• Posted by Svetlana
• in Latest news
• December 28, 2011

We are excited to announce a new release of FW Real Estate Pro 1.7.3!

If you have a real estate portal based on Joomla CMS now you can charge agents for adding properties and earn money with our property component! This great feature and some minor bug fixes have been inlcuded in this new version.

If you are really impatient for a new version and would like to download it right away, please make sure that you are logged into our site and go to My Downloads where the new update is awaiting you!

However we offer you to take a quick look at a short review of the new Membership feature before updating. It can be quite helpful for you. Please take a look at this short How-to-use guide with illustrating screen shots:

A) Where to find Membership

A new section with icon can be viewed now in the component drop-down menu.

To get to Membership, just click on this icon and you will be able to create your subscription plans (or membership levels).

B) How to switch on/off Membership

If you are ready to use a new subscription system, please make sure that it is enabled and is set to "Yes" in Configuration of the component.

Also, do not forget to put your PayPal email, where the money must be transferred. A currency code (USD) and not a sign ($) must be put into the field "PayPal currency" as it is shown on a screen shot. Please keep it in mind!

C) How to create a Membership level

Clicking on Membership menu item you can click on New button and create a new Level or Plan of subscription. You can see the following list of options there:

* Name of the plan/level - write how you want to name your plan/level
* Published/Not published - enable or disable it
* Price and Prolongation price - enter the first and prolongation price that your agent must pay
* Properties quantity - enter the number of properties allowed to be added according to this plan/level
* Featured properties quantity - enter the number of featured properties allowed to be added according to this plan/level
* Unit and units quantity - select a duration unit (day, month or year) from a drop-down list for your plan/level and put its number.

You can create as many subscription plans or membership levels as you want.

D) How does it look in the back-end?

Once you have created your subscription plans, you can view the list of them in the back-end. You get the following information right from the table with the list of levels:

* Name,
* Price,
* Prolongation price,
* Properties quantity,
* Featured quantity,
* Term
* Order and Status (published/not published)

E) How to subscribe agents from the back-end?

You can let your agents pay for membership through front-end management OR do it yourself manually via your site Joomla Administration.

To make your agent subscribed to any of subscription plans available on your portal, please go to Agents and open agent's profile.

There you can see new fields like "Level" and "The end date". Please select the level from drop-down list and choose the end date if it differs from the date set in the level.

Thus, your agent is subscribed and now can log into your web site and add his property listings. You can also prolong the date of subscription manually the same way.

When viewing the whole agents list, you can see what agents are subscribed and what are not as well as end dates of their subscriptions.

F) How do agents subscribe via front-end management?

When new agents register and log into front-end management to add their properties, the component won't allow them to create their listings without paying for subscription. Agents will see a notification about their Subscription.

If they move forward and click on Subscribe button, they will see a table with all subscription plans available on your site. Pressing Subscribe button, agents will be forwarded to PayPal page for making payment.

Once the payment is made, agent can add their properties according to the terms of chosen subscription plan.

We have also made the following fixes:

• Inquiry email bugs with the fields phone and ID # have been fixed
• Front-end management design has been improved

We would appreciate it if you could report any bugs you will find! Please also do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding new feature included in the version 1.7.3.

We wish you a very Happy New Year!

Sincerely yours,

Fastw3b team.