Additional Steps for Entering a Property Listing

Part 1 of this tutorial dealt with general information on entering a new property listing on dlucasrealty.com.

It focused on getting you familiar with the Listing Entry Page of the website and what each section does for a listing’s page once it’s published.

In this final section of the tutorial, we’ll show you what to do for important steps that lead to entering a listing on the website.

Fourth Section: Correct Image Size

This might not seem apparent to anyone who visits a website but image files (the pictures used on a listing page) are large and usually takes a long time to load into a visitors browser.

That’s why dlucasrealty.com should standardize all of its file sizes to ensure a consistent visitor experience that insures its pages load fast onto a visitors screen.

But here’s how photos should be produced and processed:

Photos should always be shot in the largest file size format possible to use (8MB maximum)
Save photo file images using listing reference number in alphabetical order (ex: Single Family Tudor 114th Road DLR4037-A)
Resize photo images 925px x 500px … (don’t worry if the 500px height isn’t exact, as long as the image is 925px wide)
Use at least 5 photos but no more than 11 photos for a listing

Fifth Section: Format the Listing Page Permalink

Formatting the permalink isn’t as hard as it may sound.

The field you’ll be formatting the permalink in is below the page title field (which is under the “Add New Listing” title).

The permalink is the actual page address on the website. It’s the link that is used to find the listing page and it’s important it also describe what the page is about.

Half the page address is already done for you [ http://www.dlucasrealty,com/listings/ ]. All you need now is to add the rest of the words needed with a hyphen between each one.

For example:

https://www.dlucasrealty.com/listings/11243-114th-road-tudor-house-for-sale-cambria-heights-dlr4037

https://www.dlucasrealty.com/listings/11243-114th-road-1br-apt-for-rent-cambria-heights-dlr4033

Each time you format the permalink, you want to make sure;

Use lower case letters
separate each word with a hyphen
put street address at the beginning
indicate what’s being offered (ex: tudor, 1br)
indicate the offer (ex: house for sale, apt for rent)
indicate the neighborhood its in (ex: cambria heights)
always put listing reference number at the end (ex: dlr4037)

Sixth Section: How to make a Photo Gallery

Photos are an important part of a listing page and you’ll need to add / select photos for 3 specific areas; Profile area, Gallery and as a featured image.

The profile area is inside the visual field when you’ll enter the listing description.

To add the profile photo, simply place the cursor at the top left (before any text you’ve entered). Once you’ve placed the cursor there, you click on the Add Media button to upload the profile image you want to use.

Make sure you have your image files ready and have determined the picture you want to use as the page’s profile image before selecting the upload any images.

When you’ve selected the Upload Files tab, you’ll notice the Create Gallery and Set Featured Image options are at the left. You’ll use this menu to select images to feature and include in the gallery.

However, for now, all you want to do is upload the profile image.

Once you’ve uploaded the profile image, repeat steps 1 through 3 to get back to the screen in the image above.

Once you’ve gotten back to step 3, you know you’re able to create a gallery when you see the Create Gallery at the top of the screen over the 2 tabs.

Now, if you’re using a Mac, you can drag every photo you want to use in your gallery into the screen and it will upload each photo. If you’re using a Windows computer, just click the select files button to upload each image file manually.

Once you’ve entered all the image files you want in your gallery, here is how it will appear look inside your listing entry page view before you publish it;

After you’ve entered all the photos you want into the gallery, you’ll see the gallery appear on the screen where the short code for gallery is placed.

You have the option of editing the gallery or deleting it from the listing page altogether. However, even if you delete a photo gallery from the listing page entry, you won’t delete the image files from the website because their uploaded into the media part of the database.

This means you’ll be able to use the images again.

If you want to edit the gallery, click the pencil icon and it will take you to this screen:

You’ll know you’re able to edit the gallery because that’s what it should read after clicking on the pencil icon.

It’s here that you can

type a short description of the picture (where it says caption this image)
re-arrange the order the images appear in the gallery (just click on image and hold down mouse and move photo)
change the number of columns the thumbnail images will be displayed on the page (I strongly suggest 4 to 5 colums)

However, please make sure you never change the size of the gallery images from thumbnail because any larger and it would be very difficult to see anything else on the listing page after it’s published.

And after you’ve finished editing the gallery, click on the Update Gallery button at the bottom right of the screen.

Once you’ve saved your gallery and have returned to your listing page entry screen, scroll down the page and look to the right until you com to the Featured Image field on the page.

Click on the Set featured image link and choose one of the photos you want to appear on the home and listing archive page that you uploaded.

Typically, you’d choose the same photo you’re using as the profile image on the listing page but you can always use another image. One of the best features of this website is that you can change the featured image as often as you like to freshen the listings appeal to new visitors.

Seventh Section: Choose a Form

Choosing a form is really simple.

First, switch your entry view from Visual to Tex and place your cursor underneath the “Request an Appointment” title.

Then click on the Add Form button

You’ll arrive at the following screen hovering over your page entry screen. Its the gravity form menu.

Once you’ve completed the suggestions offered in the image, you’ll see the short code appear below the “Request an Appointment” title.

Eigth Section: Embed a Map on a Listing

This is probably the easiest step of all the ones that’s been laid out so far.

First step is to navigate over to Google Maps on your web browser.

Click on the link and you’ll navigate to a map with an address entry field for you to type in the address of the listing you want to map on your listing page.

Once you have the address entered and pin pointed on your map, you then click on the cog wheel icon at the bottom right next to the question mark to make the map menu visible to use.

Select the Share or Embed Map option from the menu and you’ll arrive at a hover screen like this.

By choosing the embed option from the choices offered, you’re given an iframe source link you’ll need to highlight entirely, going from left to right, until you’ve captured the entire link.

Once you’ve highlighted the link, copy it and proceed back to your listing page to the field indicated below.

The iframe source code you copied will be pasted into the Enter Map Embed Code section of the listing entry page.

But before you paste in the code, type the following html code into the field with 2 spaces between them that you see on the above image.

That html code treats an embedded map image on your site like its a regular page of text and converts it to appear orderly like text on your listing page like this after you’ve published it.

You won’t see the map in preview while still editing the listing before you’ve published it because the iframe source code only renders on live web pages.