image, the location names can have translations in dierent languages (First the languages must be installed on your website. Please refer to Language Manager section). For example when we change the language of the website from English to French, the word 'United States' should be changed to 'États-Unis'. This button 'Sync with Languages', load all the translations that you entered in the location system into the RPL and Joomla language les. 3.

Generate Location Texts RPL has its own cache system for dealing with thousands of location records, which increase the speed of the website. In addition, the Location Search system uses the same engine for Auto-Suggesting the location names in a timely manner.

This

button 'Generate Location Texts' is used when some modications have been done in the location database (for example adding new locations, adding translations, etc), in order to update the location cache system. 4.

Removing Location Levels We will cover this function later in this section.

5.

Adding and Removing Location Level As we mentioned before, RPL has a powerful and exibility location setting. You can edit location setting by clicking on the Location String.

You can dene the

structure of the address the way you want. When you open Edit Location String you can see a box that have country/state/city/etc. According to the address structure standard of your country, you can add items. For Example in some countries the address starts with street you can choose street to show rst. OR if you donât want to show the country in the address, you can remove it.

Copyright


55


4.6.2 Location Settings As we explained before, the RPL location database is based on 7 location levels plus Zip Code. The location levels are hierarchical. Depending on your needs you can easily make modications in to the location levels in order to respond to your website particular requirements. For conguring your location system, rst you should select the location type: Property Location or People Location (People location will be used when website users ll forms on your website and want to enter their address).

The 2nd point is to select the country database that is going to be congured. 1.

Changing Keywords (a) Each country has its own location structure.

For example in United States

we identify a location with: Country/State/County/City/Area. On the other hand in France a location is veried with Country/Province/Department/City. As the result in the location system of each of these countries, we need to have specic words for location levels. This can be done through Custom Keyword section of the Location Settings. (b) Note:

This is dierent from the keyword translations to another language.

For that purpose, you need to enter the translations in the Language Manager section of RPL. For example in French, the translation of the keyword 'city' is 'la ville'. When the French language is selected in the frontend of the website, regardless of the location of the property, the 'city' will be shown as 'la ville'. 2.

Location Level in the Add Listing Wizard (property wizard) From this row in the location setting, you can set how the location system should appear on your Add Listing Wizard. The question is if a level is selectable in the property wizard (add listing). There are 4 options for each level: (a)

Yes: This means that the users should select that level from a dropdown box. For example, if your website cover more than one state, with no preference, you need to set this option to Yes for Level 2 (State).

(b)

No (Set Default): Again the example of Level 2 (State), if your website covers only one state, you need to select this option. By selecting this option, a box

Copyright


56


appears in the 'Default Location?'

row, for selecting the default state.

For

example if you select Florida, the State of all the properties will be set to Florida by default. This is useful because your agents do not need to enter this information each time they add a property. (c)

Yes (Text): If you select this option, in the Add Listing, the users need to type the location name.

For example if you set level 4 (area) to Yes(Text),

it means that the agent can type the name of the area, instead of selecting it from a dropdown list. This is useful when a level do not exist in the database, or when we don't have a database of a country at all (in such case levels 2,3,4 should be set as Yes(Text)). This is the Text-based location system that we mentioned earlier. (d)

Disable: When a level is disabled, users do not see it in the Frontend of the website and cannot set it in the Add Listing Wizard. You cannot disable a level unless the next level is disabled rst.

3.

Viewable in frontend This option determines whether a location level should be shown in the Property Listing page and Property Show page. This is very useful because most of the Real Estate companies cover a local market. For example for a company that only covers the state of California, or a certain county, it is not necessary to mention California, United States in the address of all the properties.

4.

Viewable in the location text search This option determines which location should be shown in box of location text search. For example for a company that only covers the United States, or a certain country, it isnât necessary to show location 1 in the searching of address. So you can uncheck location 1 and search by city.

5.

Default Location This row will be activated only when the option 'selectable in the property wizard' is set to No(Default) for a location level. When active, you should select a default location from a dropdown list.

6.

Zip Code Parent Level In each country, the ZIP Code is associated with a dierent location level.

For

example in the United States, the ZIP Codes are associated to States. In France, the ZIP Codes are associated to City. So with this option you can select which level the ZIP Code is associated to. In another words it determines which level is the parent level for the zip codes. Note: When you add countries, each country will have its own location level structure.

You need to select the country from the drop-down menu on top of the

Location Settings panel, and start conguring it the way you want.

4.6.3 Adding a Country/State named 'Other' It is advisable to add a country/State named 'Other' on your website. Suppose the properties on your website are all within the United States or within a particular State. On the other hand, you may have clients from all around the world. When your clients are

Copyright


57


lling CRM contact forms, they need to enter their address. You have 2 options: 1- Adding the locality package of ALL countries, just for the purpose of user address, which makes your database very heavy and slow. 2- Or you can enter a country named Other and then add a text box area in the form, so the users can enter their address in Text format.

4.6.4 Disabling a Country for Properties or People In the Location Settings top section, there is an option for disabling certain locations for properties or people. As we just explained, it is practical to add a location called 'Other' to your website. However you don't want to let agents to select 'Other' as their property location. According to the image below, you can select Properties Location, then select 'Other' from the next dropdown list, and press on 'Disable This'. The result is that the country 'Other' will not show up in the list of countries, while adding properties.

4.6.5 Removing Location Levels 7

Now that we discussed all about location levels, we can discuss about a more com-

plex feature that is removing location levels. RPL locality packages are generated in the most detailed way. For instance, for US there are following levels added: State (Level2), County (Level3), City (Level4) and zip codes, which are assigned to these cities. But it is probable that you do not want to use some of these levels. For instance, if you wish to remove the county level without losing cities or zip codes this feature is useful. Note: You can access this feature from the main page of the location manager. What this functionality oers can be seen in the following diagram.

In the following

diagram Location level 3 is removed on a 4-level locality package (Like US locality package):

7 This

feature is added from RPL 7.4

Copyright


58


=⇒

By clicking on the Removing location levels the following interface is shown.

To better underestand the elds and their meaning, here is an example:

Example: Suppose you have downloaded and installed US locality package which has 4 levels, as described earlier, but you do not want to include the county (level3) eld. What you should do is set following parameter:

Country: United State

Location level to remove: Location3

The current location last level: Location4

Current zip code parent: Location4

Increment: automatic

This way, the county eld is removed and cities are moved to location level 3 and zip codes are assigned to them accordingly.

Note: Increment is a way of determining the volume of data that needs to be dealt with in order to perform the modication.

When it is set to

automatic, the system

calculates the suitable volume of data for each transaction and commands the server to complete the transaction part by part. However some servers may have smaller Time-out and cannot handle the calculated volume. In such case, you need to enter a number less or equal than 100 and press on modify. If this doesn't work, decrease the number until you get a positive response from the server. This is normally a heavy task (depending on the database size of the country), so be patient until the server nishes the job.

Copyright


59


4.7 Language Manager RPL has a unique feature with which you can show all its titles and messages the way you like. Of course we have some predened titles and messages in the system but all of these can be shown according to users' needs. Let's say for example, you can easily set the system to show another message instead of this one: Are you sure to delete selected requests? Another use of RPL language manager (aside from customizing RPL messages and keywords) is to add translations for these messages, etc. in other languages than your Joomla default language.

Keywords & Translations When you go to the language manager interface, you see a list of keywords that are in upper case and underlines (if they are long). The keywords are those that are predened in standard RPL Core and are used only for programming purpose. Users cannot see the keywords in the frontend of the website. Instead they see the translation of the keywords in human language. The translations that are related to RPL are visible and changeable through RPL Language Manager.

Please refer to the screenshot below.

The columns

en-GB and fr-FR are the English and French translations of RPL keywords.

You can

install and activate other languages as well.

Note: Please note that rst you need to install a certain language in Joomla and then you can manage it from language manager (we are going to explain this later in this section). English language is the default language that will be installed along with Joomla.

Note: You will not see French language column on your RPL if French language is not installed and you will see other language columns if they are installed on your Joomla.

4.7.1 How to add a new language 1. Install the Joomla Language package to your Joomla, for example fr-FR. You can nd more information from Joomla website. For instance the following page: http://community.joomla.org/translations/joomla-16-translations.html 2. Download the RPL language le related to that language (for example French) and then upload it to you Joomla Language directory. You can upload the le through FTP. The le must be copied to language folder of that specic language.

For

example for French, the folder path would be /languages/fr-FR/ 3. Click on Load Languages icon in RPL Language Manager

Copyright


60


4. The column related to that language will appear in RPL language manager and you can edit/add translations from there.

4.7.2 How to change translations of certain keywords 1. Search for the keyword or the translation that you want to change.

As you can

see in the language manager, there is a search box and a drop-down list on the left side of the search box. For a proper search, rst you need to select the proper item from the drop-down list next to the search box. If you want to search for a keyword, select the keyword (the keywords are in upper case and have underline_). If you don't know the keyword, but there is a word (translation) that is bothering you in the frontend of your website, simply select that specic language from the drop-down list (for example fr-FR) and then enter the word. 2. You can see the list of keywords or translation that is matched with your search. Simply change the translation for that keyword for your desired language.

Once

mouse focus is moved from that textbox (by clicking outside the text box) the translation will be updated. In fact this last step will copy the RPL database to Joomla language le, so it will be visible on your Joomla website.

4.7.3 How to add new keywords Supposed you've added new elds for your properties through the Flex Add-on. In that case you need to add a keyword for those eld though the language manager. Otherwise in the frontend, users will see uppercase words with underlines_. For doing so: 1. Click on New icon in your language manager 2. Add the keyword (the eld name in uppercase). For example if the eld name is Covered Pool you need to add COVERED_POOL 3. Enter the translation for it. In case of English you will add Covered Pool. Or if you have for example French language too, you will enter La Piscine Couverte. 4. Click on Add

Copyright


61


4.7.4 How to delete a keyword In case you want to delete certain keywords: 1. Find them in the list of keywords and translations (through search 2. Select them by checking the select-box beside each keyword. 3. Click on the Delete icon. You can delete more than one keyword at once.

4.7.5 Load Language(s) & Create ini le Joomla stores its language information in ini les. For certain technical reasons, in RPL we store the keywords in database. In order to match Joomla and RPL systems, we must synchronize Joomla system of language les (ini les) and RPL database language system after any change. As explained in earlier procedures, when you click on load languages button, language data from Joomla les will be imported to RPL database and will be usable by RPL7 language manager. As explained earlier this button is necessary when you add new language packs from Realtyna site to your website. Also create.ini button does the opposite action of Load Language(s) icon. Clicking on this icon results in creation of Joomla language ini les based on the RPL database. All

RPL ini les for installed languages will be

overwritten.

Important Remark: If you have a language installed on your Joomla and you downloaded a language le from Realtyna servers and have copied it to your language folder of Joomla, you have to load that language rst by clicking on Load Languages. If you forget this step and click on Create ini le, that language le will be emptied because this icon will copy the RPL database (which is still empty) to the Joomla ini le. Important Remark:

After you make modications to keywords translations, etc.

you

should press this icon so those changes take eect and language les are created.

Copyright


62


4.7.6 Activating Multilingual for Flex Add-on The Language Manager is a tool for handling multi-language feature for the RPL interface. On the other hand, a multi-language website requires that the user-entered data be presented in multiple languages as well. For example, the property description is a text eld, needs to be entered in dierent languages that are supported by the website. In order to activate this option for each Text eld in the Add Listing wizard, you need to congure the eld through the Flex Add-on.

Simply click on the Edit icon for the

selected Text eld, and set the Multilingual option to Yes, as you can see in the next image. Please note that the multilingual option only becomes visible, after installing a 2nd language for your website.

After setting this option, a drop-down option will appear beside the text area, where you

Copyright


63


can select the language of the property description. You can save the property description in multiple languages and the system will show the related language in the property details page.

4.8 Notications RPL is proud to present its new and powerful notication system.

This system sends

emails to a group of pre-dened or situation-selected recipients and lets them know about the event that has happened. For example, when a property is added to the system, it sends an email to system admins and asks them to review and conrm that property. There are various email notications in RPL along with installing Add-ons a couple of notications will be added to your RPL system. Of course you can always select which notications should be sent and which should not. All congurations are accessible in the

Notications tab in RPL back-end:

4.8.1 Notication Basic Settings Here you can review and set some basic options of email notications. Like if they are

enabled or disabled. There are some points you should notice rst: 1. If the

enabled icon is blue, this means it is always enabled and cannot be disabled.

You'll understand why when you check which notications are always enabled. 2. Besides the settings provided here, there are some settings for individual users in their prole wizards to select which email notications they want to receive and which not. This means they will only receive notications which are enabled both here by admin and in front-end by themselves. If an email notication is disabled, users won't see it in their front-end settings. 3.

Default user status is the status of email notication for a user who has not set his notication settings yet. Suppose a user has newly signed up. He has not visited their prole wizard yet and has not chosen which notications they are willing to receive. What should the system do if there is a notication that has to be sent to this new user? This is where default user status comes in handy. If it is enabled the notication will be sent to that new user and if not, nothing happens.

Copyright


64


4.

Access means that a notication setting is only shown to the users who have access to that feature in the system. For example property conrmed notication which is a notication that is sent to the users when the property they have added is conrmed; will only show in prole wizard of users who already have the access to add properties.

RPL notications are divided into two categories:

Instant Notications : These notications are sent right after the event has happened. Like User signup notication which is sent right after the user has signed up in the website.

Cron Job Notications : These notications are sent with a delay that may be one second or 24 hours.

The reason is technical but very understandable.

Consider

Membership About to Expire notication. As you can understand from the title it sends notications to the users whose membership is about to expire. Being near expiration date is not something that happens in RPL or some function that runs in the system, it's rather a check. This means system should check all memberships once in a period of time and nd those which are about to expire. understand that Each

So we can

cron job notications are sent when a system check has run.

cron job notication has its own interval (in hours). This is the period of time

that check task we talked about runs once in it. You can easily change this interval right here in

Notications tab. Of course there are some more congurations for triggering

cron job tasks that we'll discuss later. You can also change the email subjects for notications.

That's easy, just change the

value in the text box and you're done. You can also set the

sender title of these emails. If an email is sent from an individual

its sender title is his name. In case of a website, they usually put website name as sender title. Of course there is one sender title for all notications. That's obviously because these are just dierent messages coming from one unique source.

Note: Notication emails are sent with the same email address Joomla uses to send its emails. We have discussed the basic congurations of notications. Now it's time to move on to more detailed congurations like notications content and recipients.

4.8.2 Edit Notications Whenever you click on a notications title in back-end, you'll be redirected to its edit section:

Copyright


65


In

Email Template tab you can edit email notication's template. Each notication

that is sent by RPL has two types of data: some static data, which is entered here in this template editor (some default data is available for each notication). And some dynamic data that is generated by the time each notication is being sent and may be dierent for each individual email sent.

As you can see in the screenshot, there are some text

and some images containing a box with some text written in it. These image boxes just show which dynamic data is put where.

For example in the above screenshot, actual

MLS ID that is a dynamic data is replaced with the image that says MLS ID when the notication is being sent. In other words these images are just markers to show where the dynamic data should be placed. You can move these images, change their order and place them wherever you want.

Note: In case you want to remove any of the markers, it is recommended to create a backup of the template le placed in joomla_root/components/com_rpl/notications/templates rst.

Important Note: In case you are using other languages than default English language pack, please make sure you have translated the keyword HERE or some links may not appear in the sent emails. You can edit these templates to your desirable way. These emails use HTML format so you can add banners, images, and other HTML elements. After you're done with changes click on Save

Content button and that's all.

Each email notication has some advanced settings that may dier from one to another but they are all placed in

Copyright

Advanced Options tab:


66


Additional Recipients is available for all email notications. Each email notication in RPL may have some main recipients which system logically nds out. For example the main logical recipient of property conrmation notication is the person who has added the property. But we may want to send a copy of that email to a couple of other users. To do that we should just add those users to additional recipients and click on

included recipients. Just select your

Add. To remove a user or some users from included

recipients just select them and click on

Remove.

Of course these additional recipients can be groups or even email addresses instead of individual users. This way system will send a copy to all members of each included group and all the included email addresses. There is one other setting which may appear in some email notications and that's

Notice Days. Notice days is the number of days that a notication is sent before or after the event occurs. Consider Membership About to Expire notication. We know it sends the notication sometime before membership expires but how many days? Here's the place to dene that. If we enter more than one number and comma separated, it will consider all of those days. As in the above screenshot, individual notications are sent in 5 and 4 and 3 and 2 and 1 days before membership expires.

4.8.3 Notication Settings in Prole Wizard There is a module loaded in prole wizard in Frontend that contains notication settings for users. The settings are simple, just names and descriptions of notications and an option for users to choose which notications they want to receive and which don't.

Copyright


67


If you want to receive a notication, make sure it is checked here in the list. Unchecked notications are considered disabled for your user. You can also read their descriptions by hovering your mouse on the ? icons.

4.8.4 Notication Settings for Admin Admin users (since they will also receive email notications that are not visible in Frontend settings) have a separate section in backend to choose notications they want to receive and which ones they do not.

If you want to receive a notication check it here and if not, uncheck it. You can also read their descriptions by hovering your mouse on the ? icons.

Important Note: These admin notication settings are separate for each admin user. We just put them in back-end so it won't be mixed up with normal users.

4.8.5 Setting up Cron-job System As you know, some email notications need a cron-job system to perform a scheduled check and send notications if needed. There is a cron-job plugin installed along with

Copyright


68


RPL that can handle all or a part of this procedure. To enable/disable this plugin you can use either

RPL Check & Maintenance or Joomla Plugin Manager.

If you open this plugin's settings in

Joomla Plugin Manager you can congure some

parameters too.

Minimum Interval is the lowest interval of all cron-job tasks in the system; which usually exist in the notication system. It's recommended to set it to 6 hours or 1 hour but if you have notications which have cron job intervals of less than 1 hour set it to 1 hour and not 6. Cron-job tasks in RPL can be done in two ways:

Plugin Handled: The cron-job plugin will handle tasks and no further conguration is needed. This is the easiest way but may cause one little problem. Technically, in this method the cron-job task runs in the background when the rst visit in a period of time (interval) is happened to the website. For example, if I am the rst visitor of the website after cron-job time has come, the rst page I browse may take a little while to load. Of course this happens once in every period and only for one user and only for one page. Also, for websites that don't have a large number of properties and a large number of users this wait time is not that noticeable. But for big websites we recommend the next method.

OS Handled: As you may know, Server Operating Systems have their own cron-job handler and can perform cron-jobs for us. It is obvious that this way is much better and won't cause us any wait times.

In this method, OS takes care of our cron-job task as

a separate thread and no matter how big and complicated our website is; the task will be done just ne. Most of reliable web-hosts oer this cron-job option in their

Control

Panel. Here we guide you through cPanel software, which is mostly used in Linux Based Web Hosts:

Copyright


69


The rst step is to set the plugin to use

OS Handled cron-job. Just select OS Handled

in the drop down and save the settings. After that, log in to your cPanel account and you'll nd a link named

Cron Jobs in Advanced section. Click on the link and you

will be redirected to a page that lists all the existing cron-job tasks and a place to add a new one.

Select your minimum interval in options except

Common Settings and you won't need the rest of the

Command, which should be set to the following value:

php -q /[joomla_home_directory]/ plugins/system/rpl_cronjob/rpl_cronjob/cron.php [joomla_home_directory] is the location of your website's (Joomla installation) home directory on the server.

If you are using cPanel,

home directory is listed as one of

Stats in the main panel. The command should be something like this: php -q /home/mywebsiteuser/public_html/ plugins/system/rpl_cronjob/rpl_cronjob/cron.php After you've entered the command click on Add New Cron Job and that's all.

4.9 SEO RPL has a powerful SEO sections to promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines. RPL gives you the best chance to improve your site and have a high rank from search engines.

Copyright


70


4.9.1 Diagnosis The rst section is diagnosis that gives you a complete view of your site like domain, title, Meta tags, etc and it shows the rank of your site in search engines. In the rst box you can add the URL of page and then see the details of it's situation below it like socials, Page Ranks, etc. Overall it gives you analysis of site from view of Search Engines.

4.9.2 Structure Title Title tags are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page, and are important both for SEO and social sharing.

If you

active this feature you can choose parameters that you want to be in title.

Note : By moving up and down the item (from right) you can change order of items.

4.9.3 Meta Data Description Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from SERPs. RPL obtain a chance for you to write these short paragraphs that are a webmaster's opportunity to advertise content to searchers and to let them know exactly whether the given page contains the information they're looking for. When you active this feature you can use items in the right box to write a description about site/page.

4.9.4 Meta Data Keyword RPL gives you Keywords that are the related words to your website that help your site to be on the rst results of searches. You should choose words that users search more and competitive words. RPL help you choose the words correctly. If you active this feature you can choose words that you want to be your keywords.


4.9.5 Management URL RPL help you to make URL of a web ideally to be as descriptive and brief as possible. If, for example, a site's structure has several levels of les and navigation, the URL should reect this with folders and subfolders. Individual pages' URLs should also be descriptive without being overly lengthy, so that a visitor who sees only the URL could have a good idea of what to expect on the page. newline If you active this feature you can select items that are appropriate for URL's of your site.


Copyright


71


4.10 Setting & Tools 4.10.1 Check & Maintenance This section provides the system status of all functions of the backend of RPL8. This could help indicate what issues, if any, need to be addressed. These include:

Maintenance: Lists any recent maintenance done to the site

Requirements: Provides the status of system requirements

Plugins: This provides plug-ins installed and whether they are activated

Installed Add-ons: This provides the current versions of add-ons (Note: Payment add-on is transferred to RPL core only because of technical advantages. However it will be activated only after the installation of Membership Add-on or Booking Add-on)

Menu Creator

4.10.2 Log Manager This section records a log of all changes/edits done to the website and it details which user has made the changes by date.

Copyright


72


4.10.3 Congurations This section oers the admin/Super user the settings and congurations to track website activity and parameters for the users. The settings are very self-explanatory, so we don't include them in this manual. If you have any questions please feel free to contact our support team.

4.10.4 Payment Setting This Section is used for payment settings for the some of the RPL add-ons such as Membership, Booking and Advertisement Add-ons. Otherwise this section is disabled.

Copyright


73


4.10.5 Discount codes This section is disable unless you install membership and booking Add-on. It is used when you consider discount for users. You can dene discount code for users and send it to them. Then when they want to buy a membership or listing service or pay for a booking (vacation rental) they can enter the code and get the discounted rate.

4.10.6 cPanel In this section you can enter the cPanel information of your website. This is necessary for some of the add-ons like Franchise solution add-on that creates multiple child websites with one click.

Copyright


74


4.11 RPL Hybrid Modules 4.11.1 Search Module and Listing Basic Settings With the aid of the Flex Add-on, RPL8 gives you complete exibility to customize the property elds and their options any way you like. Another excellent function in RPL8 is the search module, which doubles the customizability of the Flex Add-on. In the new search module you can completely set what elds you want in the search module and in what order they should be displayed.

There are some search options, shown on the top of the image to the right:

Ajax Search:

Can have three values: no, yes and yes (on the y). If no is selected,

the search options are submitted without Ajax like simple search submissions. If yes is selected, the search is done Ajaxly and the search button should be clicked. If the yes (on the y) is set, there is no need to press the search button to do the search. When you change the search criteria, the form is submitted Ajaxly and the search is done. The Ajax search is highly recommended.

Module Layout:

With this layout you can customize the graphical design of the

search module display with your own designs and use the layout name to load the search module. You can use this for dierent search module layouts; you can use one search module with one template and another search module with other templates.

Jquery Layout:

The Jquery CSS layout for sliders and other CSS of the search

module.

Target MenuItem:

Copyright


75


The search must be submitted to a page with a Property Details page. If the search is not Ajax or the search module is not in a page that has a listing, this target menu item becomes important.

It is the menu

item you should set for the page showing results of the search.

In the elds area, all the searchable elds

8

are listed .

Each eld can be enabled by

checking enable/disable.

The next eld is

for the item display index in the search module.

The higher the index, the lower the item is displayed. Negative values can also be set for indexes. For example, the order becomes like this: -15,-14-13, etc. or -2,-1, 0, 1, 2 etc. Based on the eld type, each eld can have several options. For most of the elds you can set a type of display.

Listing Type/Property Type These can have any of the following options:

1. Select Box: It shows a drop-down box with any option that does the search without any limitation on the listing or property type.

2.

Multiple Select Box: It shows a drop-down select box from existing types and

you can choose your desired ones by pressing the Ctrl button plus mouse over them.

3. Check Boxes: It shows the list of the listings with check boxes, any item or multiple items can be selected.

4. Radio Buttons: It shows the list of listings with Radio Buttons. 5.

Radio Button with any: It shows the list of listings with Radio Buttons but

the Any is as a rst button.

6. Predened: For example, if you need a search module only on the For Sale listing menu, use the predened option.

When it is selected,

a list of available listings/property types will

be

multiple

shown. items

8 Separator

Copyright

You by

can

pressing

even the

select Ctrl

elds, which are not searchable, are also in the list of elds for designing purposes.


76


button and clicking.

Then that search module sets the listing/property type to those

specied.

7. Select Box from Predenes: With this option the customizability is almost complete. This option is like the previous one, but it shows a select box that the user can only select from the items specied.

Price, Area, Etc Fields which have a unit like price, living area, etc. have the following options:

1. Min/Max Textbox: It shows two text boxes, one for the minimum and one for the maximum value in the search. Also another select box is shown in the unit on the eld.

For example, if you have $ and

e

as currencies in the RPL system, there will be a price box enabling the $/eselection

9

and

two text boxes for min/max. When conguring this, specify a default value for min/max. For example, to show 0 as min and 1000000 as max you should set 0,100000.

2.

Min/Max Slider: This is the same

as textbox, textboxes

but instead of showing two

it

shows

a

slider.

For

the

default, specify min/max/interval for the slider, which are the slider minimum and maximum respectively. The interval is the increment interval that the slider can increase between values. For example 0, 1000, 5 means values like 0-1000, 5-1000, 10-1000, etc. can be searched.

Important Remark: The default min/max/interval values should always be set for the min/max slider and textbox, otherwise the search would not work properly.

3.

Min/Max

the

same

showing slider

4.

as two

with

Slider+:

textbox,

but

textboxes

range

like

it

This

is

instead

of

shows

a

1000000+

.

Min/Max SelectBox: If the default

values are set as for example 0,10000,1000 then two select boxes are shown for minimum

and

maximum

having

values

like

0, 1000, 2000, and 3000 up to 10000.

9 If

only one currency, area unit, etc. is enabled, no select box is shown for unit selection and just the default unit is set and shown. Copyright


77


5.

Min/Max SelectBox+:

This op-

tion will show a select box with ranges like 1000+, 2000+, etc.

6. Min/Max SelectBox with any: This option will show a select box with ranges like 1000, 2000, etc as well as Any eld.

7. Min/Max SelectBox with range: This option will show a select box with ranges like 0-100, 100-200, etc as well as Any eld at the top.

Numbers Numbers have the same options as prices, area, etc. with the exception that numbers do not have a unit select box in the frontend search module. The other dierence is that with numbers it is possible to set a text search eld, so you can search with the exact number you are looking for.

Select-box Select box elds (like PriceType) can have the following options: 1.

Select Box: The select eld has some options like per week/per month, etc. in the search module. A selectbox can show these values and the search results are narrowed based on the selected items. For instance, for price type it shows a select drop down box and once the per month is selected, all properties with their price by month are shown.

2.

CheckBoxes: It shows all the options of the select eld with checkboxes and multiples can be selected.

3.

Predened: Like listing types/property types, the predened option can be used on select elds. This means you can set a listing like: for rent, per month.

Features & Appliances & Neighbourhood For features and appliances elds the following options are available:

Copyright


78


1. CheckBox: A simple checkbox is shown for a feature or appliance. If the checkbox is checked only properties having that feature are shown.

If it is not selected the search

will ignore that parameter, meaning properties having or not having those features will be the result.

2. Any/Yes Nob: It works like the checkbox, but instead of showing a checkbox it shows a yes/any nob.

3.

SelectBox:

The select box option

shows a drop down in the search module that has three options: any, yes, no. If no is selected; only the properties listed do not have the selected feature

Location Search RPL has a very exible and customizable 8-level location system (7 location levels and one zip code). For the location search there are two options if the Google Map add-on is installed. Otherwise there is one simple option, which loads the location levels in simple select boxes.

1.

Simple: This option will be available in the core and shows location levels based

on your RPL location settings.

For instance, the picture to the right is for an RPL,

which has the country level set as no (set default) and it is viewable in front-end. State and city are set as yes, other locations are disabled and the zip code parent is set for the city.

2.

Radius: This option is available only

in the case when the Google Map add-on is installed.

If this is set for location, in

addition to the location levels, a text box for radius is displayed.

In this textbox,

the radius for searching properties can be set.

This also has a unit parameter that

can be selected from the dropdown box. It loads large length units from the RPL settings, like kilometer, mile, etc.

If the ra-

dius is set to a value other than 0 or is empty, the radius search is done;

other-

wise the simple location search is done.

Copyright


79


Important Notice: If all large-length units, like kilometer and mile, are disabled from RPL unit settings, the radius search will not function correctly. One or the other must be enabled.

Gallery If you enable the gallery search eld, it will show a checkbox in the search module.

If

checked, only properties with images will be in the results.

Advanced Property Manager Fields It is possible to use the search module for Property Manager.

There are several ad-

ditional search options such as: the owner of property, conrm, nalize, delete status, and the add date which can be enabled.

Copyright


80


4.11.2 Walk Score Module Walk Score is a third-party service provider for calculating the walkability of any address to certain landmarks such as banks, restaurants, etc., helping to nd walkable places near an address.

A walk score is a

measure of your neighborhoodâs walkability. Walk Score is providing service only in certain countries. To verify whether your country is covered, please refer to their website: www.walkscore.com

If Walk Score supports your country, you can subscribe to their free service.

Their

free service provides Walk Score information to any website until a certain number of queries per day. If you exceed the maximum number of free queries, you need to subscribe to their paid service.

For more

information please visit their website.

Realtyna has integrated Walk Score service with RPL, which enables users to benet from this interesting service on their website.

In the property details page of each

property, you can nd the walkscore module that calculates the walkability of the property address to its surrounding landmarks. This module is designed to show the Walk Score of property on your website using the Walk Score API license key (to be acquired from your walkscore subscription), which is a primary need for this module to work properly. This module is a zip package that can be easily installed and congured from backend of the Joomla installer and module manager. Go to the extension manager in Joomla, in the upload package le option, select the zip package and click on the upload and install button.

This is all you need to do to

install this package. Now for conguring the module, you need to go to the Module Manager in the back-

Copyright


81


end of Joomla and select the Walk Score module (mod_rpl_walkscore). There are some useful options that you can congure such as layout, width, height etc. You can see these

options in the next image.

Layout: You can choose your desired layout to show the walkscore. License Key: You can set the license key of walkscore API. Width: The total width of Walkscore module display (to set according to your template).

Height: The total height of Walkscore module display (to set according to your template).

Walkscore Layout: You can select Walkscore layout option (horizontal or vertical). After conguring, according to the instructions of the Basic Setup section of this manual, you need to activate this module and assign it to a module position. The default position for this module is in the property details page, within the same window as the picture gallery and google maps. The module position is called: RPL_Pshow_walkscore

4.11.3 Google Places This feature is available as a part of the RPL Hybrid Package.

According to a report by Google, a large percentage of consumers search for local businesses online. This is especially important for people when they search for their ideal home. They need to know the proximity of the property to stores, pharmacies, schools, etc.

before physically visiting the

property.

By utilizing the Google Places feature in your property listing website, your potential clients will not need to go elsewhere to retrieve this vital information. The longer users stay at your website, there is a greater chance of converting them to a lead. In addition, search engines put a great value in the average time that your website visitors spend on your website.

Copyright


82


This add-on is similar to Walkscore, so you should consider which one serves your area the best. To install this add-on, you should go to your billing account, download section and them modules. Download Google Places package, then install it through extension manager of joomla backend the same way as the other Joomla extensions. After the conguration, according to the instructions of the Basic Setup section of this manual, you need to activate this module and assign it to a module position The default position for this module is in the property details page, within the same window as the picture gallery and google maps. The module position is called: RPL_Pshow_google_places

4.11.4 PDF Flyer Add on PDF Add-on is not a module nor a plugin. It is an internal Add-on and the reason it is not included in the RPL core is because it increases the size of the package and the Joomla installer cannot handle it. This Add-on creates the ability to see a PDF output of your properties. To install this Add-on, please go to your billing account/Downloadables section/Add-ons and download the package. Then install it through the extension manager of the Joomla backend where you will also nd other Joomla extensions. After installing this Add-on,

you need to enable PDF option in RPL Links Module. Note: If you enable PDF option in RPL Links Module without rst installing the Add-on, you will face the following error message in Joomla: 500 - View not found [name, type, prex]: propertyshow, rplpdf, rplView This happens because some codes need to be added by the Add-on to the system before you can use the PDF output.

Copyright


83


4.11.5 Energy Tag In some countries, it is now mandatory to display the energy consumption tag of the properties in the listings.

This tag looks

like the energy tax on electrical appliances and represents the energy-saving eciency of a property. To satisfy this requirement, we have developed an Add-on module for RPL that allows entering of the energy consumption value of a property in the Add Listing wizard.

This value generates the correspond-

ing tag which is shown in the image. This Add-on is available free of charge within the RPL advanced package. To install this Add-on, go to your billing account/Downloadable section/Modules and download the package, then install it through extension manager of Joomla backend, like the other Joomla extensions.

Copyright


84


After installing the Add-on, Energy Tag eld will be added to the Add Listing Page/Features tab.

Copyright


85


To display energy tag module in the Property Details page, you need to follow these instructions: 1. Login to Joomla backend 2. Press the Module Manager 3. Choose the Energy Tag from appeared list

4. Insert the Title and Position (we recommended RPL_Pshow_right but it totally depends on the template module positions), then assign it to your desired pages. By adding value/character in Energy Tag, its module will be displayed on property show page.

4.11.6 Listing Stats Module This module is for displaying the classications of properties on your website, for example, for showing the number of properties per location or by price range.

Copyright


86


You need to specify a location level and location id and then set your desired settings to the module parameters. And then assign the module to your desired position. For the installation, download this module from your billing account->download-ables-> modules and install it through Joomla extension installer.

Module options In the module options in the Joomla backend, there are several options.

Layout As usual in RPL modules you can choose the layout of the module.

Width and height of the module This option is for specifying width and height of module.

Leave it empty if you

want to follow template structure.

Show All By Price and Show All By Street These for

options

sorting

price.

the

create

two

properties

listing by

links

street

or

These sort options must be en-

abled from RPL backend->Sort options

Show Newest Properties This option creates a lter for newest properties and shows it on front-end of your website. You should set "New listing days" option for example set it to 14.

Show Price Ranges This option creates price ranges links to front-end of your website.

Location Type and Location ID By using these options you can specify the location. You can set the location type to Country and the location id to 254. It means you selected "United States" as location. You can nd the location id through RPL backend->Location Manager

Copyright


87


Price Options Currency For setting the currency of price ranges use this option.

Price Ranges You can dene your desired price ranges here. There are 10 price ranges by default but you can create less price ranges if you want. For example you can set [empty]->10000 for the price ranges 1, 10001->50000 to the price range 2, 50001->100000 to the price range 3 and 100001->[empty] to the price range 4. Instead of [empty] blocks leave the items empty and it will create "Under" and " Up" texts. For example price range 1 will be "Under $10000" and price range 4 will be "$100001 and Up" in the above case.

Final result will be something like this in rpl_demo template. Of course you can change the design through CSS/HTML editing.

Copyright


88


4.11.7 QR Code Module QR Code stands for Quick Response Code and was created by the Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994.

This is particularly useful for

the Real Estate business.

By printing a

QR code on your property yers or advertisements, potential customers can easily scan the code and retrieve the information about the property on their smartphones.

Of course they need to have a

QR Reader App installed on their smartphone.

Realtyna has developed a new

module for the RPL Hybrid package;

it

generates unique QR codes for each property and displays them on the Property Show and PDF yer of the property.

To install this module, please go to your billing account/Downloadable section /Modules and download its package, then install it through extension manager of Joomla back end like the other Joomla extensions. After installing the module, you should see it in the Joomla modules list on the module manager page. Then you need to follow these steps to display QR code module in the property details page: 1. Go to Joomla backend, Module Manager 2. Filter list by type as you can see in the image below. Open module settings page by clicking on it and then set it's position based on you template. Set the Menu Assignment to all pages and publish the module.

When you congure the module correctly, you should be able to see it on the property details page.

Copyright


89


4.11.8 Craigslist Code Generator Module Craigslist has become a new real estate advertising trend. By using our Craigslist HTML code generator you can display eye-catching layouts that generate new leads. The HTML code generator provides clean templates that showcase your real estate. To install this module, please go to your billing account/Downloadable section /Modules and download its package, then install it through extension manager of Joomla back end like the other Joomla extensions. After installing this add-on, you need to enable HTML source option in RPL Links Module.

After enabling this option, you can see its icon on links module in property details page. As you can see in the image, the HTML source code is generated for that specic property.

All you need to do now is to copy the HTML source and past it on your craigslist ad page or any other web pages. The result will look like the following image.

Copyright


90


4.11.9 RPL School Info Module RPL

School

module

that

info

module

shows

is

school

a

Joomla

information

near a property using information from http://www.education.com.

Since

this

website only works for the schools in the United States, this module is specic to listings in the United States. In need

order to

to

use

sign

up

this for

module, a

free

you API:

http://www.education.com/schoolnder/tools/webservice/ To install this module, ules

please

go

to

like other mod-

your

billing

ac-

count/Downloadable

Copyright


91


section /Modules and download its package. Then install it through Joomla extension manager like other Joomla extensions. After installing the module, you should see it in the list of modules. You need to follow these steps in order to display the information in the property details page:

1. Open the module settings page by clicking on it and then set its position based on you template.

2. Then set the Menu Assignment to all pages and publish the module

3. The module has some parameters such as how many schools you would like to show, and in what distance from the property address, and what kinds of schools you would like to appear.

4. You need enter your license key after getting it from www.education.com. Finally after saving the settings, the module shows a list of schools in dierent tabs.

4.11.10 Video Add-on Using video in the internet for transferring data is increasing very fast.

Video add-on

is designed and created to meet this increasing need and by using this add-on, you can make your property videos available for your website visitors. This add-on enables you to share videos from YouTube, Vzaar and other video providers. You can also upload dierent formats of video directly to your site and let your visitors watch them from your own site.

Copyright


92


Installation and Setup Like other RPL add-ons, you can simply download it from the downloadable section in your Realtyna billing account. Then install the package using Joomla Extension Manager. After installation, a new tab will be added to your RPL backend by the name Video Addon and a new module is installed as well. From this tab in RPL backend you can change the basic settings of Video addon.

YouTube Settings

Username: Your YouTube username.

Password: Your YouTube Password

Developer Key: Please visit http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/dashboard/ to obtain a developer key. After logging into your Google account click on new product and then enter name of product and click save, after that Google generates Developer key and you can simply copy and paste in to your video addon.

After getting Developer key, you should login to your YouTube account and create a channel. It's required in latest YouTube API.

Copyright


93


Vzaar Settings

Secret: Your Vzaar username Token: you can get it from http://vzaar.com/settings/api but you need to be logged in to see that page

Video Upload Settings You can simply enable and disable video services. For example if you disable Local Video Upload then agents cannot upload videos in your server and they can only use external videos and YouTube or Vzaar service.

4.11.11 Carousel Module This module shows a photo gallery of a selection of properties based on the lters that we set in the module backend. The RPL carousel is a lightweight jQuery plugin that enables you to easily create customizable photo gallery sliders.

It provides the customization

options for slideshows, navigation buttons, and auto play. You can create multiple horizontal and vertical photo sliders in a single page. The RPL carousel is a cross browser plugin that works in all major browsers.

Module Settings There are some useful options that you can congure in the module manager (mod_rpl_carousel) in the backend such as gallery type, number of properties, listings, property types, etc.

Gallery Type: Enter the desired type/layout to show the gallery. Number of Properties: Set the number of the properties included in the gallery. Listing: Set the module to show specic listing types such as For Sale. Property Types: Set the module to show specic property types such as apartment. Only Featured: Displays only the featured properties in the carousel gallery. Only Hot: Displays only the hot properties in the carousel gallery. Only OpenHouses: Displays only the properties tagged with Open Houses in the carousel gallery.

Copyright


94


Only Foreclosures: Displays only the properties tagged with Foreclosure in the carousel gallery.

Autoplay: Sets the carousel gallery to be auto-played when the page loads. Randomize: Sets the carousel gallery to load random properties each time. Image per property: Sets the number of images per property. Show Properties Without Image: Sets to display the carousel module even if the properties have no images

Autoplay Delay: The delay can be set between each image rotation in terms of milliseconds.

Image Width: Set the width of the images in pixels. Image Height: Set the height of the images in pixels. Container Width: Set the width of the carousel gallery container in pixels. Container Height: Set the height of the carousel gallery container in pixels.

Copyright


95


Sample Layouts Skitter: In this layout, carousel displays the properties is images as a skitter . There are two arrow key icons which you can see a small size image of next or previous image inside it. By pressing the small buttons on the bottom of the image you can choose which image to be displayed.

Copyright


96


NivoSlider: In this layout, the carousel works as an image slider which provides property details on the bottom. In nivoSlider carousel you can see most of the details of a property with an instant glance.

Copyright


97


Fullscreen: This layout simply shows x number of properties with the following scheme. You can use this layout if you need to show properties as full screen on the front end of the home page. This layout will ll automatically whole of the page with some specic info on each property included property type, listing type, price and area plus two arrow keys for displaying next and previous property images.

Swiper:

Copyright


98


Eighteen : In this gallery type, you will have a simple display of property images with two narrow arrow keys beside of them.

Copyright


99


Camera:

4.11.12 RPL Links Module The RPL link module is for displaying the necessary internal/external functions of RPL. Internal functions such as PDF Flyer, Compare, Request a Visit, Send to Friend, etc. And external functions such social media share buttons such as facebook/twitter, etc. RPL Links has two basic layouts, one for PropertyShow and one for Property Listing, named default and listing, respectively. From the backend there are two instances of it as well: one positioned to RPL_Pshow_links_direction or RPL_Pshow_left and the other positioned to RPL_Plisting_links. The rst one is for PropertyShow; each option enabled will be shown in the PropertyShow. PDF is working only if the add-on is installed.

Copyright


100


There are also two module links if the Complex add-on is installed on your site : Complex Listing links to display links for Complex listing and positioned on RPL_Clisting_links and RPL_Cshow_left position to display Complex Show links.

Copyright


101


4.11.13 Property Listing Menu Creation If you want to have menus on your website that show a special group of properties, based on Listing Type, Property Type, Location, etc, you can do it through creating a Property Listing Menu. Clink on Menu (in Joomla backend) and select Add New Menu Item. For the menu type, click on RPL (from the list) and click on Property Listing. In the next page, you can congure your menu in a way that it shows only the desired listing. Property Listing menus can be set to show special types of properties. The rst option on the menu settings is the

type. In RPL8

you can select the type of the PropertyListing you want. Dierent types are explained below:

1.

PropertyListing:

The

usual

Prop-

ertyListing loads all the valid properties in the system with the specied template from the template manager.

2.

PropertyManager:

Accessible only for

logged in users; the same search module can be used.

3.

Bookmarks:

Shows a page with all

the bookmarked properties of the current logged in user.

Since users that are not

logged cannot have bookmarks, the menu should be a registered level menu.

4.

User (if the membership add-on is in-

stalled):

Shows a list of the current user

properties.

This is much like the Proper-

tyManager but without the accesses to the PropertyManager.

5. ComplexListing (if the complex add-on is installed): Shows ComplexListing.

6. ComplexManager(if complex add-on is installed): Shows ComplexManager.

The second option is the

target menu item. This is the menuitem where the details of

the property are shown. This is important if you need to assign special modules to the

10

PropertyShow. The idea is to create a hidden menu item

10 Just

and set it here. Then you can

a menu item in a menu which is not displayed in the frontend

Copyright


102


use the usual Joomla SDK to have special modules and congurations for it. The next option is the

agent type item. This is for creating a specic listing for one

agent type. For example you can create a listing to show owner's properties. Agent is for creating a property listing page exactly for a specic agent. Also broker is an option for creating a property listing page for a specic broker. This option only works if membership and broker add-on are installed. It is also possible to create special listings from the specied listing type or property type. Also you can set it to show properties with special tags such as featured, hot, etc. Ajax is for paginations and sorting of the properties. If set to yes, changing page or sort (or number of results per page) is done Ajaxly. The last conguration is the number of properties per page, which is the default number of properties unless the user changes it.

How to create a specic property listing page like Apartments For sale in US : If you need to have a (menu) page for example Apartments For sale in US, you need to go to front page of the site and look for the properties you want among Search Module. For this example you should choose For sale from the property listing eld, the Apartment from Property Type eld and United State as country from search module and then click on the search button. Then you need to select all the link of search result from address Bar :

Then go to Joomla backend/ Menu Manager and choose your desired menus or create a new one;

Click

on

New

button

and

then

click

on Select button and press the System Links

and

nally

choose

the

External

URL from appearing list on fancy box.

Then of ing

paste

the the

the Link

necessary

copied

URL

eld

and

elds

for

in

front

after Menu

llTitle

and choosing the module assignment,etc. Hit

on

the

Save

&

Close

button.

By doing so you will have an specic menu for a specic listing.

Copyright


103