{"id":2533,"date":"2008-01-23T16:23:06","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T23:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2533"},"modified":"2008-01-24T12:07:35","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T19:07:35","slug":"speaking-in-tongues-a-universal-contact-form-for-real-estate-weblogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2533\/speaking-in-tongues-a-universal-contact-form-for-real-estate-weblogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking in tongues: A universal contact form for real estate weblogs…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nota bene:<\/i><\/b> Slightly amended. Reread carefully.<\/p>\n

I landed on Jeff Kempe’s weblog<\/a> yesterday. In the way of the web, I don’t remember how I got there or why I came. But I spent a little while looking around, without quite realizing what I was looking for.<\/p>\n

And then it hit me: There’s no contact information. No phone number. No “email me!” link. No contact form. You can find Jeff’s phone number on the About page<\/a>, but that’s about it.<\/p>\n

Maybe he wants it that way. Maybe it’s none of my business. And maybe I’m not so religious about this stuff that I can go out look for motes — or even beams. But Brian Brady is dead-on when he talks about asking for the business, so I decided to do something for Jeff, whether he likes it or not.<\/p>\n

And: You can play, too.<\/p>\n

What I came up with is a sort of universal contact form for real estate webloggers.<\/p>\n

You can see how it looks on DistinctivePhoenix.com<\/a> in the image to the right. It’s built to adopt the look-and-feel imposed by your weblog’s theme’s CSS file, so it should look just right when you deploy it. I deliberately made it narrow because sidebars can be pretty tight places.<\/p>\n

The code itself is pretty simple, so if you feel comfortable editing PHP, you can go in and modify it to your heart’s content.<\/p>\n

But if the thought of editing software makes your brain ache, you can deploy this form by editing only five lines of code, all very simple.<\/p>\n

First, you have to email me to get me to send you the form<\/a>. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get a PHP file to download from our server without executing. I can email you a zip file, but our anonymous FTP is so anonymous I can’t figure out its true name.<\/p>\n

Anyway, when you get the PHP file, you’re going to do this — in a text editor<\/i>, not in Microsoft Word: Edit the second through the fifth lines. They’ll start out looking like this:<\/p>\n

$myName = \"Firstname Lastname\";\n$myCompany = \"The Almagamated ClusterFunk Team\";\n$myEmailAddress = \"MyEmailAddress@MyFileServer.com\";\n$myWeblogAddress = Read more<\/a><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nota bene: Slightly amended. Reread carefully. I landed on Jeff Kempe’s weblog yesterday. In the way of the web, I don’t remember how I got there or why I came. But I spent a little while looking around, without quite realizing what I was looking for. And then it hit me: There’s no contact information. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-technology","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":745,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/745\/you-think-you-have-a-handle-on-russell-shaw-bet-you-dont\/","url_meta":{"origin":2533,"position":0},"title":"You Think You Have A Handle On Russell Shaw? Bet You Don’t","author":"Jeff Brown","date":"December 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"You've maybe met a 'mega-producer' or two. I've met my share, and in their own ways they're all pretty impressive. Russell breaks the mold -- no, he smashes the mold. There are two things you realize after talking with Russ longer than a few minutes. He knows who he is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10379,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10379\/%e2%80%98maybe%e2%80%99-kills-our-careers-one-letter-at-a-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":2533,"position":1},"title":"\u2018Maybe\u2019 kills our careers one letter at a time.","author":"Scott Cowan","date":"November 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been selling real estate for a while now. Not as long as many of you who are frequent contributors or readers here, though. When I got started in real estate, it was the outcome of my last falling out with Corporate America. What my last experience with working\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2090,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2090\/san-diego-fire-update-email-from-jeff-brown\/","url_meta":{"origin":2533,"position":2},"title":"San Diego Fire Update: Email from Jeff Brown","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"On 10\/24\/07 10:44 AM, \"Greg Swann\" wrote:Are you okay? Talked to Brian and he indicated the danger now confronts you.Thanks \u2014 we\u2019re not in danger, but the air quality sucks. \u00a0The fire is about 15 minutes or so mostly east and a bit south from us. It\u2019s so bad, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1118,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1118\/a-rare-breed-an-intelligent-highly-educated-young-man-and-he-doesnt-know-it-all\/","url_meta":{"origin":2533,"position":3},"title":"A Rare Breed — An Intelligent, Highly Educated Young Man — And He Doesn’t Know It All","author":"Jeff Brown","date":"March 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a shame, but I suspect most Bloodhound contributors, couldn't pick half of us out of a lineup. Don't get me wrong, we've emailed or phoned, but for the most part we've never met. I'm maybe the worst off. I've met Greg Swann, Russell Shaw, and Brian Brady. 3 out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Real Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Real Estate","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/real-estate\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2082,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2082\/san-diego-fire-update-podcast-with-jeff-brown-discussing-todays-events\/","url_meta":{"origin":2533,"position":4},"title":"San Diego Fire Update: Podcast with Jeff Brown discussing today’s events","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I was able to connect with Jeff Brown, and we spent a few minutes on the phone talking about today's events in battling the fires in San Diego. I was unable to get through to either Kris Berg or Brian Brady, but I'm hoping this simply means their cell phone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Group Therapy"","block_context":{"text":"Group Therapy","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/group-therapy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1104,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1104\/retire-retire-early-retire-wealthy-unthinkable\/","url_meta":{"origin":2533,"position":5},"title":"Retire? Retire early? Retire wealthy? Unthinkable!","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Who wants to think about retirement? I really love to work, and it seems probable that I will continue to churn away until the hardware fails. But I know that at some point I want to stop having to worry about money. I want to write books and explore ruins\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Investment"","block_context":{"text":"Investment","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/investment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}