How to Improve Your Real Estate Website Page Speed

Speed Up Your Real Estate Website Using IDX+

Point W3 Total Cache to your IDX+ enhanced sitemap generated by the WordPress SEO plugin.

IDX+ adds all your MLS ZIP codes, tracts, cities, and communities automatically into your WordPress SEO plugin’s sitemap. Check out the IDX+ optimized sitemap for yourself - you can see how this helps search engine indexing. Point W3 Total Cache to your sitemap generated by the WordPress SEO plugin. Thanks to IDX+, your listings, cities, communities, tracts, and ZIP codes will all be pre-loaded, primed, and ready for speedy browsing.

IDX+ adds real estate sitemaps automatically.

Steps to Improve dsIDXpress Page Speed

You’ll need four plugins installed:

W3 Total Cache
WordPress SEO plugin
dsIDXpress
Audit Trail (if you want listings pre-loaded)
and IDX+

If you’re using the W3 Total Cache plugin (which I recommend), there’s a feature called Cache Preload.

Go to WordPress Admin > Performance > Page Cache, then scroll to Cache Preload.
Configure the Cache Preload “Sitemap URL” setting to the URL of your sitemap generated by the WordPress SEO plugin (yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml)
Save the settings.

What it does is it reads your site’s sitemap for pages, then pre-loads each of them and stores them in the cache. This means that when users go to any of the pages in your sitemap, they will have already been loaded recently and will load much faster. Thanks to IDX+, you can finally automatically preload all your real estate pages as well!

dsIDXpress Speed Improvement

What’s better than Diverse Solutions?

Diverse Solutions’ dsIDXpress is the best WordPress IDX…and IDX+ makes it even better.

How make your listing pages stand out using IDX+

With stock dsIDXpress, you can’t change the content that is sent to your site: your website gets the same exact text as the rest of the real estate agents or brokers in your MLS. Every listing and search result will be exactly the same. This is bad for SEO, and it doesn’t help you stand out from the crowd.

Use IDX+ features to make your listings unique, and Google will never look at you the same way.

Custom Content, page descriptions, and page titles on a per-listing or per-search basis. Using IDX+, you can add custom content to your search results pages and modify your listing pages to add unique content. This is huge: your listing pages will be unique.
SEO Block – add SEO-friendly text that is modified based on the features of the home. For example, you can write %%address%% is the nicest home in %%community%%, and for each listing, it will show up with %%address%% and %%community%% swapped out with data from the listing.
Facebook Comments – engaging your users with Facebook comments is a low-friction way to get clients. When people use Facebook to comment on your listings, they’re starting a conversation. That’s a giant step closer to closing a lead. And it’s included with IDX+.
Modify your template with IDX+. This is a huge opportunity to stand out from the crowd: you can modify the HTML output to create dramatically different layouts and designs not possible with dsIDXpress. IDX+ gives you total control. Diverse Solutions is one-size-fits-all. You are not!

If you want to know if something is possible with IDX+, contact us with your question.

How to Use Custom Replacement Variables

With IDX+, you can use variables such as %%city%% that get replaced with the relevant information.

But what if you want a field that isn’t a default field, such as the name of the apartment complex? Often, this is defined as Tract (accessible using %%tract%%).

Add the following code to your active theme’s functions.php file.

Add one replacement variable

add_filter('the_content', 'add_complex_park_to_idx_data', 21);

function add_complex_park_to_idx_data($content) {
	global $wp;

	if(!empty($wp->idx_plus)) {
		$supplemental = IDX_Plus::get_global('supplemental');

		if($supplemental && isset($supplemental['Complex/Park'])) {
			$wp->idx_plus['complex'] = $supplemental['Complex/Park'];
		}
	}

	return $content;
}

Add all available replacement variables

This piece of code will make all data in the Additional Details section available using replacement variables. If there is a field named “Master Bedroom Dimensions,” it will be available using %%master-bedroom-dimensions%%.

add_filter('the_content', 'add_supplemental_data_to_idx_data', 22);

function add_supplemental_data_to_idx_data($content) {
	global $wp;

	if(!empty($wp->idx_plus)) {
		$supplemental = IDX_Plus::get_global('supplemental');

		if($supplemental) {
			foreach($supplemental as $key => $value) {
				$wp->idx_plus[sanitize_title($key)] = $value;
			}
		}
	}

	return $content;
}

You can use these custom variables in any part of your template and it will be replaced.

How to Replace the Default dsIDXpress Disclaimer with IDX+

When you have a website running the dsIDXpress plugin, you’re going to have a lengthy disclaimer at the bottom of your search results and listing pages. This disclaimer may be much longer than is necessary and is required by your MLS. If you want to customize your disclaimer using IDX+, here’s how:

Add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

“
// Start custom disclaimer code
add_filter(‘idx_plus_disclaimer_output’, ‘add_my_own_custom_disclaimer’);

function add_my_own_custom_disclaimer($disclaimer = ”) {

// If the last update time was found, use it.
preg_match(‘/Listing data last updated (.*?)\./ism’, $disclaimer, $matches);
if(isset($matches[1])) { $last_updated = $matches[1]; } else { $last_updated = ”; }
?>
<p>Enter your customized disclaimer here. <?php if(!empty($last_updated)) { echo ‘Listing data last updated ‘. $last_updated.’.'; } ?></p>
<?php
return ”; // Make sure this stays here.
}
// End custom disclaimer code
“

This will replace the dsIDXpress disclaimer with your own!

Feature Highlight: Listings Minimum Price

Do you have an upscale website and don’t want to show cheap listings?

If you are a Realtor® specializing in $1 million+ listings, you don’t want your site displaying $100,000 listings.

With dsIDXpress out of the box, you can control minimum price with a shortcode like this: <p class="dsidx-error">Sorry, but we couldn't find any results in the MLS that match the specified search criteria.</p>…but once users get to the IDX search results page, they’ll see all the listings in that area.

IDX+ has a setting for that.

IDX+ has a setting called “Listings Minimum Price” that allows you to define a minimum default price.

This is invisible to clients; if they don’t search for a lower price, they won’t know listings are being filtered.
If users search for lower prices, their search results will be handled normally.

How to Add Custom Content to IDX Pages Using IDX+

Do you spend hours creating nested pages for your city, ZIP and community SEO?

Stop wasting time: IDX+ gives web masters more flexibility than ever before to optimize the content on their website. Before IDX+, your search results page was never optimized, and you would need to create hundreds of pages to generate unique content for your city, community, ZIP, or listing. (more…)

IDX+ Version 2.0 alpha is Here

Starting today, Version 2.0 alpha is available as a free upgrade for all IDX+ users. Version 2.0 has countless improvements, and here are six features out of the hundreds of improvements:

1. Drag and Drop Listing Layout

Re-arrange your listing details pages by simply dragging and dropping. Select what features are visible with the click of a mouse. Only available on IDX+.

2. RSS Feeds

Now, RSS feed links are added to search results. You can access RSS feeds by adding ?idx-plus-rss to any URL.

RSS Example

Search: Irvine $300,000 – $700,000
…/irvine/?idx-q-PriceMax=700000&idx-q-PriceMin=300000
RSS Feed: Irvine $300,000 – $700,000 RSS Feed
…/irvine/?idx-q-PriceMax=700000&idx-q-PriceMin=300000&idx-plus-rss

Note: RSS feeds work great with “RSS to Email” features in Constant Contact and MailChimp.

3. Lead Management & Groups

Lead Groups makes managing leads easy.

Comprehensive WordPress-based lead management: assign leads to agents, add notes, and more.
Lead scoring and lead groups makes it simple to manage large numbers of leads.
Improved lead details page

4. Slideshow Listing Template

Version 2.0 adds a new option for displaying listings: the Slideshow template that uses the great Galleria script. It’s beautiful, and comes with two styles: light and dark (pictured below).

The Slideshow template is now one of three listing header choices: Default, Gallery, and Slideshow.

5. Autocomplete Search Widget

Would you like a better search? You’ve got it. When users start typing a location, they will get a drop-down of available locations, including Cities, Communities, Areas, ZIP Codes, and Tracts.

6. Crazy-Amazing SEO

IDX+ already blew the lid off of dsIDXpress. Version 2.0 adds some outrageously powerful SEO features.

Auto-generated sitemap integrates with Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin: include all cities, ZIPs, tracts, communities, and even listings in a comprehensive sitemap.
Per-search and per-listing custom title tags and custom meta descriptions (See a screenshot)
Title & description integration with WordPress SEO plugin
SEO Text Block allows you to automatically add unique content to each listing with an SEO-optimized template.

…and Much, Much More.

Redesigned Admin Panel integrates with the WordPress Admin Bar
Replace “tract” with any word you want (re: this thread)
Option to use Google Street View (when available) instead of a 404 image
Auto-fill contact form info when an user is logged in
WalkScore® map integration

What’s Coming in IDX+ Version 2.0

I am happy to let you all know about some great features that are in IDX+ Version 2.0, coming in early March:

Easy RSS feed generation of any search result (simply add ?idx-plus-rss to any search URL!)
Per-search and per-listing custom title tags, meta descriptions (also unique content, available in current version)
Comprehensive WordPress-based lead management: assign leads to agents, add notes, and more.
Lead scoring and lead groups makes it simple to manage large numbers of leads.
Auto-generated sitemap integrates with Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin: include all cities, ZIPs, tracts, communities, and even listings in a comprehensive sitemap.
New and improved listing slideshow using Galleria
Replace “tract” with any word you want (re: this thread)
And much, much more!

I’m really excited about Version 2.0. It’s a free upgrade, so go ahead and purchase IDX+ today!

IDX+ Rocks…and is Here to Stay!

I am Zack Katz, developer of IDX+, and I created IDX+ because of the need for an all-in-one website solution for real estate agents and brokers. I also have developed a lot of other great WordPress plugins.

IDX+ is a full-featured, stable and secure plugin. You’re going to love it. If you don’t like the plugin, let me know within 1 week and I’ll give you a full refund.

Buy IDX+ while it’s in beta and get a lifetime of free upgrades and addons.

IDX+ is a great deal: you get tons of features for a fraction of the cost of dsSearchAgent. IDX+ is a one-time cost (plus $29.95/month for dsIDXpress) vs. dsSearchAgent’s $99/month, plus $999/year. Over three years, using IDX+ instead of dsSearchAgent would save you $4,884! ($1,677.20 compared with $6,561)

How IDX+ Works

Diverse Solutions sends every single site the same HTML. That means you have no way of being unique. IDX+ reads the HTML and adds WordPress “hooks” to modify the dsIDXpress content. This makes it simple to maintain compatibility with future dsIDXpress updates.

IDX+ does not modify the Diverse Solutions dsIDXpress plugin
IDX+ uses best-practice WordPress functions
If Diverse Solutions changes their HTML, it will be simple to prepare an update.

Diverse Solutions wants you to wait and pay for features IDX+ has today.

Diverse Solutions’ product is amazing, but dsIDXpress will never have the features dsSearchAgent has.

DS wants you to pay for the built-in IDX+ “extras”:

User registration
Saved favorites & listings
Grid (‘gallery’) view
Fine-tuned SEO features
Editable templates
…and so on.

You don’t have to wait, or be afraid: IDX+ is the answer you’ve been waiting for.

If Diverse Solutions is “… hard at work on some new features for dsIDXpress that will render IDX+ obsolete,” they don’t understand IDX+: no matter how many features you have with Diverse Solutions, IDX+ will give you more.

Check out live websites using IDX+

Here are a few examples of live sites using IDX+:

Do you have questions?

If you have any questions, please contact me with them. Also, The IDX+ Support Website and plugin documentation are there if you have questions.

You’ll likely find that IDX+ is awesome and does everything you want!

Buy Now

IDX+ Giveaway Results

The IDX+ giveaway was a big success, ending at 12:00am on January 10th.

Picking a winning IDX+ licensee

Each license purchase was given a sequential numerical ID, and then a simple PHP script was used:

“echo rand(1,sizeof($entries));“

The number that was given was for Steve Castaneda, a brand-new Realtor® in Houston, Texas. Congratulations, Steve, and enjoy IDX+ and the functionality it provides!

IDX+

Massively improve the dsIDXpress plugin to make your real estate website full-featured.