Photo Ceredit:
The Harriman Team of Wallingford, CT
Besides branding themselves with a watermarks on pictures they never took, your local MLS is probably resizing the images you upload to accompany your listing, messing them up in the process or at least greatly affecting the quality of your pictures. Fortunately many agents today have their own website and at least one place where they have control how the photos will appear.

If you are operating a WordPress powered website, you might want to take a closer look at NextGEN WordPress Gallery Plugin by Alex Rabe. This plugin has already been integrated into variety of WordPress themes and even other plugins. There is a learning curve in in figuring out how to use this plugin effectively. But it is well worth the trouble.

Possible Problems With Installing and Configuring NextGEN Plugin.

Not sure if any one else experienced the similar problems, but when I attempted to install NextGEN plugin uploading it via FTP client, it would never work properly. I believe it may had something to do with file permissions (CHMOD) configuration of the particular files withing the plugin folder. Apparently my FTP client messes them up. If you come across the same problem, consider installing the plugin through the user interface of your WordPress (presuming your are using WordPress 2.7 or later). Installing the pluging through the WordPress interface fixed my issue and as you can see in the upper left corner of this post, NexGEN plugin is working well.

The NextGEN also requires JW Image Rotator – an important component for the sideshow function of the plugin. You should follow carefully the instructions on how to tell NextGEN plugin where to find JW Image Rotator- another problem I ran into trying to configure the NextGEN plugin properly.

Have you used this plugin? What do you think about it?

Ever since I saw the implementation of Facebook Connect on TechCrunch, I wanted to look into implementing it on my blogs as well. However since I was not very active on Facebook, I did not start digging into it until a few days ago. There are are number of solutions available for bloggers today should they decide to take advantage of Facebook Connect.

For now I have settled with the Facebook Connect WordPress plugin by Sociable. The Sociable plugin requires Facebook API so before you start using it, make sure to create new application in Facebook developer section of your account. You may also want to hack this plugin- see in the bottom of the post where described how I did it.

Once installed and configured the Facebook Connect plugin will allow your visitors to logging into your blog using their Facebook credentials. They choose to allow the Facebook Connect application (your blog), to post the comments they leave on your blog to their Facebook account as well.

The Facebook Connect plugin by sociable has a widged that you can place in the sidebar of your blog where the visitors can login as Facebook users. Once logged in, they will also have an option to invite their friends to visit your website without actually leaving your blog.

Another unique feature the plugin provides is the community page, which is hosted right on your blog.

There is however one huge downside wit the plugin. It does not word that well with WP Super Cache plugin. Unless of course you can hack WP Super Cache plugin in such a way that it would serve dynamic pages to Facebook users once they’ve logged in on your blog. If you come across such a hack, please let me know.

Hacking the plugin to display the facebook login button somewhere around your comment box.- do this at your own risk.

Another shortcoming of the Facebook Connect plugin by Sociable is that the sidebar widget is the only place where the login button is displayed. Unfortunately the sidebar is not exactly the first place your visitors might examine when visiting your blog. They many leave a comment without realizing they could have shared it on Facebook. Placing the Facebook Connect login button in vicinity of the comment box can serve as a reminder that they could use their Facebook ID to comment on your blog. Unfortunately I had to come up with my own hack to accomplish that- copy and paste to code below into your comments.php file:

This is how my comment box looks now with the code above inserted:

It is probably my worst ever attempt to hack anything. Hopefully some one can come up with a better hack. With the above hack, after successful login, the page if refreshed on the very top. Bringing the visitor back down to the comment box would be so much better- but as I said, I suck at coding.

For the list of other Facebook Connect plugins and solutions for other blogging and content management platforms make sure to visit Facebook Connect Plugin Directory.

Choosing a new design for your blog is not my favourite activity. However, once in a while you might have to do it to accommodate the need of your website. When choosing a new WordPress theme one of the factors I look for is for the theme to be simple and easy to modify.

Outgoing Theme- Cleaker
For the past two years Go Beyond MLS was powered by a WordPress Theme called Cleaker. Cleaker is one of those themes that any WordPress beginner should consider using, especially if you are interested to learn how to hack your theme to modify your website’s look and feel. Cleaker has such clearly defined CSS and meticulously grouped so that an average user can understand it.

Incoming Theme StayPressed
The new theme that powers this blog is developed by CodeScheme. I have decided to go with StayPressed WordPress Theme for the same reason I have chosen the former theme- it’s simplicity that allows me to easy modify the look and feel of my blog. StayPressed is a very light theme and uses very limited number of background images, which was always a concern to me. It is a “widgitized” theme, with widgets defined for both left and right sidebars.