Awhile back I wrote a post on how to customize the homepage for the Associate Theme from StudioPress. I’ve got similar questions recently about configuring the AgentPress Theme, so I thought I’d outline how to set up that homepage like the StudioPress demo.
1: Widget Areas on the AgentPress Theme
For starters, let’s talk about the widgets that make up the homepage. There are seven widgets that are only displayed on the homepage with another six that get displayed both on the homepage and on the rest of the site pages (Header Right, Footer Widgets, and Disclaimer).
The image below shows the widgetized areas of the AgentPress homepage (left) and their corresponding widgets in your WordPress dashboard (right).
These widgets are called Legion, for they are many.
2: Plugins Needed to Power the AgentPress Theme
AgentPress is a little confusing at first. In order to set up the home page as seen in the demo, you’ll have to download a couple of extra plugins.
AgentPress Listings
StudioPress created the AgentPress Listings plugin specifically for use with the AgentPress theme. Use it to create YOUR OWN property listings on your site (as opposed to general MLS listings). If you’re a realtor who doesn’t happen to list your own properties, you probably don’t need this plugin.
dsIDXpress IDX Plugin
While this plugin is free to download, it requires a paid subscription from Diverse Solutions. This plugin gives you the ability to add MLS listings to your site (and your visitors to search those listings). There are other IDX plugins for WordPress available, but AgentPress was made to integrate with dsIDXpress. If you want to use another IDX plugin, you’ll just have to do a little customization (instructions for that are outside the scope of this article).
3: Which Plugins Power Which Widgets
Say that 10 times fast!
This is about to get fun. I’m going to knock out the boring easiest widget areas first, which means starting at the bottom of the AgentPress homepage and working our way up.
Disclaimer: Use a Text Widget here to say whatever you want, like “I can’t guarantee there’s not a squatter living in these properties. Call me!”
Footers 1 – 4: You can technically use whatever widgets you want here, but if you want it set up like the demo, here you go:
- Footer 1: IDX Listings Widget
- Footer 2: Genesis Featured Posts Widget
- Footer 3: Genesis User Profile Widget
- Footer 4: Text Widget (Pair it with the Simple Social Icons plugin for some cool social media icons)
Featured Bottom Left: Genesis Featured Posts Widget
Featured Bottom Right: Genesis eNews Extended Widget (this particular widget will be deprecated in Genesis Framework 1.9, so I suggest downloading the pimped out version of the plugin that adds support for a variety of mailing services)
Communities: Don’t let the communities fool ya! These are just good ole WordPress pages. Use one Genesis Featured Page Widget for each community you want to highlight on the home page.
Keep on reading for a treat at the end.
We’re going to bust out the graphics for the top half of the page. This image is from the admin dashboard and shows which widgets belong to which plugins.
And here’s how those widgets correspond to the homepage:
Note that if you’re a rebel and don’t want to start off using the dsIDXpress plugin, you could use the AgentPress Listing Search widget as an alternative in the Property Search spot. This is not a great option (remember that this will only pull back results for property listings that you’ve individually/manually added to the site), but it’s a place to start.
And now for the grand finale
Since you’ve done the hard work to endure this post, I’m going to reward you with a fantastic video of Christmas lights synchronized to Gangnam Style. Enjoy!
Thanks! This was incredibly useful. Figuring out the widget areas was driving me nuts!
Glad to help!
This was a very helpful find! What page attributes doe you need to have in place for all of the widgets to work on the homepage?
Hi Jed, not sure what you mean by page attributes. If you set up the widgets per the tutorial, your home page should work just fine.
What plugin would you recommend to make the theme responsive – is there one?
How could I replace the sidebar and property search at the top with one slideshow like on this website:
http://www.emlyrestifo.com?
THanks!
I suspect at some point down the line StudioPress will release a responsive version of AgentPress. For now it just is – I’d be dubious about a plugin that claims to make a site responsive.
Gee your post is much helpful than the one AgentPress released. However, after following all your stuff here I still could not see why my home page is still blank. Would you help me please? Here is the site I am working on: sklenargroup dot com
Hi there,
It looks like you’ve got the home page back up (or at least it’s not blank). From your WP Dashboard, go to Settings > Reading and make sure you have the option checked to show “latest posts” and not a static page. Otherwise the home.php template won’t be used and your home page won’t look like the demo.
Cheers,
Carrie
Hey thanks yep I just followed what you said I wen to READING and tick on LATEST POST I can now see it. Thanks a ton!
I’d really love to use the Agent Press theme, and this walkthrough made it seem easy to work with, but it also reveals one minor panic. I have a subscription to FlexMLS, not to dsidxpress… it doesn’t specify this on the sales page for the theme, and it’s good to find out before buying, but…
I hear you saying “If you want to use another IDX plugin, you’ll just have to do a little customization (instructions for that are outside the scope of this article).” How much customization are we talking about? I’m not finding ANY explanations, though my google-fu may just be coming up short. Can you share any guidance?
Hi Liz,
Great question! I admin I haven’t used AgentPress with another IDX so I can’t speak to what those customization steps are. My gut is it shouldn’t be too big of a deal, but I can’t say for sure since I haven’t done it!
Have you seen this website: agentpress.com? StudioPress is getting ready to roll out a majorly improved service for real estate agents. If you click through the website, somewhere there is a spot for contact or pre-purchase questions. I think that’s your best place to get some answers.
If you find out some good info, please come back and leave a comment – inquiring minds would like to know.
Thanks,
Carrie
HI, I just created a Real Estate site using AgentPress and FlexMLS. It wasn’t difficult to customize the Property Search field to fit the MLS search box, but it did require a little CSS work. I’m definitely not an expert when it comes to building a website, but after quite a bit of trial and error I got everything to work. I’m not sure about other IDX options, but FlexMLS uses iFrames and I wasn’t thrilled with how the actual FlexMLS search results looked. There is another option though to get a site that looks more like the AgentPress demos… for another $240 annual fee (it’s on top of the regular FlexMLS fee). There is a FlexMLS IDX plugin for WordPress and after using it for a week now, I would highly recommend it. It includes widgets similar to what’s shown above and makes everything very simple. I have found there is not a lot of help on the web for how to use the FlexMLS IDX plugin, but I have been able to figure most things out… again, with a little CSS knowledge and lots of trial and error. I have also called FlexMLS IDX plugin customer service a couple times and everyone is very helpful. Hope this helps!
Hi Solera,
Thanks for sharing your findings!!
Carrie
Great Guide! The layout screenshot was worth it alone.
Hi there, I have a few questions…do you know if there is a way in which we can edit the appearance of the footer horizon? Also, is it possible to remove the taxonomy for ‘Features’ or at least re-order it? Have you ever used hover text with this theme? I am a beginner!!! Thanks!
Hey Carleigh,
You can definitely edit the footer styles via CSS, but that’s advanced customization depending on your comfort level with CSS.
Not sure about the Features bit as I haven’t played with it, but I’m guessing it could be done.
What’s hover text? Like a tool tip or pop-up type thing? Haven’t used it either, but doesn’t mean it can’t be done!
Have you been over to the StudioPress forums? There’s not an AgentPress-specific area, but if you do a search for AgentPress you’ll see other questions posted/answered that might be helpful to you. You can always post your own, too!
Cheers,
Carrie
Do you know how to integrate the IDX to agentpress?
I was playing around with the agentpress theme trying different things to get comfortable with it and now I want to reload the theme and start from scratch.
When I deleted the genesis theme, agentpress theme and all the plugins – then uploaded them again, they saved a few things from before and I’m not getting the original default settings –
Any ideas? I cleared the cache first – didn’t help.
Hey Sheila,
That’s going to be stuff saved in the database, so the cache clear won’t help. If you don’t have ANYthing you need to keep, you could re-install WordPress (not just the files, but the database too).
You probably don’t have to go nuclear though, unless you just want to.
Carrie
Hey carrie,
I am thinking about buying this to list products. Can the custom field type be edited? Can I add more custom fields in the IDX search box?
If neither is possible, know any other theme that can do this?
PS: Awesome article. Thank you!
Regards
Hi Hari,
When you say products, do you mean listings? If it’s actual products and you want to sell online, I’d recommend a shopping cart, not an IDX. Custom fields are part of the WordPress structure and not specific to Genesis, meaning you can add to them and use them with *any* theme. That said, you’d probably need to customize a theme to *display* your custom fields.
Cheers,
Carrie
Awesome tutorial here! I am using this theme to build out an education based site that will feature schools rather than real estate listings. http://www.degreespots.com One question I have is how do we insert images into the slider? Also, I’m not seeing a Genesis Slider widget within my widgets console. Is this a plugin you had to download?
Yup, you’ll need to download the Genesis Responsive Slider plugin.
You saved me from hell. I was trying to make the real estate theme work with another IDX plugin and failing miserably. Thank you
Hi Carrie. Love your site. Really informative. Question please? I see the How much is your home worth widget. I had it but it was deleted by mistake and can’t locate it. Can you point me in the right direction?
Thanks
Thanks Greg! That’s just the Welcome widget area on the home page. There’s no special functionality there – check the AgentPress demo site – you’ll have to set up a form or whatever for users to fill out.
Carrie