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Welcome to HomeQuest

Tyler — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:26:34 +0000

We have prerecorded trainings if you would like to get started right away:

This training covers the contact manager and how to manage your clients in the HomeQuest backend as well as how to setup and use automated listing searches and monitor what your clients are looking at and adding to their favorites.

WordPress 101 Recorded Training

This training covers WordPress websites and everything you would need to know to feel comfortable with the basics of entering and changing content in your site including adding pages and writing blog posts.

Also be sure to check out the IDX Quick Tour for a quick tutorial on what it looks like for a client using the property search on your website.

Setting up a Website

With a new HomeQuest account you still will need to setup a website as the system will not prompt you to do this automatically. There are several options for websites all available from the “Websites” tab of your HomeQuest account.

Option 1: Free HomeQuest “Revo” template or our own modified version of the twenty eleven theme hosted on our servers

The fastest and easiest option for getting started on a WordPress IDX website and comes free with your subscription.

Option 2: WordPress IDX Plugin brings the HomeQuest property search features to a WordPress website that is out of our system and hosted by you. This would allow you to use any WordPress template designed by anyone including the free templates available online.

Contact HomeQuest Support if you need help creating a website

Fighting Spam on your WordPress website

Tyler — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:23:07 +0000

Visitors to your website can comment on the blog posts that you write on your website. This can add a community feel to your site as well as giving you feedback from your websites audience.

However, spammers have taken advantage of this ability on your website too. They will try to submit comments onto your site in order to have a link to their website available from your website giving them the possibility of more website visitors.

Click here to see how to Manage Comments on your WordPress Website

Some examples of spam comments are:

Here are some of the top tips from a good article “10 Tips For Identifying Blog Comment Spam”

1. Keywords in the name field.

Some commenters don’t use their real name. Others prefer to use keywords instead of any kind of name. Think of things like “Low Energy Light Bulbs”, “Texas Home Renovation”, or my personal favourite – “Wallpapering Weekly Newsletter”. Actually, I made those up. Anyway, keywords can be a good sign that the commenter is just hoping to get a link from your site to theirs.

2. Generic appreciation.

The “nice post” discussion is a bit of a running joke around here. You can see where it all began in my first post on this blog – 10 signs your blog sucks. Still, that aside, some spammers seem to like saying nice things about your blog. All they’re doing is trying to convince you that their comment should go on your blog. Again, it often means they’ll get a link from your site. If a comment says little more than “wow, nice post… I’ll be back to read more” … dig a little deeper. You might find that the person concerned is not as sincere as you might think.

3. Comment length.

Is the comment really, really long? Or abnormally short? As with all of these points, it’s not a guarantee, but sometimes the length is a giveaway. I’ve seen some amazingly long comments that didn’t contain anything except links to dodgy sites. Some really short ones, too – with just one solitary spam link.

and most importantly…..Check The Link.

If the comment has a link, check it out. If the link goes to a canadian pharmacy or some other unsolicited site, just go with your gut feeling and spam the comment.

You can read the full contents of the article here including the other tips, though these three are going to be your most effective way to fight spam.

Using Scrapbooks on the HomeQuest IDX (Video)

Tyler — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 23:37:13 +0000

Scrapbooks are essentially just Favorites lists. Anyone who uses your HomeQuest IDX map will be able to save as many homes as they like to as many Scrapbooks as they like. Click to watch the video below to see how to utilize Scrapbooks in the HomeQuest IDX.

Scrapbooks in the HomeQuest IDX from HQ on Vimeo.

RSVP for a spot in the next HomeQuest Open House 3/19

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:19:48 +0000

HomeQuest is hosting this months Open House on Friday March 19, 2010.

Please EMAIL SUPPORT@HOMEQUESTGROUP.COM in order to RSVP a spot. Spaces are limited, and they fill up quickly so if you are interested write that email now.

Commenting is now available

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:47:53 +0000

All WordPress hosted sites with HomeQuest now have commenting capabilities turned on. That means that clients can now interact with your blog posts. Now your blog is not just a one way form of communication, but an actual community where users can respond to your blog posts and each others comments. Having an engaged community brings benefit within the search engine rankings as well.

How to run and save a Market Analyzer report (Video)

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:03:36 +0000

The Market Analyzer runs neighborhood level reports based on sold listing data.

The Market Analyzer may not be available in all markets.

Market Analyzer from HomeQuest on Vimeo.

Why You Should Switch To HomeQuest Hosted IDX Platform

admin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:22:24 +0000

Hi Folks,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the awesome feedback we’ve been recieiving about the HomeQuest IDX platform, remember – if theres anything you’d like to see, don’t understand or want more informaton on, please don’t hessitate to contact us.

I wanted to list a few of the direct benefits of switiching to the IDX Blog platform (which is completely free if you are already a HomeQuest subscriber

Its completely based on WordPress – WordPress is loved by all the search engines, specifically Google.
WordPress is also incredibly easy to add content too and keep up to date
We have some custom themes which are very modern / Web 2.0 looking
Its completely customizable!

Head on over to HomeQuest and see what a difference the new platform can have for your web presence!

Client Activity Views

garron — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:50:43 +0000

HomeQuest provides the agent with a set of tools to help understand what their prospects and clients are looking at or interested in.

View Client Activity
The first is the ability to sort your database by the most recent viewing of listings. This allows you to build a large database of clients and prospective clients and still maintain a clear view of your most active people.

Client Activity Graphs
The client activity graph that shows the past two weeks activity including listing viewed, saved listings and printed listings. The image below is a typical active buyer activity graph…looking every day, adding some to favorites and printing.

Client Watch
Client Watch enables you to see the daily pattern of homes viewed using the Looking Glass. You can easily look at each day and get a very clear picture of where your clients are looking.

HQ Designed for Large/Dual Monitors

garron — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:56:16 +0000

Ever wondered why HomeQuest launches the Client and Agent Looking Glass in a new window? Probably not, but it is for large or dual monitor set ups. This works very well for browsing through your clients, looking at their activity level with the main admin while using Looking Glass to view patterns, saved favorites, etc. I highly recommend dual monitors and it can be very affordable, an inexpensive video card and two 19″ lcd can run under $500 and chances are you already have one of the screens. The set up in the picture is a Macbook pro running an apple 30″ cinema display sweeeet!