Web Site Design and Development

For most of my usual real estate readers, this post will be pretty technical and you may want to skip it.  It deals with a fix I found in working on Houssee.com, and it has a sort of Dilbert-like appeal to those of you who’ve ever worked on a software team.

One of the reasons I eventually left software is the inordinate amount of time we used to spend making the case that

#define BROKEN true

should be changed to

#define BROKEN false

Usually there’s some vague sociological reason for leaving the first line in, like a manager who found a consultant who told him it should be that way. 

In this case the reason is:

“I Know More About Apache Than YOU Do, Neener Neener Neener”

For those of you who are still struggling to get “Option 2″ search engine friendly URLs to work in Pligg using .htaccess, you can take comfort in the fact that the developers over there know more about Apache than you do.

But meantime enjoy the fix below!

JohnLockwood New Pligger Pligg Version: 0.90   Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 2 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts

The Fix Guys, I believe I found the fix for this. Unless anyone knows of a reason why it shouldn’t be included, I suggest the developers roll it into the code and see if it doesn’t save a lot of people grief in the next release. Here it is: In .htaccess, find the line that reads: Options +Indexes +FollowSymlinks Change it to this: Options +Indexes +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews The problem in a nutshell is that depending on how Apache is configured, ^upcoming/… (for example) never fires off the rewrite rule, but instead resolves to upcoming.php?/…. The fix above solved it for my host (kattare.com), and now option 2 is running brilliantly. Hope that helps.

 

Today, 05:09 PM

(User name deleted) Pligg Developer Pligg Version: 9.9 Pligg Template: Arbuckle   Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: PA Posts: 1,750 Downloads: 43 Uploads: 15 Thanks: 130 Thanked 371 Times in 223 Posts

MultiViews has always been an issue.. It’s not listed in the requirements because most servers don’t use it.. There is no way we can make a list of requirements of things “not” to use.

 

Today, 09:13 PM

JohnLockwood New Pligger Pligg Version: 0.90   Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 2 Downloads: 1 Uploads: 0 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts

Who said anything about listing it in the requirements? If your code DEPENDS on the thing being turned off, and you know that, and the fix is easy, then one would think that someone with source code access who cares about having a quality product that works for as many installed users as possible would take a minute to add the 1/3 of a line of code that it takes to turn it off. If it was off to begin with, fine, no harm done, it’ll still be off. If it was on to begin with, the “issue” will now be a “non-issue” because the “bug” will be “fixed”. Quote: Originally Posted by xxxxx MultiViews has always been an issue.. It’s not listed in the requirements because most servers don’t use it.. There is no way we can make a list of requirements of things “not” to use. Yeah, and there’s no way I can make a list of all the bugs there are in your code. Mostly I find it fairly robust, and I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, but I stubbed my toe hard on this one, and I’m not the first one, hence the thread. I sent you the fix. Here it is again: Add -MultiViews to the Options line in .htaccess. If you’d rather show off how much more you know about Apache configuration than your users than have a product that works in as many environments as possible, leave it broken.

Do you dig real estate, yet find yourself homeless on Digg? Houssee.com is a Digg-like site for Real Estate news. We welcome submissions from bloggers from their personal blogs, or from their social network blogs such as ActiveRain, RealTown, RealEstateWebmasters, etc., etc. We also love to have links to other real estate news stories you may have encountered from online news sources.

Houssee.com is also the sponsor of the Houssee award, which features the top user-voted stories each week. ParticleWave gets the honor of hosting this first ever Houssee award. So here then are the stories that either got the most votes or were otherwise outstanding in their category.

And The Oscar Houssee Goes To…

In General Real Estate News, first prize for the top voted post this week goes to Gig Harbor’s Matt Thompson for his Reconnect to Your Community link to his Good To Tour Gig Harbour Again, a beautiful and well illustrated post that does an outstanding job of highlighting his community.

The Market News and Updates categories had no published news, and I’ll recuse myself from pointing to my own posts and zero in on Purva Brown’s thought-provoking Will Investors Save the Sacramento Market? Mitch Argon’s monthly update on Reno Home Sales Statistics would have been the top vote getter in that category, but it was filed under general.

The Investing category award goes to user PhoenixMarketTrends for an excellent article on whether owning Is Owning an Apartment Buliding Right for You, which goes into the pros and cons of the larger multi-unit investments.

The Mortgage category didn’t garner any votes yet, so I’ll just have to pick an article, won’t I? OK, I pick the one that I highlighted, Massachusetts Sues H&R Block over Mortgages to Minorities.

Fans of Trulia voted heavily for Tell Us Your Trulia Voices Success Story — Win a Ticket To Inman Connect, giving us a clear winner in the Real Estate Internet Marketing Category.

With a single entry in the Listing Announcements category, Matt Thompson scores a second Houssee this week for a Rare Gig Harbor Waterfront Property, with an honorable mention to Susan Hilton’s cool post about custom Treehouses — ok, ok, they’re not listings, it’s just a fun post.

Finally, in the About Houssee.com / Winners Category, where we feature the post that did the most to spread the word about Houssee.com, our clear winner was a post by Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, entitled Houssee.com, a Digg-like Site for Real Estate Info.

Submit Your Posts and Win Fame, Links, and Pictures of Valuable Shirts

So what you should do is go over and sign up so you can start submitting your posts and voting for your favorite news stories right away. Please make sure to check out the categories and submit your post to the most appropriate one — there’s more competition in the “General News” category.

OK, so you’re thinking, “Wow, this one post is the start of an awesome tradition. If I act now, I can be practically in on the ground floor of the Houssee phenomenon!” I don’t blame you a bit for thinking that. It’s very perceptive.

Just by submitting a story, every Houssee submitter is guaranteed a real honest-in-goodness link. We’re not talking about a creepy nofollow link, either, or something that goes through Javascript and then links to you after phoning our European allies to ask for permission. We’re talking genuine link love, baby, the way God and Tim Berners Lee intended.

Plus, if you win a Houssee during one of our (weekly? occasional?) Houssee award posts, you get yet another link from the award, which will be posted on one of the many fine Houssee hosts we have in mind. (OK, sure, they’re all different blogs that I write — but when I run out of those I’ll think of something.)

What Else Do You Get?

But wait, there’s more!

If you win a Houssee, you’re entitled to proudly display this picture of a 100% cotton tee shirt. This is not a picture of some cheesy cotton polyester tee shirt. This is a nice shirt, with double-secret half stitches and reinforced upseams. This picture is only available through this exclusive Internet offer.

Congratulations to all our intrepid posters and hard working winners this week. Come check us out.

Submit early. Vote often!

As threatened, promised, I’ve added a sidebar widget for the top user links to Houssee.com, the Internet’s best 100% Spam-free (famous last words) Pligg-based real estate publish-and-vote-for-your-news Digg clone.

How come only Jay Thompson and I are top users?  Short answer, because only Jay and I are the intrepid first adopter and admin, respectively, who submitted one or more stories and added a URL to our profile.

For those of you who are interested in the hitherto unpublished details of the Brain-Dead-Algorithm ™ — subject to change without notice, but not too soon — here it is:

Did you enter a URL in your profile?  Did you submit at least one story?  If so, you’re totally the golden-boy (-girl) with a front page link.   When there get to be > 6 of us, the people with URLs who’ve submitted the most stories will be the Top Users.

Being a Houssee.com top user will increase your geek credentials tremendously, though not as much as rolling your own Linux install or coding with a soldering iron.

Submit early.  Vote often.  Enjoy!

I am pleased to announce that ParticleWave has just launched Houssee.com, a web site where you can submit and vote for your favorite real estate articles.

I launched Houssee.com because I enjoyed using RealEstateVoices.com, but as I mention in a recent review, I felt it had a bit too much Spam to succeed in the long run. 

The mission of Houssee.com is to be a promotional tool for Realtors®, mortgage brokers, and others in the real estate blogging community, while putting systems and strong moderation in place to keep out the spam.  (What’s the definition of spam?  Well, it’s everything that’s not somehow directly related to real estate.  Yes, Realtors® often have laptops, and the laptops often need batteries — but your laptop battery ad is spam.)

As time goes on we’ll have further announcements about Houssee.com and how you can make the most of it to help you get content read. 

Top Contributors Will Be Featured

Within a few days I should have a section on the home page featuring the top six or so contributors.  To encourage you to start publishing your stories, the “top contributor” will be the person who submits the most real estate stories, whether or not the stories are published.   (As the site takes off I may reward other aspects of contributing, such as publishing stories that get good votes, or voting for others’ stories, etc.)

If you have comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment here.