We build affordable web sites and blogs that get results.

Are you respecting the Realtor® trademark?

Maybe you’re mad at NAR and you don’t care if you add the trademark symbol or not, but for most of us, we don’t mind (and consider it a lower risk proposition) to go ahead and put the trademark on there. Realtor®, as you may know, is a registered trademark of the National Association of Realtors®.

The trouble for bloggers is that many bloggers don’t know how to type the trademark symbol, and even for those that do, typing that stupid “®” every time is a pain in the neck. But don’t worry, the plugin makes it simple. Install it, then go ahead and type the r-word (in either lower case or upper case), and the plugin will automatically correct your usage.

Installation: Just download the plugin, unzip it into your Wordpress plugin directory, activate it on the Manage Plugins page, and you’re good to go! No warranty is provided, including fitness for use. Enjoy!

Current Release

The 1.4 Release (final?) leaves hyphenated forms (realtor-whatever or whatever-realtor) alone. This is important as we found out because Wordpress permalinks frequently use hyphens, and people couldn’t link to this post. Now a link to this post will work!

Version 1.3 added the Realtor® Fix Plugin Test Page, which you can visit to see how the plugin will transform your posts. Because it’s pretty well tested, the plugin offers a simple switch (see the plugin code) for enabling comment filtering if you want. However, it still ships with comment filtering disabled by default. This version offers improved matching code, so most URLs with some version of “Realtor®” in them should work well without using the “[sic]” to disable adding the trademark. However, adding the “[sic]” is still supported. Finally, this version also offers support for capitalizing the REALTOR® trademark. Simply type it in all caps (REALTOR®) and it will do the right thing. If you capitalize the first letter or don’t capitalize anything, you’ll get “Realtor®”.

The 1.2 Release added two features: First, if you add “[sic]” after the r-word it will suppress adding the trademark (but remove the “[sic]“). Thus, if you need to link to realtor.com, use http://www.realtor.com. Secondly, comments are not processed. A few minutes after I had the plugin installed a user used the r-word in a url, and it was transformed. Users commenting shouldn’t have to know the rules of use.

credit: The Moonstone Archive

When I wrote my 101 Subscribers in 30 Days post, Minnesota Investment Property specialist Scott Ficek was good enough to comment on on the post and recommend the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin, so I could get a nice-sized subscriber base like the one shown at right.

So, thank you to Scott and I hope he’s right that this plugin works well, lest I have my clothes sold off by pregnant teenage chain smokers.

(No, that’s not a bid to go after some of the wrong kind of traffic, but I’ll bet I get it anyway.)

While I appreciate Scott’s participation and suggestion, I must admit that I almost didn’t make it past the name on this plugin.

I realize that people who need someone to follow are stoned in love with the bald one, but many of us could care less what Seth Godin would do. I would have called it the “New Visitor Welcome Plugin” or the “Convert New Visitors to Subscribers” plugin. That way when people are wondering how to convert new visitors, they’d find the plugin. But that’s just me. I appreciate Richard Miller writing it, and if you’re going to contribute good code to the community I guess you can pick whatever name you want. Meantime those of us who’ve largely forsaken programming for writing can just shut up about it and link to the plugin, already, by way of saying thank you.

Thanks and a hat tip again to Scott.