WPRealty WordPress and ARMLS

I wanted to drop in and write a blog post about the ARMLS in use with WPRealty in your WordPress site. So, since we have had so many Realtors asking about how they can use this tool with ARMLS here is a post that covers some of the more important points you should consider.

As you may or may not know, ARMLS charges its vendors about $X amount per month to be able to provide IDX to Realtors and in fact many popular and commercial solution providers are authorized vendors of the ARMLS MLS.  WPRealty IS NOT an authorized vendor and here is why.  Our resources are being fully directed toward the development of WPRealty 3.0 and we do not have the necessary client base in the ARMLS market to justify the cost.

You may ask; Why are there sites out there in the ARMLS market using WPRealty, how is this done? I’ll answer this by giving a case in point and then disclose our position.

How to get ARMLS MLS Listings in WordPress

WPRealty and the WPRealty team builds developer solutions with our primary product WPRealty 2.0, our form manager, our plugins and addons all of which currently fit the requirements of Realtors using WordPress as their sites CMS engine. We built WPRealty initially for use in projects we personally developed for Realtors and Agents then later pushed it forward as a product other developers can use as a software product.  The initial target audience was webmasters, designers, site developers and MLS professionals. WPRealty has become a bit simpler to use and we have more and more actual end users purchasing the plugin in hopes of securing a great price for the much anticipated WPRealty 3.0.  Regardless of who it is that purchases WPRealty, one thing is always true. Each person using it in ARMLS (and other markets) is required to have their own MLS authorized access to the MLS data.  WPRealty is simply the software tool that saves Realtors thousands of dollars in development by making it compatible with most MLS data loaders on the market.  That being said I’ll cover a case in point with an ARMLS authorized Realtor.

ARMLS Website Example Case

A Realtor who has been authorized by ARMLS to have data feed access for their website purchases WPRealty for use in their WordPress site.  This same Realtor is free to contract any developer to use existing MLS integration tools to work with WPRealty in order to populate the site with listings, or, they contract us to do the integration for them.  If we are contracted we always extend the opportunity for them to host with us (our primary business is hosting and Realtor site development) since we build so many sites we know what it takes for real estate website hosting.  We then use the Realtors authorized credentials to build the data loader for their website. The Realtor then has his/her own custom solution working in WordPress for real estate listings.

We do not take that code and build turnkey ARMLS sites because we are not a vendor. We do build the software that makes this possible for the Realtor to use.

What does ARMLS provide the authorized Realtor?

Once approved you should be provided something to the effect of the following credentials. Its important to note that you must agree to their terms and conditions as is the case with all MLS providers.

1. HOST URL: http://rets.flexmls.com???????????
2. USER NAME: abc.cde.hij
3. PASSWORD: something-that-matters
4. PDF Documentation on requirements such as disclosure, configuration and so on.

I Want ARMLS in my WordPress site!

Once you purchase WPRealty and setup your site you can hire us to write the custom scripts for you for inclusion or you can hire a programmer or simply use available tools for MLS integration such as vieleRETS, RetsConnector, phRets, TransparentRets (commercial and very expensive).

The process for integrating RETS into a WPRealty database will vary depending on market and fields available. The process for us is to map fields (the bulk of the hard part) then write the SQL inclusion process.

The best thing to do is to contact us for more details to avoid any possible confusion.