Mainly K2 powered. Uses Praise template, XMAP, and for the time being Rocket Theme slide show until FPSS for K2 is released.

I am gonna lose my mind.
I check your site and I wanted to use K2 just like you do as an estate agent.
Everything is fine. I can add bla bla bla.
But couldnot make it work as your front page.
I am not talking about slide show or anything.
I am talking about displaying all categories.
All i can come up with showing all items in categories.
What ever i did i could not make it work.
Help me please im desperate

Hi Enver.
The main property menu (top left module) is a standard joomla main menu - not a K2 Tools menu.
The K2 categories - make a top level main category 'home', then make the subcategories (apartments, houses etc) children of 'home' - see the screenshot labelled 'categories.png'.
The 'home category' is configured as shown in the last two image attachments.

Hope that helps.
Mark

Hi Mark
Thank you
I mean really thank you for your help
I knew it was something easy but sometimes you just stuck and it was one of those times.
I think this will help lots of people.
Thanks again
And a very good sit you got there.
When I finish mine i will post it here.

Hi Mark,
I am evaluating k2 for a few real estate sites I am planning to build for my clients and I really like the way you used the component to layout your site. In addition to K2 what other component did you use to display the properties details including the gallery? For instance, If I follow your "Properties" menu to "apartments" I see property details and gallery.
It is great site by the way.

Some of my clients would like to use a Category of K2 as blog and also to display property listings. I am reviewing some real estate components as well and I found the good ones are quite pricey. If it is possible to design site like yours without using real estate component, my client would be happy. Please share you thoughts and experiences.
PS: By the way I really like your post with screenshots to show how you designed your site layout.
Tura

Mark Banks said:Hi Enver. The main property menu (top left module) is a standard joomla main menu - not a K2 Tools menu. The K2 categories - make a top level main category 'home', then make the subcategories (apartments, houses etc) children of 'home' - see the screenshot labelled 'categories.png'.
The 'home category' is configured as shown in the last two image attachments.

Hope that helps.
Mark

Hi Tura, thanks for the positive feedback and comments.
The site has gone through a couple of changes since the original post, though K2 2.2 is the primary component for content/property display. It is also going to handle a new location/village category that the client is adding to the site.

Frontpage:
The layout is a YooTheme template, which was adopted over the old Praise Estate theme.
Menu is a Joomla menu, not a K2 category based menu.
Featured Property and Latest Property modules are handled by JBamboo's microblog module.
Slideshow is Jbamboo's slideshow V3 module.
The remainder is all K2 Content Tool module

Property detail pages:
slightly modified K2 pages with
Simple Image Gallery Pro (JoomlaWorks) for the gallery
AllVideos for (future) video files.
Google Maps plugin (k2joom) - (though a small issue with Lat:Long entries having to be reversed)

XMAP for sitemap and full property listing page.

Contact form CK Forms - easy to use AND it plays nicely with Jextend Finder.

Search - handled by Jxtended Finder - which is currently at RC1 stage. Had a few initial issues with it, however support from Rob at Jxtended has been 100% excellent. The Finder component does much, much more than can be seen on the site (it can return indexed results based on natural language, K2 category, k2 items, k2 extra fields (text area/fields), k2 tags, PDF's etc.). We're just waiting for the final stable release to become available before changes are made. The 'search by' menu option is created using pre-defined search filters.

Tried out several other very good K2 compatible add-ons - JezArguo and Praise2 slideshows, client preferred the jbamboo.

Comments for devs...
Still waiting for Front Page Slideshow to be released... is it really 8 months now ;-(
And would REALLY like to see an easy to use TAB system (for client content entry) be made available for content/item pages

AND a new feature for SIG PRO added - the ability to use default captions (i.e. Click Here) UNLESS a custom caption file is found in the gallery folder. Currently, it one or the other which we have found limits flexibility across different categories.

hope that answers your questions,
Regards
Mark




Tura Adam said:Hi Mark, I am evaluating k2 for a few real estate sites I am planning to build for my clients and I really like the way you used the component to layout your site. In addition to K2 what other component did you use to display the properties details including the gallery? For instance, If I follow your "Properties" menu to "apartments" I see property details and gallery. It is great site by the way.

Some of my clients would like to use a Category of K2 as blog and also to display property listings. I am reviewing some real estate components as well and I found the good ones are quite pricey. If it is possible to design site like yours without using real estate component, my client would be happy. Please share you thoughts and experiences.
PS: By the way I really like your post with screenshots to show how you designed your site layout.
Tura

Mark Banks said:Hi Enver. The main property menu (top left module) is a standard joomla main menu - not a K2 Tools menu. The K2 categories - make a top level main category 'home', then make the subcategories (apartments, houses etc) children of 'home' - see the screenshot labelled 'categories.png'. The 'home category' is configured as shown in the last two image attachments.
Hope that helps.
Mark

Hi Mark,
Thank you so much for your detailed responses to my questions. I understand there is no one magic component that does every thing for real estate sites. I am worried that using multiple modules and components will make it difficult for the agents to maintain their sites.

Have you looked at components such as The Thinkery Intellectual Property? I know this component is expensive but it does have most of what real estate agents need under one roof. The challenge is it is becoming difficult to find free or reasonably priced extensions anymore.
cheers
Tura

Mark Banks said:Hi Tura, thanks for the positive feedback and comments. The site has gone through a couple of changes since the original post, though K2 2.2 is the primary component for content/property display. It is also going to handle a new location/village category that the client is adding to the site.

Frontpage:
The layout is a YooTheme template, which was adopted over the old Praise Estate theme.
Menu is a Joomla menu, not a K2 category based menu.
Featured Property and Latest Property modules are handled by JBamboo's microblog module.
Slideshow is Jbamboo's slideshow V3 module.
The remainder is all K2 Content Tool module

Property detail pages:
slightly modified K2 pages with
Simple Image Gallery Pro (JoomlaWorks) for the gallery
AllVideos for (future) video files.
Google Maps plugin (k2joom) - (though a small issue with Lat:Long entries having to be reversed)

XMAP for sitemap and full property listing page.

Contact form CK Forms - easy to use AND it plays nicely with Jextend Finder.

Search - handled by Jxtended Finder - which is currently at RC1 stage. Had a few initial issues with it, however support from Rob at Jxtended has been 100% excellent. The Finder component does much, much more than can be seen on the site (it can return indexed results based on natural language, K2 category, k2 items, k2 extra fields (text area/fields), k2 tags, PDF's etc.). We're just waiting for the final stable release to become available before changes are made. The 'search by' menu option is created using pre-defined search filters.

Tried out several other very good K2 compatible add-ons - JezArguo and Praise2 slideshows, client preferred the jbamboo.

Comments for devs...
Still waiting for Front Page Slideshow to be released... is it really 8 months now ;-(
And would REALLY like to see an easy to use TAB system (for client content entry) be made available for content/item pages

AND a new feature for SIG PRO added - the ability to use default captions (i.e. Click Here) UNLESS a custom caption file is found in the gallery folder. Currently, it one or the other which we have found limits flexibility across different categories.

hope that answers your questions,
Regards
Mark




Tura Adam said:Hi Mark, I am evaluating k2 for a few real estate sites I am planning to build for my clients and I really like the way you used the component to layout your site. In addition to K2 what other component did you use to display the properties details including the gallery? For instance, If I follow your "Properties" menu to "apartments" I see property details and gallery. It is great site by the way.
Some of my clients would like to use a Category of K2 as blog and also to display property listings. I am reviewing some real estate components as well and I found the good ones are quite pricey. If it is possible to design site like yours without using real estate component, my client would be happy. Please share you thoughts and experiences.
PS: By the way I really like your post with screenshots to show how you designed your site layout.
Tura

Mark Banks said:Hi Enver. The main property menu (top left module) is a standard joomla main menu - not a K2 Tools menu. The K2 categories - make a top level main category 'home', then make the subcategories (apartments, houses etc) children of 'home' - see the screenshot labelled 'categories.png'. The 'home category' is configured as shown in the last two image attachments. Hope that helps.
Mark