If you’ve been in real estate any length of time you know what a pain it can be to have to change the dimensions of a large batch of listing photos so that they’re the right size to use online.

Shrink-O-Matic is a free program that you can download to your computer and use to re-size multiple photos at one time simply by setting a maximum height and width.

Here’s a short video explaining where to get Shrink-O-Matic and how to use it.

Download Shrink-O-Matic Here

I found a good recent post on how to prevent your WordPress blog from being hackedover on the Velvet Blues blog.  It’s worth taking a look, and/or passing the info on to your web designer if they’re managing a WordPress blog for you.

Just a note, for the table prefix rename I like a WordPress plugin by SEO Eggheads that is really easy to use, called, well, the Table Prefix Rename Plugin.

We like to keep things simple…

Today I spent a couple of hours looking for an online photo editing tool that would be easy for agents to use to:

1) Edit photos of their properties online, and

2) Allow them to make a decent header graphic for a website on their own.

I realize that last one may seem a bit ‘out there’, but I’m working on what I hope will be an affordable solution for those TOO MANY agents who need a decent website and have nothing.  They seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place, and it’s driving me nuts to see it.  (But that’s another blog post topic.)

Anyway, after thrashing around online for 2 hours I found Picnik, which I think is THE most amazing online photo editing site.

All you do is upload a photo and you can make countless alterations to it, from the standard lighting enhancements to very complicated text effects that look completely professional – it’s awesome!  Not only that, but it’s incredibly easy to do all kinds of ‘artsy’ things such as distort parts of an image, break it into puzzle pieces, add different frames, and oh so much more.

There’s a free membership that offers a ton of options, or for just $24.95 a year you get the premium level with even more options.  I plan to upgrade to that as soon as I’ve done a video showing the basic options.

So, I highly recommend you go play with Picnik right now – yes now!  And yes, I know what I sound like. :) 

I love stuff that works, and Picnik is brilliant.

Scribd is a cool, free online service that helps you share documents online by embedding them in your web pages.  If you don’t own a website, you can still post your documents on Scribd for free, where they can be read without having to be downloaded first.

This solves the problem of having to attach pdf, Word or other documents to emails so that your clients can receive them, and is FAR better than just linking to the document from your website.  Instead, people can simply read the document straight from the page.

Here’s an example of a Microsoft Word document uploaded to Scribd.  Scribd gives you the code to paste into your website or blog page and it turns out like this:

2008 Seattle Eastside Home Sales

Click the little down arrrow in the top menu and click the plus sign to enlarge the document. (If the web page were wider I could have chosen for the document to appear larger.)

Alternatively, and this goes for anyone without a website as well, you can link to the full page version:

http://www.scribd.com/full/10375109?access_key=key-19q09i7aytgoivbin6gy

Or, link to the page that gives people download and embed options:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/10375109/2008-Seattle-Eastside-Home-Sales

Important:

When you upload to Scribd the default is for the document to be public, which is nice for advertising your business.  However, you have the option to keep documents private, which means they won’t show up in Scribd’s searchable database – nice for information that’s just for specific clients.

More and more real estate agents are using self-hosted WordPress blogs these days, as I do on all my sites so far.  Here’s something you should know about how to choose the best permalink naming structure.

(The permalink is how the URL will look for that blog post.  For example, for this post the URL (permalink) will read “http://www.toolsforrealestate.com/best-permalink-structure-for-blog-posts.)

1.  The default blog post naming structure WordPress will give you looks like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/?p=123

This is terrible for search engines, since ?p=123 doesn’t say anything about what the post is about.

2. Most people do what I did, which is to instead select one of the other naming structure options provided by WordPress.  A really common one looks like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/2008/12/21/post-name/

where ‘post-name’ is the the title of your blog post.

This url includes the date of the post.  What I didn’t realize until just recently is that if you update your post at a later date the url changes to reflect the new date.  This messes up the search engines and anyone who linked to your (most excellent) post because it now has a new url.

(I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone in the next day to edit old posts.  Aagh!)

3.  A good choice is to select ‘Custom Structure’ and then use either just the post name:

/%postname%/

or the category and post name:

/%category%/%postname%/

This means that you can go in and update your old posts without losing the old url, since it doesn’t include the date.

So… what if you want to switch to a url with no date, but you already have a bunch of old posts with dates in the url and you’re afraid of losing links to them?

(When you change the naming structure in WordPress it changes all of your old post urls as well.)

4.  There’s a great blog plug-in called Dean’s Permalink Migration that creates a Permanent Redirect from all your old url formats to the new one.

This keeps the search engines happy and doesn’t break any links from the people who linked to you. It’s also VERY easy to use.

Just upload and activate the plug-in, go into the Permalinks Migration section to make sure that the old naming structure is correct (you can copy and paste from your permalinks setting if it’s not,) click ‘update’ in the Permalinks Migration section, then go into the Permalinks setting of your WordPress blog and choose whatever naming structure you want.

Update Feb. 4th 2009: This plugin DOES work, however the examples below may no longer work because of another change we did to our website since this blog post.

I just did this with two blogs and tested it by clicking on an old url to see if it went to the new url.  To test it yourself, click on:

http://www.toolsforrealestate.com/blog/2008/12/20/sending-an-email-newsletter-make-sure-your-content-rocks/

and you’ll see it will go to:

http://www.toolsforrealestate.com/blog/sending-an-email-newsletter-make-sure-your-content-rocks/

Here’s the link again for Dean’s Permalink Migration Plugin:

http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/permalinks-migration-plugin/

I love things that work.

If you have a real estate blog you probably want to occasionally post photo galleries and slideshows of your listings.

There’s a great free WordPress blog plugin called NextGen Gallery that lets you do just that.  Considering how many great features it has I was actually surprised at how relatively simple it was for me to set it up.

Here’s the link to the NextGen Gallery plugin download page on WordPress – just click on the red ‘Download’ button on the right hand side.

The other day I was helping out the irrepressible Natalie Danielson of www.ClockHours.com with her domains, and it reminded me to post these tips on domain name buying.

(By the way, in addition to teaching and selling clock hours online Natalie is also a stand-up comic, and if you ever hear her laugh you’ll know why I called her ‘irrepressible.’)

Here are some domain name buying tips to keep in mind:

1. If someone else buys your domain name for you, make sure that you will be the legal owner of the domain name!

Wondering if you own your domain?  Go to www.betterwhois.com, type in your domain name including the .com or .net and click ‘Search’.  Scroll down past the small print and first paragraph.  The ‘Registrant’ should be you.

2.  Don’t be afraid to buy your domain name yourself – it’s easy!  Watch our domain name buying video, then head over to www.GoDaddy.com to snag yours.

3.  If it’s not taken, always buy your first and last name followed by .com.

4.  When picking other domain names, go as simple and straightforward as possible!

Ask yourself:  If you say it once to someone at an open house, are they likely to remember it?  If you say it over the phone, will you have to spell it? 

5.  Buy common misspellings.  For example, if ‘susie’ is part of the domain name, see if you can buy the version spelled ‘suzie’ as well.  Then you can forward the misspelled version to your main site.

Quick Tip:  Get your domain name(s) even if you don’t have a website yet!  You’re only buying the NAME, and you don’t need to ever make a site for it.  At a measly $10 a year with GoDaddy it’s better to buy it even if you end up not using it than to find out someone snagged the one you really wanted.

Use GoDaddy coupon codes:  Reader Ioana Manciu was nice enough to comment on our domain buying video post and leave these Godaddy coupon codes, which worked as recently as last week:

SPN3 – .COM for $7.45 – Save $2
SPN1 – 10% off any order
SPN2 – $5 off any order $30 or more

Libby and I got our photos taken earlier this year by Jamie Pflughoeft, owner of the wonderful Cowbelly Pet Photography, and I emailed her last week to ask why the photos that were supposed to be high resolution were 72 dpi (dots per inch) instead of 300 dpi, which is what’s normally used for print.

She emailed back such a nice explanation I thought I’d include it here, since a lot of people (including me, obviously) get confused about this.  Here’s Jamie’s answer:

“Resolution has nothing to do with dpi.

1. All digital files come out of every camera at 72dpi. This refers to dots per inch, sometimes also known as ppi, or pixels per square inch. This has nothing to do with resolution, only printing. More on that in a minute.

2. RESOLUTION refers to the actual size of the file in dimensions. The images that come from my full frame Canon 5D have a resolution of 2912×4368. The only camera that produces higher resolution files is the Canon Mark II, but that’s totally overkill for this type of use.

3. Back to dpi, this number depends on what type of printing you want to do.

• ALL web and email use is always 72 dpi.
• Straight photo prints are between 200-300 dpi, depending on the lab.
• Promo product printing like brochures and biz cards is usually 300 dpi, but again, this depends on the lab. Every printer has their own suggested file requirements.
• Magazine printing can be up to 600 dpi, again, depends on the magazine.

Billboard printing pretty much demands the use of film, because the photos are so huge.

4. Sizing an image for print.

You can either crop to the dpi and size that you want- say 8 x10 inches at 300 dpi, or you can use ‘edit- image size’ – and type in the dimensions and dpi you want there. You can do this without needing to upsample, although Photoshop is very good at upsampling. Unless you are doing a gigantic print, you won’t need to upsample a file that is as high resolution as 2912  x4368.”

The bottom line:  Your web photos of listings will load quickly and still look good at 72 dpi, while your flyer photos will turn out better at 300 dpi, or even 150.

(For small print flyer photos 72 dpi still seems to work out fine as long as the digital dimensions of the photo are not smaller than the dimensions in print, but it’s safer to go with higher dpi.)

Hope this helps.  I highly recommend checking out Jamie’s site, starting with the beautiful pictures of Libby on the Cowbelly blog.  (Just ignore the other dog.  Kidding, kidding. )

If you’re in Seattle and want a great photo of your pet I highly recommend Jamie.  (And she will ply your dog with organic buffalo and green-lipped mussel dog treats – I kid you not.)  You, on the other hand, might starve if the shoot goes long, so bring a muffin.

One of the top 10 most emailed articles in the New York Times a couple of months ago was a post by David Pogue, their tech blogger, called Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User.

I read it and couldn’t believe some of the things I didn’t know myself, even though I’m a confirmed techy.  I’m quoting some of the ones that I thought were most useful (and subsequently forgot, even though I thought they were great at the time.)

You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.

You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).

You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo).

There’s more, like where to find out about possible internet hoaxes and how to use Google as a currency converter, so I highly recommend checking out the article.  In fact, printing it out and keeping it by your computer (so you don’t forget some of them, like I did) is probably a great idea.

Have you ever wondered how to get that copyright or contact information into the bottom of a Microsoft Word document so that it shows up on every page?  It’s easy to do, using the ‘Header and Footer” toolbar.

  Here’s how:

1.  In the top horizontal menu click “View”

2.  From the pull-down menu that appears, click “Header and Footer”.   (If you do not see that option listed, click the down arrows at the bottom of the dropdown menu to expand it.)

The main part of the document becomes inactive, and at the top and bottom of the document active Header and Footer regions appear, surrounded by a dashed line.

3.  Click within the header or footer region and type the content you want.  (You can adjust font style and add an image just as you would within the main document body.)

4. When you are finished, click “Close” on the ‘Header and Footer’ toolbar that popped up .  The toolbar will disappear.

5.  If you are happy with the result, click “Save” to save your changes.

That’s it! Remember you can also adjust the font color and size so that the header and footer content does not stand out as much as the main body content.