We’re pretty big fans of WordPress around here. It’s such an easy to use, free content management system for your website with a plug-in system that lets you add totally new functionality to your site within minutes.

Question:

“What is a “One Click WordPress Install”?”

Answer:

Part of what makes WordPress so popular is its famous “one click install” which can be done using your web host’s control panel. In the video below, Eric Bramlett walks you through how to install WordPress in one-click using Dreamhost:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OHS1IO8-ko

Tip: OnlineRealEstate101.com readers can save 20% off a yearly hosting plan with Dreamhost by using promo code ORE20OFF.

Photo Credit: swruler9284

This post contains affiliate links. Find out why we use affiliate links by clicking here.

This article is part three of a five part series on building a real estate website with WordPress. You can view the rest of the series by visiting the guide at the bottom of this post.

The design process is the most exciting part about building a new website. Whether you go with a free, premium or custom theme (website design), your design options are virtually limitless with WordPress. We’re going to review the pros and cons of all three aforementioned options and how/when they should be used on a real estate website.

Free WordPress Themes: No Cost

The best, most trustworthy place to find free WordPress themes are at WordPress.org’s free theme repository. Another excellent resource can be found at Smashing Magazine where they frequently offer high quality WordPress themes for free.

Pros: The themes are free, some rival premium themes in quality.

Cons: Very limited selection for business users like real estate agents. Little to no support offered if you run into problems with a theme. Many free themes require that you leave the footer links (links at the bottom of the website) intact to promote the company that created the theme for free.

Premium WordPress Themes: $60 – $100

Premium themes strike the perfect balance of being inexpensive while still maintaining the high quality standards of a custom WordPress theme. There are a growing number of niche real estate themes being offered by WordPress developers like AgentPress, Gorilla Themes’ Broker, Open House and Smooth Real Estate and Agent Theme by StudioPress.

Pros: Nominal cost for a high quality WordPress theme (many with options tailored towards real estate agents) that offers web-based support to help you get up and running. Most theme licenses allow you to remove footer links making your website look much more professional. Multiple color schemes in some themes helps keep your website looking unique.

Cons: Minimal cost for a theme could lead to other agents in your marketplace using the same design for their website. Some premium themes still require more customization after purchase to make it match your brand/style.

Custom WordPress Themes: $2,000+

Custom WordPress themes are the crème de la crème of website design. Most agents and independent brokerages would be wise to start off with a premium theme and build out your web presence first before pursuing a custom website. Medium to large brokerages and top producers who insist on one-of-a-kind branding and website styling are better suited to custom design.

Pros: Totally unique website design which is great for brand identity. Custom features can be added to your site like an integrated listing search system and enhanced photo galleries for your listings.

Cons: Significantly more expensive than a do-it yourself premium theme. May come with pricey monthly or yearly maintenance costs.

If a custom website design sounds ideal check out Real Estate Webmasters and Dakno. Both are leading real estate website design firms used by top agents like Jim Olenbush and Kevin Tomlinson.

For brokers and agents who love the cost of premium themes but want a more custom look for their site there is a hybrid option: purchase a premium WordPress theme and then hire a designer to modify it to your specifications.

You really can’t go wrong with a premium WordPress theme or, if your budget allows, a custom website. Once you decide on which path to take there are a couple tips to keep in mind:

1. Use caution with free themes. - Most free themes aren’t really sufficient for use on a business website. This is mostly because free themes tend to be poorly designed or offer little to no support. I would only recommend using a free WordPress theme if it’s of very high quality and is from a trustworthy source (WordPress.org).

2. Know what you’re getting BEFORE you buy. - Find out how the product/service provider will answer your support questions before purchasing their product. Also, don’t be afraid to spend an inordinate amount of time playing with a theme to make sure it’s the right design for you.

If you enjoyed this post be sure to check out the rest of our Site Building 101 series below:

Site Building 101 Series:

1. Introduction to Building Your Real Estate Website With WordPress (Includes Cost Summary!)

2. Choosing a Domain Name and Web Hosting

3. You’re here!

4. Selecting a Great Real Estate Search Vendor

5. How to Build an Email Drip Campaign

Photo Credit: Torley

This post contains affiliate links. Find out why we use affiliate links by clicking here.

Today’s Q&A launches our first post series: Site Building 101. The five part series (including this article) runs through the basics of building a site using WordPress including choosing a domain name and web hosting, designing your website, selecting a great real estate search vendor and creating an email drip campaign.

Question:

“How much does it cost to build a real estate website with WordPress?”

Answer:

When building a website for real estate you have two types of cost: fixed and variable.

Your fixed costs are:

• Domain Name (i.e. yoursite.com)
• Website Hosting (Serves your website to people who visit your domain name)
• Email Drip Campaign Marketing Service
• Real Estate Search Vendor

Your variable costs are:

• Website Design and Maintenance (varies by skill level)
• Website Marketing and SEO

Eventually your website hosting and email marketing service might become variable costs after you reach a certain growth point and need to move up to more expensive plans. For a brand new site or one that doesn’t get 30,000+ visitors per month the upcoming hosting plans will be perfect.

So, how much does it all cost?

Domain Name – $10.69 or $1.99 with hosting at GoDaddy.com

Website Hosting – $5.59/month at GoDaddy.com to $8.95/month at Dreamhost (we use Dreamhost for ORE101).

Website Design - Premium WordPress Theme – $60 to $100

Email Marketing Company – $19/month at Aweber

Real Estate Search Vendor – $25/month to $60/month+

Total Cost For First Year - $670 – $1,166

For first time website creators that might seem like a bit much. The bulk of your cost is going to come from having a real estate search (aka IDX) on your website but that’s also going to be your biggest lead generator so it’s absolutely necessary.

Also, when compared to a custom website, which typically run $5,000 – $10,000, a WordPress site is an inexpensive lead generating machine. If a custom website is something you’re considering for the future I recommend building a WordPress site for now and then, once you are well established online, invest in a top tier website.

Over the course of the next two weeks we’ll dig deeper into each of the costs associated with building a successful real estate website.

Check out our entire Site Building 101 series using the guide below:

Site Building 101 Series:

1. You’re here!

2. Choosing a Domain Name and Web Hosting

3. Designing Your Website

4. Selecting a Real Estate Search Vendor

5. How to Build an Email Drip Campaign

Photo Credit: Jakob Montrasio

This post contains affiliate links. Find out why we use affiliate links by clicking here.

I love Twitter. I love it because you get to meet so many interesting people and learn new things that you wouldn’t have otherwise been aware of had someone not tweeted it out. One such cool thing I saw recently was Jay Thompson’s (@phxreguy) single property website for his newest listing at 490 E. Elgin St in Gilbert, AZ.

Using the Thesis WordPress theme Jay created a destination site that makes use of Thesis’ media box to display random photos of the home on every page, links to local and school websites and a fantastic photo gallery.

The site also pulls double duty as a search portal by adding a real estate search to the site. This will be a tremendous feature of the site should a home buyer visit the site, pass on the home and want to view similar homes in the area.

For non-WordPress junkies you can check out the single property website service from AgencyLogic to create similar results.

To see Jay’s single property site in full click here.

This post contains affiliate links. Find out why we use affiliate links by clicking here.

Hot on the heels of our Monday Q&A: “What is a Premium WordPress Theme?”, I’ve created a list of premium WordPress theme websites that I visit often and more info about each company’s products. Be sure to consider how you plan to use your website before buying a premium theme.

For example, say you find a great premium WordPress theme with a magazine layout. Magazine layouts tend to highlight 5-10 of your latest blog posts, often dated, so you can show off your latest articles to your readers. If you never or rarely blog on your site then you would be better off with a page based theme or a theme that focuses on a few key navigation points versus the number of posts that you have.

To help make choosing a premium WordPress theme easier there is a short description about what themes are offered at each website, pricing information and link to their sites below:

WooThemes

Price Range: $70 – $140 per theme. Club membership starts at $125 upfront and $15 per month for unlimited all theme access.

About WooThemes: WooThemes is a personal favorite of mine. I use their designs on my own real estate website, my Mazda 3 car site and here at ORE 101. There is a huge selection of niche WordPress themes including business site themes and magazine style designs in addition to great tech support on their forums. I really appreciate the number of color options you have for each theme and the continuous updates to ensure the designs are bug free.

Learn more about WooThemes.

Elegant Themes

Price Range: $19.95 per year for unlimited all theme access.

About Elegant Themes: Bargain alert! I’ve used Elegant Themes on occasion because their designs are so polished though few of them would be suitable for a real estate website right out of the box. Forum tech support was quick to respond to any questions I had about the themes and at $19 per year it’s absolutely worth joining if you find a theme you love.

Learn more about Elegant Themes.

StudioPress

Price Range: $59.95 per theme. Club membership is $199.95 and includes all themes available on the site, future updates and future new theme releases.

About StudioPress: Brian Gardner, creator of StudioPress, was one of the first to offer premium WordPress themes to the masses. There is a great collection of themes to choose from over at StudioPress including the Agent Theme which was designed specifically for real estate agents. In my experience forum support has been excellent and Brian goes out of his way to personally respond to distress signals.

Learn more about StudioPress themes.

AgentPress

Price Range: $99.95 per theme. Service packages (including theme and plug-in installation) run $199.95 – $299.95. All service packages require that you use one of AgentPress’ recommended web hosting companies.

About AgentPress: A spin-off of the highly successful Agent Theme by StudioPress and customized with even more real estate website specific features by Nicole Nicolay (aka @nik_nik), AgentPress is a great theme to consider when building your website. It looks like forum support is still managed through StudioPress which, as mentioned before, is excellent.

Learn more about AgentPress themes.

Gorilla Themes

Price Range: $79.95 and up for individual themes. $139.95+ for developer license (includes PSD file.)

About Gorilla Themes: Gorilla Themes caught my eye with their extensive (and growing) number of real estate agent/broker specific WordPress themes. As of this writing there are six (6) agent/broker themes available including one of their newest themes: Broker Real Estate theme.

Learn more about Gorilla Themes real estate themes.

iThemes

Price Range: $79.95 and up for individual themes. $499.95 gives you an all-access pass for 1 year to every iThemes theme available.

About iThemes: iThemes offers mostly business related themes and theme frameworks (see more on theme frameworks below). Some of my favorite business themes from iThemes are Yukon, Essence and iCompany.

Learn more about iThemes.

Theme Forest

Price Range: $12 and up.

About Theme Forest: Theme Forest is a collection of HTML templates like WordPress themes that are available for sale from independent designers and companies. TF isn’t a traditional theme club but more of a marketplace so do proper due diligence on each seller you purchase a theme from.

Also, be sure to ask or read about how the seller supports their product when it comes to updates and fixing quirks you experience personally. The theme in the picture above is a real estate theme I found on Theme Forest.

Learn more about Theme Forest.

Theme Frameworks

Theme frameworks are a variant of premium WordPress themes with a different spin. Instead of being ready to use right out of the box they are highly customizable, fully featured foundation themes that you build custom designs on top of. The amount of work that will go into customizing one of these frameworks depends on your needs.

For example, Jay Thompson (PhoenixRealEstateGuy.com) uses the Thesis WordPress theme (see below) with a custom skin as his primary blog design. Skins, also known as child themes, are designs built on top of a theme framework. The theme framework is still the same but the visual design of the website changes.

Thesis

Price Range: $87 (For use on one website) to $164 (For use on any sites that you own)

About Thesis: The creation of Chris Pearson, previously most well known as the designer of the free Cutline and Copyblogger themes, Thesis is an extremely powerful yet lightweight theme framework. It’s optimized for SEO with a built-in SEO configuration panel on every post/page, has a ton of customizable options from the backend control panel (control font size, header placement etc.) and a thriving support community.

Learn more about the Thesis theme framework.

Headway

Price Range: $87 (For use on up to two websites that you own) to $164 (unlimited installs on websites that you own)

About Headway: Headway is a relative newcomer to the premium WordPress theme market but they’ve wasted no time making a big splash. One of the many unique features about Headway is the visual editor in the backend. This visual editor lets you edit your website’s design and layout without ever having to touch a line of code.

Learn more about the Headway theme framework.

This post contains affiliate links. Find out why we use affiliate links by clicking here.

The popularity of WordPress spawned a significant number of free website designs, also known as themes, over the past couple of years. Because the designs were free they were also used heavily throughout the community which created a sort of design monotony among WordPress sites. The lack of technical support coupled with infrequent bug fixes for freebie themes sent webmasters in search of a better solution.

Before premium themes your only other styling option was to hire a designer and coder to give your site a custom look all its own. Though certainly worth the cost of admission, custom designs can be cost prohibitive with total project costs upwards of $2,000 or more depending on your level of customization. On to today’s question…

Question:

“What is a premium WordPress theme?”

Answer:

A premium WordPress theme fills the void between freebie themes and custom design work by providing a high quality, super affordable and often ready-to-use website design for less than $100. At this price point it’s affordable to experiment with different site designs and color schemes for your website. There are a few points to consider before buying a premium theme including:

• How will you use your site? For business blogs or real estate websites running WordPress as a CMS you’ll definitely want to go custom or with a premium theme. Free themes are acceptable for personal blogs but reflect poorly on your business because it shows that you tried to build your website as inexpensively as possible. This could project the idea that you cut corners wherever possible to save money which is NOT the story you want your website to tell!
• What type of content will you be posting (video, podcasts, written articles)? Some premium themes are built around a specific niche (band pages or brochure websites) so you’ll want to make sure your premium theme supports the content you’re looking to publish.
• Does the premium theme company support its products well? I’ve seen some beautiful WordPress themes out there where the developer only releases one or two updates or none at all to fix bugs that could cause your premium theme to be unusable. Rule of thumb: An active support forum and quick bug fixes are signs of a well supported product. Look for change logs that show what changes have been made under each version number.

A great way to research company support and customer satisfaction is to use Twitter search. When Twitter users are happy or mad about a product they almost always tweet about it. Use Twitter search to find out about their experiences so you can have more control over your experience.

Do you use a premium WordPress theme on your site? Have any theme clubs that you prefer?

Every Monday we host a Q&A session where you can get your most pressing real estate tech/marketing questions answered. Questions for our next Monday Q&A can be sent to us via Twitter or by submitting a question in the comment box at the bottom of this post.

Question:

What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites?

Answer:

Most first time bloggers and new users to WordPress find the two pretty confusing. WordPress.com and WordPress.org are actually nearly identical with the primary difference being that you can get your blog hosted for free at WordPress.com.

WordPress.org offers the same easy-to-use blogging software that you get on WordPress.com but as a download so you can install it on your self-hosted website. So, to answer simply, WordPress.com is like WordPress.org Lite.

I’ve charted out the key differences between the two below:

What’s Good About WordPress.com

• Free blog hosting, next to nothing start up costs. (Register and create your blog, it’s that easy!)
• A huge collection of pre-approved website designs to choose from.
• Low maintenance — Your blog software is automatically updated to the latest version for you.
• Community features – Visit WordPress.com and you can see the hottest new post from other blogs hosted on the service.

What’s Not So Good About WordPress.com

• Very limited in flexibility; not for power users.
• Lots of little upgrade expenses to customize your blog (i.e. custom domain name, video hosting, customize website design.)
• You can’t upload your own website design (important if you want to buy a premium WordPress theme to customize your site’s look.)
• Zero plug-in options so if you want to add site features like the Next-Gen Photo Gallery you wouldn’t be able to.

What’s Good About WordPress.org (Self-Hosted WordPress Install)

• Fully customizable and flexible. Once you install WordPress on your website you can use any design you want (custom, premium or free) and add extra plug-ins to expand site functionality (like Next-Gen Gallery).
• No extra costs other than website hosting and domain registration.
• Still low maintenance. – WordPress 2.8+ offers two-click automatic software upgrades and plug-in upgrades from within the WordPress dashboard.
• Never pay for extra storage space. – Most web hosting companies these days offer terabytes (1,000 gigabytes) of storage (often seen in “Unlimited” hosting plans) which means you’ll never have to worry about having too much stuff stored on your website.

What’s Not So Good About WordPress.org (Self-Hosted WordPress Install)

• If you break it, you fix it. – You are fully responsible for maintaining your site. If your site gets hacked, you install a rogue plug-in that kills the site or botch an upgrade it’s on you to fix it. Thankfully the WordPress.org support forums are an excellent resource for newbies.
• Takes a little bit longer to get your website set up. – With WordPress.com sites there are pre-installed plug-ins that cover features like polls, video hosting and post/page ratings. When you do a self-install (WordPress.org) you have to set that up yourself. Not hard but it does take more time.

In the end, it’s up to you and your skill level to decide whether you want to host your blog on a private server or jump in and play right away within the walled garden of WordPress.com.

If you plan to build an entire business website using WordPress software as a CMS (Content Management System) then doing a self-hosted install is the best way to go. For casual bloggers or people who aren’t looking to run a full time business with their blogs, WordPress.com will suit you just fine.

Did you find this article helpful? Have more questions you would like to see answered in our Monday Q&A? Submit your questions and feedback on this article using the comment box below!

Get ready, we’re launching on December 28th!