Hello everybody! I’m looking to start building my first real estate portal that may require me to add a classifieds section where people can pay and post advertisements. I think I will need a CMS to build a full fledged portal. Which CMS do I need to go for? I’m currently learning MySQL and PHP because I have heard it is important to know that stuff before I start working on a CMS. How important do you reckon it is? And which CMS do I go for? I have heard of the big names like Joomla and Drupal. Any suggestions from people that have built portals before would be welcome!
I recommend you use Wordpress and install wordpress real estate theme or plugin. It will help you a lot of do SEO and make everything easier.
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Nothing is better than WordPress considering your requirements.
Download WORDPRESS setup from http://wordpress.org/ or use QUICKINSTALL if your host supports that.
And choose any free theme from https://wordpress.org/themes/ which suits your need.
I hope this helps !
use QUICKINSTALL if your host supports that
Please don’t ever use a quick install on any hosting platform. I’ve rescued too many wp sites that were quick installed. There are so many security holes in quick installs of wp that my 9yo daughter could hack into it in ten minutes. Take the extra 20 minutes and ftp the files and manually connect your database.
Thanks a lot for your answers everybody. I have downloaded wordpress and it looks pretty good at the moment. I have toyed with the real estate plug ins and they look handy. I would like to, however, build everything on my own except the classifieds section. Is there a way to have just one section of your website/portal on wordpress while you build the rest on your own? Any ideas on how I can do that if that is a possibility? I am ok with that section looking a bit different for now as long as the colours are similar.
quite possible.
For e.g. you have 5 pages on HTML/CSS and you want only NEWS section in WORDPRESS.
Then get 5 pages done in HTML/CSS and link NEWS section of header to /news
Now create a folder in your root directory with “news” as name. Install WP in it.
Get 1 wordpress theme created matching header/footer of your static pages.
Now in this setup link top menu as static links in MENU section of WordPress.
That’s it !!!
Okay, that does sound easier than I thought. I’ll get on with my project then! Thanks for your help. Might message you if I hit a roadblock somewhere!
another vote for Wordpress here , there are many plugins and themes that have the functionality you require.
Althought I will also vote for WordPress due to its ease of use, I would also recommend you check out osCommerce. It’s the best ecommerce script out there and it’s free.
wordpress good for it’s feature. But it’s so familiar for attacker.
Start with WordPress and give a chance to Joomla & Drupal
See what fits for you.
the_loserkid, you can use wordpress as multi landing page/theme to solve this issue. A lot of plugin on wordpress community help you do that easy. No code needed here!
If you run professional real estate company I doubt WordPress will do the trick. It is buggy and hard to setup properly. Try Cubescripts real estate demo:
Thanks everyone for your help. Much appreciated.
@Webinsane I am currently trying to code something like that 
Will take me a long time even if I succeed so I may have to just use that. Thanks a ton for that reference.
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Wow. My 9 y.o. son cant hack wp websites. I actually use Softalicious quick install via ASmallOrange. Is it unsafe too? Could you please explain how come that there are security wholes via this method. Appreciate this.
My 3 real estate blogs are all built on wordpress platform. There are some great WP real estate themes out there; do some searching and you’ll find. These themes come with the advanced listing search, allowing users to search properties based on a number of criteria.
You can customize the themes if you want a new unique look for your site.
No problem. Let me know if you have more questions. I am real estate software guru 
You will need a theme with such layout where you can reserve sections for classifieds. You are having the need of a theme/template which should have multiple columns and sidebars to get stuff advertised. You may face difficulty to find such template so I recommend you to get TemplateToaster make yourself such type of theme/template. And also you would not have to hustle with coding if you get this software. Everything would be lot easier for you.
Further, you may choose WordPress for you because this CMS will be easier to you for use. Yeah, Joomla is also good, buy Drupal may take you time to understand it at first.
I am also confused whether to Go with Joomla OR Wordpress. I know Joomla, that’s why developed my site in Joomla. I have designed “52nd Avenue” & have SEO Score of 80 in Seo Site Chekup. But Have issue with Speed.
Please Advice Is wordpress better in term of speed as compared to joomla