Whew! Blog updated and improved

Boy oh boy! I’ve invested over 25 hours into this blog this week!

1. More new listings. Now, you can quickly see all the new single family detached listings added to the MLS in the last 8 days.

   I added “New MLS Listings - Snapshots” to all the Zip Code Real Estate Notebooks. It’s a quick, fun way to see what’s hitting the market.

   You still have, of course, the MAP of new listings and the link to the LIST of new listings.

   I hope you see where I’m going with this. My goal is to make Arizona Real Estate Notebook the best web site for checking out new listings.

   Stop by weekly. Amaze your friends with your real estate knowledge. Knowledge is power.

2. New look. I updated the look of the web site. In WordPress software lingo, I changed the theme to one called “Thesis.” The new look is still very clean and undistracting, great for putting the Phoenix real estate market information front and center.

   The look is going to be fine tuned over the next few weeks.

3. Backend software update. I had a huge security problem so I had to update the software behind this web site, WordPress blogging software.

   Unfortunately, I ran into a problem which I just couldn’t solve. [For the WordPress geeks out there, the plug-in "exec-PHP" was adding line-feeds to the end of some "included" code.] Eventually, I found an inelegant solution and I changed the code on over 250 pages of this web site.

   While I was at it, I decided to make some improvements to the web site as well and so added the “New MLS Listings - Snapshots” and updated the theme.

I was up until 5:00 AM this morning. Another night it was 4:30 AM. Another night 2:30 AM. This was a big project and I’m not done yet. And this is in addition to the normal weekly and monthly time invested in this web site.

I’m toying with the idea of making a premium version of this web site which will only be available to my clients.