Sorry for the delay in getting back to many of you. The demand for IDX Free has been overwhelming, with has been great. You can save yourself some time and headache by making sure your web server meets ALL of the requirements. Please do so BEFORE you contact us about using the software.
Sorry for not updating sooner, but things have been a bit hectic lately and we have not had much time to devote to Free IDX. Beta testing is going great on the few sites that we have currently running the Free IDX system like, Esquire Real Estate. Esquire currently has over 500 pages indexed by Google and is generating nearly 100 visits per week from search engine visitors. This is a lot when you consider that there has been little to no work done linking this new website up with other related real estate websites. This is really pretty exciting. There are a couple of other sites that have asked us not to mention them here, but suffice it to say that they are doing as well if not better. We have had a lot of interest lately from other real estate agents and web developers in IDX Free, and we want to thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, we have a very busy schedule and our lead programmer is getting married this weekend. So, it is going to be a couple of weeks before we really get back on track with IDX Free.
Just wanted to update all of you on the status of IDX Free development. Today is Aug. 2nd and we have had many people contact us about beta testing the IDX Free system. We would like to thank all of you for your interest and for your patience as we have not been able to get everyone on board who would like to use the IDX Free system.
We have realized that there is going to be a need for two systems, one that can run on just about any Unix/Linux server and one that is fullly automated (that requires a more robust hosting package). Most people sign up for the cheapest hosting they can or use a reseller package that is not fully featured enough to run the fully automated versiion of IDX Free. You should check the system requirements, but one of the main things you will need if you want to use the automated setup is what is called “shell access”. This is very easy to find as just about every hosting company in the world offers some kind of shell access account.
We expect to be back on track after we split the system up into two distinct flavors hopefully by week’s end. We will keep you posted.
It appears that a number of people are having issues trying to figure out if their ISP or the server they are using will support IDX Free. One of the primary features of IDX Free is its ability to automate the task of downloading the MLS data to keep you within the Terms of Service of your MLS board and to keep your potential clients updated with the latest properties on the market. One of the programs that our software uses to do that is called ncftpget and it is basically an FTP client (program) that will fetch the data for you. Many ISPs do not have this installed and will not give you the ability to install it on their cheaper servers. This is really one of the things you will need unless you want to manually update the data files yourself each week.
A shell account with command line access is something else you will want. Many of the web based server admin software is neat and easy to use, but it is not as robust as the command line interface. So, full shell access is something you will want to ask about as well.
If you are looking for a new host or a quality host, we can recommend one for you. Just drop us a line.
We have done the first install and of course it uncovered a few details that we would like to clean up. We should have these done by Monday and will then be ready to install IDX Free on another website or two. We will also be making a few cosmetic changes to the search page, the one-line listing and possibly on the detail pages in this update.
We are happy to announce the first implementation of the IDX Free MLS system on Esquire Real Estate. Originally, we began devleopment of this IDX system for the guys over at Esquire and then we decided that it would be a great thing to make it open source. We have always been big fans of Open Source software and we figured this is a good opporunity for us to give something back. So, thanks to the guys at Esquire Real Estate for helping make this happen.
We have just completed our first map file to integrate the Sandicor San Diego Board of ®REALTORs FTP IDX data into the IDX Free system. IDX Free uses a simple map file to convert the data from local MLS boards to the IDX Free setup. This ensures that our system is flexible and can work with any MLS bloard’s data structure.
Welcome to IDX Free. We offer a free IDX MLS website solution that is fully customizable and virtually all configuration can be done via a web browser. Unlike other IDX solutions, IDX Free is very search engine friendly helping your website to attract free traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. If you are not technically inclined, but want to have a top performing website, we can help install IDX Free for a nominal fee.