Disclaimer: AlphaBlossom is a recommended developer for Agent Evolution, the company behind the Equity Framework.
For the past four (plus) years I’ve been developing websites exclusively with the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. Over the last two years much of that work has been in the real estate market, still using the Genesis Framework along with real estate child themes from Agent Evolution.
I am a big fan of the Agent Evolution Genesis child themes, so I was very interested when they told me they were working on a new WordPress framework for real estate websites, now known as the Equity Framework.
The New Equity Framework For WordPress, By Agent Evolution
The Equity Framework is a brand new, mobile Responsive framework (think parent theme) that integrates perfectly with IDX Broker, so that your website can do the work it was meant to do…display dynamic real estate listings, allow visitors extensive real estate search capabilities, capture leads and make sales more effectively.
It’s so good that shortly after its debut, Agent Evolution was acquired by IDX Broker. That’s great news for real estate agents, real estate brokers and real estate website developers.
With unprecedented access to IDX research and development, the future looks very bright for Agent Evolution’s Equity Framework.
Equity Framework Review
The Equity Framework is built specifically for real estate websites. Although it’s optimized to work with IDX Broker, you can create a powerful and effective website without an IDX service, or with the IDX service of your choice.
There are currently three child themes available with more on the way. The current child themes are Must See, Move-in Ready and Picture Perfect. If you visit the child theme pages on Agent Evolution’s website, you’ll find links to demos with and without IDX Broker, as well as a link to view the WordPress admin.
Basic Features
- Mobile Responsive – Layout changes to look its best on any screen size or device. Includes “Hamburger” style collapsible mobile navigation/menus
- Custom CSS Panel – Allows you to enter CSS changes into an input box in the admin panel
- Editable Footer – An admin page that allows you to customize the footer using short codes or standard HTML. Includes a Footer Left, Footer Right, and Disclaimer input box
- 3 Standard Layout Options – Full width, Content/Sidebar or Sidebar/Content. The default layout for most pages is Content/Sidebar, but of course this is dependent on the child theme used. Layouts can be selected on a page by page basis in the page admin screen
- Custom Widgets – Includes custom menu, featured page, featured posts and, if using the WP Listings plugin, featured listings widgets
- Icon and Logo Uploader – Upload your logo, favicon and Apple Touch icon through the WordPress customizer
- Shortcodes – Tons of shortcodes allow you to easily insert buttons, social icons, contact info, columns, testimonials, responsive video, Font Awesome icons and more
- Includes Properticons – Properticons are Agent Evolution’s custom vector based real estate icons, included with the Equity Framework
IDX Broker Features – Unlocked when IDX Broker is activated
- “Wrappers” Custom Post Type – Allows you to easily add unlimited wrappers to integrate IDX Broker content into your website seamlessly (see more about this below)
- IDX Broker Custom Styling – IDX Widgets have been styled to match the child theme, ensuring a seamless integration into your website
- Custom IDX Widgets – Horizontal or vertical quick search, property carousel, property showcase, city links, lead login and lead signup widgets all appear in the WordPress admin once you have activated IDX Broker
IDX Wrappers, The Easy Way
One of my favorite new features of the Equity Framework is the built in Wrappers custom post type. There are several ways to integrate IDX Broker into your WordPress site. The recommended way for WordPress is to create a page to display the IDX content, add a bit of code and attach that page URL to the wrapper you’d like to use.
You can create as many wrappers as you’d like and assign different IDX content to them. One wrapper is the Global wrapper, which is the default page to display all IDX content unless another wrapper is specified.
The problem with this method is that your wrappers are WordPress pages. They are mixed up with all of the other pages on your website…until the Equity Framework came along.
Once activated, you’ll notice a new menu item in your WordPress admin called…Wrappers. This is a WordPress custom post type made specifically for wrappers. Very cool! Now you can create wrappers for unlimited pages without intermingling with your standard pages.
You can use the standard WordPress WYSIWYG TinyMCE editor to add whatever content you’d like before your IDX content. You can enter a unique title for each Wrapper, just as you would normally for a page or post.
It makes it very easy to add unlimited wrappers and maintain a very organized page/post/wrapper structure, all separate from each other, as shown in the screenshot below!
If you’re a realtor, agent or developing real estate websites, take a look at the Equity Framework for Real Estate Websites. Take it a step further with the SEO friendly, mobile responsive IDX Broker.
If you’re ready to make a website that gets leads and converts those leads to customers, contact AlphaBlossom to get started. We look forward to partnering with you to develop a Real Estate solution that works for you!
Sign up for IDX Broker and save the $99.00 set up fee!
Hi Tony!
I’m an SEO and I’m in the process of building my fiance a real estate website using Genesis Framework and the “Winning Agent Pro” child theme. Then, I came across “Equity framework” and the Agent Evolution child themes and I’m a little confused on which is the best way to go and was wondering if you could point me in the right direction…Cheers!
@clevelandseoguy:disqus They’re both great frameworks, and typically I use Genesis as my framework of choice.
When it comes to real estate sites, I prefer Equity simply because it’s designed specifically for real estate, and there are some great child themes that you can customize to make your own.
Equity is based heavily on Genesis, so if you’re familiar with Genesis then Equity should be easy to pick up.
If you’re using IDX broker, I think Equity is the best framework to go with. Since IDX Broker’s acquisition of Agent Evolution, the Equity framework integrates IDX Broker very well, and will only get better as time goes by.
So my preference is if it’s a real estate site, I recommend Equity (especially with IDX Broker), and otherwise I recommend Genesis.
I hope that helps!
Hello Tony,
I’m in the process of building a real estate website using Equity Framework and the “Agent Evolution, Move In Ready” child theme. I am trying to add the Yoast Breadcrumb functionality with the code below under move-in-ready child theme, functions.php file.
Code is placed after the function equity_child_home() starts in functions.php file. The problem the breadcrumb result is only getting displayed on Home Page.
<?php
if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
yoast_breadcrumb('
‘,’
‘);
}
add_action( ‘equity_before_content’, ‘yoast_breadcrumb’ );
?>
Please can you help me making this work for other functionalities too.
Thanks in advance!
Hi @himanilotia:disqus, the equity_child_home() function if for the home page only, so your breadcrumbs will show up only on home page if you place it inside of this function.
Take it out of the function and just add the add_action line on it’s own, or if you want it to apply to only certain pages, you will have to us a conditional statement.
Placing it outside of the function in your functions.php file will apply it globally to your site.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for the support!
I tried placing the below code after the function “move_in_ready_idx_carousel”. I am getting the error shown in an image.
add_action( ‘equity_before_content’, ‘yoast_breadcrumb’ );
if( function_exists(‘yoast_breadcrumb’) ){
yoast_breadcrumb(”,”);
}
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cbf319a6ceca96548d98c44f19d0b5b534e59a1c706692ff3272bebbad29903f.png
Also, I do not understand why it is showing only “You are Here: Home” for the rest of the pages too?
Hi @himanilotia:disqus, sorry for the delay, and sorry my first response wasn’t helpful…I replied too quickly.
Replace your code with this:
//* Add Yoast SEO Breadcrumbs before content area
add_action( ‘equity_before_content’, ‘alphablossom_add_yoast_breadcrumbs’ );
function alphablossom_add_yoast_breadcrumbs() {
if ( function_exists(‘yoast_breadcrumb’) ) {
yoast_breadcrumb( ”,” );
}
}
Change “alphablossom” to your own unique prefix and that will add the breadcrumbs to your Equity theme, before the content area.
Let me know if you still have issues, but I just tried this on the Equity site I’m currently developing and it worked as expected.
Hi @alphablossom:disqus , I tried adding the code just before the function equity_child_home starts.
add_action( ‘equity_before_content’, ‘accessrealty_add_yoast_breadcrumbs’ );
function accessrealty_add_yoast_breadcrumbs() {
if(function_exists(‘yoast_breadcrumbs’)) {
yoast_breadcrumb(”,”);
}
}
On doing this, neither there is any error nor output. I don’t know where I might be going wrong.
Please help!
Hi @himanilotia:disqus, not sure why it’s not working for you based on the info I have. One thought…are you sure that you have Breadcrumbs still turned on in your Yoast/WP admin?
If you do, the code above should work. If you’d like to let me look at your entire functions.php file, maybe I can see what’s wrong. You can use https://pastebin.com/ and either past the link here or email me the link at [email protected].
Hi @alphablossom:disqus here is the link of functions.php file https://pastebin.com/TZhz5ecH . I checked the Yoast Breadcrumb Settings is enabled.
Here is the snapshot for the same. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/559fa1e5c60d05c53532f3fa0d1ef9319ac7c63e48bc6f601ab607365257f25b.png
Thank you…everything looks correct so not sure what the issue is. Possibly CSS issue?
Do you have it on staging so I can take a look at the site? I’d like to check the CSS. If that’s not the issue, I’m not sure I can help more without accessing the files on your server. I’d be happy to take a quick look if you’re comfortable with that, but other than that I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be working.
@himanilotia:disqus forgot to mention, have you tried turning on WP Debug, or looking at your error logs to see if there are any clues there?
https://codex.wordpress.org/WP_DEBUG
Hey Tony Eppright , It’s working now. I removed the if statement and it worked like a charm. I don’t know there is something wrong, as I already placed a reply 2-3 days back. Don’t know why my comments aren’t visible.
I will turn on the WP Debug and utilize it in the further Development.
Anyways, Thanks a lot for all the help and constant support. You are Awesome 🙂
Wishing you a very Happy New Year!
Thanks Again 🙂
Hi again @himanilotia:disqus! Thanks for your nice message…so happy to hear you got it working!
Happy New Year to you too! Already off to a great start 🙂
Hi Tony I have the equity framework and Must See real estate theme. I am trying to dequeue the google maps api that comes up on the Home Page so it is not render blocking. I tried to add the following code to the Home Page mark up and widgets are of my functions php file wp_dequeue_script( ‘google-maps.js’, ‘//maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js’, 100 ); but no effect. The code being added to the home page by a plugin is What am I missing? thanks
Hey @brett_cairns:disqus , maybe try adding this to your functions.php file:
add_action( ‘wp_print_scripts’, ‘myprefix_dequeue_script’, 100 );
function myprefix_dequeue_script(){
wp_dequeue_script( ‘googlemaps3’ );
}
Always backup your site first and make sure you have ftp/sftp access in case something breaks. It’s hard to say for sure, but hopefully this will work for you.
HI Tony will this dequeue the script from the entire site or just the home page. I need it on the rest of the site as is but want to dequeue it on the home page. thanks
You can add a conditional statement to check for the front page (home):
add_action( ‘wp_print_scripts’, ‘myprefix_dequeue_script’, 100 );
function myprefix_dequeue_script(){
if( is_front_page() ) {
wp_dequeue_script( ‘googlemaps3’ );
}
}
Thanks very much for you help Tony. I tried this and it did not work which made no sense. I subsequently discovered that the google maps insert was not being made by the IDX but by Ubermenu which has a default setting for google maps checked. Once unchecked problem solved. Who would have thought a menu would add google maps by default?
Hi @brett_cairns:disqus, yes very strange that Uber Menu includes that by default. Makes sense, you have to match the handle for the script you’re trying to remove, so it wasn’t working…but glad you got it sorted! Have a great weekend.
This is the enqueue function used by the IDX wp_enqueue_script(‘googlemaps3’, $mapsAPI, array(‘jquery’), false, true);