You might think that all of these things would be expensive and hard to manage but you can literally get a powerful real estate website for free. Not only can you get a free real estate website, but you can set it up so that your entire online blogging and social media presence is managed from your site… and even automate a lot of your everyday mundane social media tasks like tweeting and posting updates on Facebook.

All this can be done with free stuff that anyone can download and use. If you set it all up correctly, your real estate site can compete with some of the major sites out there. In this series of articles, I am going to give you a run down of the basic set up process for setting up a powerful website that you can easily control and manage yourself. In this article I will explain how to get your actual website up and running for free using a system called WordPress and some simple add-ons.

First you have to have a domain name. This is your web address… like “YourSiteName.com”. I suggest buying domain names from a place like godaddy or anotehr service like it that is mainly just for buying and managing domain names. This way you have full ownership and control over your domain name. Once you buy your new domain name (also known as a URL or a web address or a “dot com”), you have to point it to a web host.

Choosing your web host is really the biggest decision after what the name of the site is. You don’t want to have to move it later. There are all sorts of free web hosting services out there and since this article is all about the free site setup I will tell you that… but, I do recommend actually buying a web hosting account from JensBeattyMedia.com simply so you can call us and ask us for help. It is $7.77 a month and it is the only thing I will mention in this article that actually costs anything.

If you want to find a free host elsewhere, just Google “free web hosting” and you will find a ton of them. Most of the time there are limitations or other weird stipulations to justify them being free. Some don’t guarantee “up-time” etc… but they are free. That is why I recommend actually paying for hosting. It is also one of the only things I actually charge for so please forgive the plug .

So, after your domain is pointing to your new server, you will want to install WordPress onto it. If you don’t know what WordPress is, it is a free piece of web software that allows you to edit and manage your web site’s content. It allows you to edit and add pages very easily without knowing HTML. It is super easy to use and it allows you to make changes to your site’s content yourself. Adding a page to your site using WordPress is almost as easy as sending an email or posting on Facebook.

So WordPress allows you to edit the text and pages on the site, but you can also install cool add-ons, like “themes” or “skins” and “plug-ins”. I will explain all of these things a bit more as I cover the next few steps. If you set all these pieces up the right way, you can create a powerful real estate website for free.

Once WordPress is set up, you can install “WordPress themes” to make your site’s look and layout different. There are tons of free WordPress themes out there and there are a few WordPress themes for real estate and real estate investors out there. For this setup… we will be using Leadtheme, the best free real estate WordPress theme of course. Download the Leadtheme WordPress theme for free and activate it on your new WordPress site. Leadtheme has a bunch of items that other themes don’t that make it great for a real estate web site. It allows you to edit your Facebook fan page and capture leads from Facebook as well as show your property listings on your real estate website and Facebook fan page. You can read about all of Leadtheme’s features here.

Once Leadtheme is installed and activated, you will install a free “WordPress plugin” called cForms. This will allow you to add forms to your site to collect information from your users… AKA “leads”. People will be able to visit your real estate website or Facebook fan page and fill out a form to send you their contact info if they are interested in your product or service. This is the one of the main reasons you have a website. A website is to not only to be read like a brochure, but it is also there to get you leads!

After you install the cForms plugin, you can import a set of pre-written forms that you can download from Leadtheme.com. All of the basic real estate website forms are in the Leadtheme form pack. You just follow the instructions for upload and it creates 9 real estate website forms with one click.

So now your real estate web site looks cool and you are ready to receive incoming leads… but you have no pages written on the site. Just download the Leadtheme content pack for real estate investors and it will build all of the basic pages needed for most real estate investor websites automatically. It will automatically pull in all of the forms you just created with the Leadtheme form pack and you will have a fully functional website with all the main pages that make up a real estate investor site. All of the pages and forms are all easily editable using WordPress so you can change all of the text to be more specific to your business.

That is basically all there is to it to set up a free real estate web site. Of course there is a level of technical know how needed, but if you need help you can ask questions in the Leadtheme.com forums or you can hire my company, Jens Beatty Media Productions, to set the whole thing up for next to nothing.

If you follow this series of articles I will explain how to take this basic WordPress web site setup and super charge it to compete with major sites just using FREE stuff from all over the internet! I will teach you how to manage your Facebook page, automatically send updates to Twitter, how to manage your on site SEO and how to set your site up for success.

Download Leadtheme and Start Building Your FREE Real Estate Website Today!

Originally aired: 10-18-2011.

The creator of Leadtheme, Jens Beatty, makes his second appearance on AtlantaREIA’s monthly “What’s Hot in Real Estate Investing” webcast to discuss the core features of Leadtheme and what’s new in the  Leadtheme 2.5 Update .

Even if you are not using Leadtheme for a real estate site, you can still benefit from the information in this webcast.

Jens Beatty and Dustin Griffin discuss the core features of Leadtheme 2.0 on AtlantaREIA’s monthly “What’s Hot in Real Estate Investing” webcast.

Even if you are not using Leadtheme for a real estate site, you can still benefit from the information in this webcast.

Jens has arranged for all registered Leadtheme users to be invited to attend the webcast for FREE! Even if you are using Leadtheme for a website that isn’t real estate related, you will benefit from the information that will be covered in the webcast. Jens reccomends that all Leadtheme users join in and hear all about Leadtheme 2.5 and how to use it to effectively generate any type of leads online. In addition to the information that Jens will be covering, he will be taking questions from the attendees in case you have been wanting to ask anything about Leadtheme 2.5!

All current registered Leadtheme users will be sent and invitation to the webcast in the next couple days. If you aren’t registered yet, make sure to sign up on Leadtheme.com before October 18th, 2011 and you will receive your invitation the day of the webcast.

We look forward to having you on the webcast. Thank you for using Leadtheme for WordPress!

Click here to register on Leadtheme.com… it’s 100% FREE!

New Leadtheme WordPress Support Forums

I have been working on this for a while and I am happy to announce the New Leadtheme WordPress Support Forum. Since there are so many ways to use Leadthemefor all kinds of businesses and site, I thought the forum would be the best way for all the Leadtheme users out there to be able to find answers to their questions. I hope that you find it useful for finding answers as well as a way to network with other Leadtheme users. It has been up for a few weeks now and there are already some great questions in there. If you are a current Leadtheme user, I highly reccomend registering for the site so you can participate in the forum discussions.

Ask anything you want about Leadtheme or WordPress in the new forum. Either myself or another Leadtheme user will certainly have the answer to your WordPress questions.We want everyone to get the absolute most out of their Leadtheme website or blog. When set up properly, Leadtheme can be very powerful. Leat us help you show you how to use it the right way! Sign up free on Leadtheme.com today and get access to the new Leadtheme WordPress Support Forum!

If you sign up and post in the forum, you can get a free custom Leadtheme header image for your Leadtheme site. Just ask for it in the specials area of the forum.

New Members Registration on Leadtheme.com

Since we are on the topic of signing up for Leadtheme.com… you may have noticed that all the Leadtheme downloads are now "Members Only". I want to let you all know that Leadtheme and the Leadtheme Content Packs are all still 100% FREE and we don’t have any plans to charge anything for them in the future. The reason for making them members only is simply to try to learn who our users are and how we can make Leadtheme better. We won’t give your information to ANYONE. We really just want to bring the Leadtheme community closer together and make everyone get more from their Leadtheme site.

So now if you want to download Leadtheme for WordPress or the free Leadtheme content packs, you just have to sign up and join the Leadtheme community. I hope you all participate in the forums and together we can take our Leadtheme sites to the next level and beyond! Registered members gain access to the Leadtheme FREE WordPress Theme, FREE Leadtheme content packs, FREE prewritten forms, FREE custom Leadtheme header images, and access to the new Leadtheme WordPress Support Forums! If you haven’t already… Sign up today and get access to all this and more.

New Leadtheme 2.5 WordPress Demos

If you haven’t checked them out yet, on the right sidebar of Leadtheme.com, there are some awesome new demos available. You can check out the new features in Leadtheme 2.5 like the new "FB Like" and "Blackbook" skins. There is also a new demo for the Squeeze Page Content Pack update that shows off how you can make a Google +1 Squeeze page that gives a reward for people giving your site a +1 on Google. It is super simple but once you see it, I am sure you will think of a million ways to use it. Distribute downloads like ebooks or give access to a special message or video… the sky is the limit. Make sure to check it out and don’t forget to sign up and ask any questions you might have in the new Leadtheme WordPress Support Forum!

Along with the addition of Google +1 buttons, I added a couple new skins that I think will be pretty popular. One is called “FB Like” and the other is called “Blackbook”. View a demo of the new FB Like skin. View a demo of the new Blackbook skin.

Outside of the actual update for the WordPress theme, I finally got a chance to update the Squeeze Page Content Pack. I added the example Facebook Fan Page and Facebook Thank You Page as well as a special form in the Squeeze Page Form Pack for the Facebook Page. I also created an awesome new example page for the Squeeze Page Content Pack that takes your Leadtheme 2.5 Google +1 integration to the next level.

The new example page is a “Google +1 Squeeze Page”. If you can’t figure out what it is just from the name, let me explain a bit. Basically it is a fairly normal squeeze page that has the normal teaser messaging on it. However, there is one big difference. Instead of having a lead form on the page to fill out to get your special offer, it has a special Google +1 button added to it that when clicked, the user gets taken to a thank you page where you can give them any sort of download, video, or message! It is so simple, but when you think of the possibilities it is a super powerful feature.

Basically, it allows you to tell your visitors, “If you +1 my page, I will give you this special offer” and when they click the +1 they get taken to your thank you page. You can put any sort of downloadable product, ebook, video or special message on this thank you page. The possibilities are endless. View a demo of the Google +1 Squeeze Page setup

This is all made possible by an awesome free plugin that allows for a redirect to be added to the Google +1 button. The plugin is called “Google +1 Plugin for WordPress” by Jacob Gillespie and it is super simple to install and set up. I will be writing a whole new set of setup instructions for how to use this plugin and the Squeeze Page Content Pack to create a Google +1 Squeeze Page on your site. Make sure to sign up for the Leadtheme Newsfeed on Leadtheme.com to be notified when I publish the new instructions.

You can view a demo of this new Google +1 Squeeze Page setup Here .

I hope you enjoy Leadtheme 2.5. If you have questions about the new Google +1 integrations, the new squeeze page setup, or anything else related to Leadtheme or WordPress, make sure to sign up for our new WordPress support forum for free and ask us anything you’d like. And by the way… don’t forget to click the “Like” and “+1″ buttons on Leadtheme.com and “Like” our Facebook Page!

Also, included in the new Leadtheme Content Pack updates, are lead generating Facebook page and lead form examples to get you set up even faster. Simply edit the existing Facebook page example by adding your own words, images and videos. Once you have added a custom tab to your Facebook fan page, you just paste a simple snippet of html that we supply to your custom Facebook page tab and your new Facebook page is online and fully controllable via your WordPress admin. Create as many Facebook pages that you want from inside your WordPress site. With Leadtheme controlling your Facebook Pages via WordPress, the possibilities are endless!

In this update we also included the addition of Facebook “Like” buttons to the social media bar that appears on your Leadtheme pages and posts. Now your web site visitors can easily give your page or post a “Like” on Facebook!

Another exciting feature in Leadtheme 2.0 that will come in handy for real estate users is the ability to have a property listings page on your site. The new listings page template in Leadtheme allows you to display your property listings from REIhomesales.com for free. To activate the page, you simply need to sign up for a free account on REIhomesales.com, add a property, and paste your property listing feed url into your Leadtheme control panel. Once the feed url has been added in your Leadtheme controls, you can add and edit all of your properties on REIhomesales.com, and your properties will automatically appear on your Leadtheme WordPress Site! It’s super easy, and it’s 100% free! Start generating leads for your properties today with Leadtheme and REIhomesales.com!

If having your properties displayed nicely on your WordPress site isn’t enough… we have also created another Facebook page template to allow you to show your property listings directly on your Facebook fan page! Simply add a custom tab to your Facebook page and paste the code we supply into it and your listings will feed right onto your Facebook fan page.

In addition to these super cool features, we also fixed up some existing issues with Leadtheme. Due to some weird issues with the cForms plugin, we made some changes to the Leadtheme form pack settings. We turned off “Ajax Enabled” on all the forms. Having it turned on was causing issues on some people’s servers that would make the form “hang” after the form was submitted. If you are lucky enough to have a server that supports the “Ajax Enabled” feature, we recommend you turn it on. At this point, we are still unsure why it works for some people but not for others.

Along with the disabling of Ajax on the forms, we also decided that since we couldn’t rely on the pop up form confirmation messages that appear when you use Ajax, we would add “Thank You” pages to the content pack. Now when someone fills out a form on your site, they are redirected to a “Thank You” page that can be edited to say whatever you want. While we originally intended this to just be a workaround for the cForms issues, this really allows for a more personalized experience for your site visitors. You can make the “Thank You” page deliver any message you want. You can add any videos or images you want to your “Thank You” pages. You can also create individual “Thank You” messages so that each form on your site (or Facebook Page) can deliver it’s own “Thank You” message or content.

We are also including a new skin for Leadtheme called “Apple-Ish”. As you may have guessed from the name, it is ispired by Apple.com. Now you can have that clean, light look that they are famous for on your own site!

We also included some styling fixes for Google Chrome.

To recap, here is a quick list of the great new features in Leadtheme 2.0…

Leadtheme 2.0 New Features

• Facebook Fan Page Template
• Facebook “Like” button integration
• REIhomesales Property Listings Page Template
• REIhomesales Property Listings Page Template for Facebook Pages
• New “Apple-Ish” skin.
• Styling bug fixes in Google Chrome

Leadtheme Content Packs 2.0 New Features

• Facebook Page Example
• Facebook Page Form “Thank You” Page Example
• Thank You page example for web sites

Leadtheme Form Packs 2.0 New Features

• Facebook Page Leadform
• Added Thank You page redirects
• Turned off “Ajax Enabled” on all forms

We couldn’t be more excited about Leadtheme 2.0. We hope that all of the Leadtheme users out there love the new WordPress editable Facebook pages and listings pages as much as we do. Soon, we will post some examples of these new pages in action. For those of you that are trying to generate leads online and don’t have Leadtheme for WordPress… Download Leadtheme now and start capturing leads and sign-ups with your WordPress site and Facebook pages today!

It is a pretty simple setup and pretty much anyone with a WordPress blog or website can easily add a chatroom to their site. After looking around a little bit, I found a really simple WordPress plugin called Chatroll that has a great looking chatroom widget for the sidebar of your site. The free version of the plugin only supports 10 users at a time, but you can purchase upgraded packages to suit your site’s level of traffic. It was super easy to set it up and it looks great on a site using Leadtheme for WordPress.

You can log into our new chat room from any of our WordPress sites, Leadtheme.com, JensBeattyMedia.com, and REItrainer.com. Log in as a guest, with your Facebook account, or Chatroll account and chat away! We are just trying it out right now, so only 10 people can be in there at a time. If we see a lot of people in there and everyone seems to like it, we will upgrade it to handle more users at once. If you have a really long question or if you need a quote on custom web design and development please use the contact form on JensBeattyMedia.com. If nobody is in the chatroom, feel free to use the comments on any post on our sites to ask us questions or use the contact form on JensBeattyMedia.com.

Helpful tip: If you are using Chatroll on your Leadtheme site’s sidebar, turn the borders “off” in the settings on the Chatroll site and set the width to “314” in the shortcode they give you. This will make the widget sit perfectly on your site’s sidebar. Enjoy!

I don’t know why I never noticed it, but in previous versions of Leadtheme for WordPress, it was lacking the ability to have comments on pages. Now in Leadtheme version 1.1, the first new update to Leadtheme for WordPress, I have added the ability to have comments on pages. When you update your copy of Leadtheme for WordPress, and you don’t want comments on your existing pages, you must log into your WordPress admin and uncheck “allow comments” and “allow trackbacks” on the edit screen for each of your existing pages. This might be a bit f a hassle but it will be worth it in the future when you want a page that has comments. On the same note, when you add a new page, comments and pingbacks are allowed by default. If you don’t what them enabled, you must uncheck the check boxes on the page edit screen.

A few other minor changes in this release of Leadtheme for WordPress…

• Changed font size on the main navigation menu. I made it a little smaller so you have a little more space for your navigation links.
• Fixed drop down menu colors on Big Stripe skin. Now the colors on the drop down menus match the WordPress theme correctly when you use the Big Stripe skin for Leadtheme.
• Fixed text color for the footer disclaimer on Big Stripe skin. You can now read the disclaimer text easier when using the Big Stripe skin on Leadtheme for WordPress.
• Added style support for WP-Cycle slideshow plugin on homepage. You still have to manually add the PHP call in the theme files to pull in the slideshow, but now it will be positioned correctly on the page. I will be writing another article on how to use WP-Cycle with Leadtheme properly and how to edit the WordPress theme files to get it to work. Sign up for the Leadtheme Newsfeed to be notified when the article is posted about how to add WP-Cycle to your WordPress themes for free.
• Added links to helpful pages on the Leadtheme admin options page. Now you can easily get help and information about the Leadtheme options from within the theme’s admin page.

Download Leadtheme Version 1.1 for WordPress FREE!

Leadtheme Content Pack for Squeeze Pages 1.0 Released!

Along with this update for Leadtheme, we have also released a new free content pack and form pack to help Leadtheme users get a squeeze page set up quickly and easily using Leadtheme and WordPress. It is pretty basic, but that is what squeeze pages are all about. It has a home page, a thank you page, a contact us page and a privacy policy page, as well as some form presets for use with the cFoms II plugin.

Check out the Leadtheme Content Pack for Squeeze Pages in action on this new demo site… Demo-Squeeze-Page.Leadtheme.com.

Download the Leadtheme Content Pack for Squeeze Pages FREE!

I hope you enjoy the new update. Thanks to the new comments on pages feature you can also leave comments on the Leadtheme download page. Let me know what you think!

]]> http://leadtheme.com/news/comments-on-leadtheme-wordpress-pages-you-got-it/feed/ 0 http://jensbeattymedia.com/investor-resources/generate-leads-online-with-leadtheme-for-wordpress/ http://jensbeattymedia.com/investor-resources/generate-leads-online-with-leadtheme-for-wordpress/#comments Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:12:16 +0000 admin http://reitrainer.com/?p=673

The “REIhomesales Investor WordPress Theme” has officially been renamed and re-released as the all new “Leadtheme” for WordPress. Over the past few months, more and more people from outside the real estate investor world have started using the theme for all sorts of different businesses and generating all types of leads and signups. Since all of the main “real estate” features we actually in the content pack, we realized that the theme itself could really be used by anyone. Not to mention “Leadtheme” is so much easier to say!

There weren’t any real feature updates with this renaming, so if you are using version 1.5 of REIhomesales Investor WordPress Theme, you don’t really need to upgrade. Essentially, REIhomesales Investor WordPress Theme 1.5 and Leadtheme 1.0 are exactly the same. Once we update Leadtheme to a version higher than 1.0, you will then want to upgrade to Leadtheme.

The new website for the theme is Leadtheme.com. Since the WordPress theme resources section is getting bigger and bigger, we thought it was a good idea to move it all to its own site. Make sure to check out Leadtheme.com for all of the latest news and updates for our fantastic lead generating WordPress theme.

For those of you that are setting up a brand new WordPress site for generating leads, Leadtheme is still 100% free and is packed full of easy to use features. Leadtheme makes it super easy to manage a powerful lead generating website for any type of leads or sign-ups.

A few of Leadtheme’s main features….

• Easily set up pre-made forms for capturing information from site visitors
• Support for WordPress sites with multiple authors. You can run a huge blog site with Leadtheme.
• Multiple “skins”. We include 2 designs you can choose from and will be creating more soon!
• Prewritten content packages to get your site online quickly
• Easily add links to your social media profiles
• Easily add Google adsense (or any other banner ads)
• Easily add Google analyitics (or any other tracking codes)
• Easily add YouTube videos or playlists
• Optimized for fantastic search engine results.

These are just some of the reasons to use Leadtheme for WordPress. It doesn’t get much easier or affordable to get a great looking, highly effective website online, and now Leadtheme can be used for any type of business for generating any type of lead or website sign-up. Turn your WordPress site into a lead generating machine… Download Leadtheme for WordPress today!

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