SmartBroker Server v6

SmartBroker Server v6 is a big update to the SmartBroker system, and a few things are done differently to previous versions. This page is here to help you with the transition, or to help you find your feet if you’re completely new to SmartBroker.

Highlights

The main changes to SmartBroker are:

• Ability to add, edit or delete and re-order your own specification categories and standard items
• Can now work in any currency – 32 currencies are available by default, but you can always add your own
• Users can change the units used to describe listings – if feet and miles don’t work for you, use metres and kilometres
• View, edit and delete enquiries as required
• Add your own listing status options, including labelling listings: for example, ‘Price reduced’ or ‘Sale agreed’
• Featured listings now receive greater prominence on WordPress sites, and there’s a brand new Featured Listing widget available.
• Setup multiple OpenMarine feeds and specify which have one photo-per-listing, and which feed all the photos

Hints and tips

To help you get the most out of SmartBroker v6, here’s a couple of hints and tips that’ll help:

1 – Main sections

SmartBroker Server v6 is broken up into 4 main sections:

1. Listings – this is where you add, edit and manage your listings
2. Taxonomy – this is where you set-up your currencies, builders, specification categories and the like. It’s worth have a quick flick through this before you create your first listing to check if you’d like to make any changes.
3. Reports – Here you can see the activity log for your SmartBroker server.
4. Settings – Allows you to add new users, set up OpenMarine feeds and alter the configuration of your server. Also the place to go to to export your data.

2 – Server configuration

Server v6 has several new configuration options that allow you to customise your system to suit your business. Head to Settings -> Config to view all the available options.

Most of the options have sensible default values, but check through them and make any changes necessary.

There’s a new section of configuration options based around user messages. These are used both on your site and via the WordPress plugin to set items such as your standard disclaimer and enquiry response messages (previous versions of SmartBroker didn’t share message between the server and WordPress, but now it’s all in one place).

One setting to pay particular attention to is ‘Listing page id’ – this should be the same as the listing page ID in your WordPress plugin, otherwise OpenMarine feeds will contain faulty links to your site.

3 – Reordering items

Unlike previous versions of SmartBroker, the order items are listed in is important in v6 – for example, listings will appear in search results in the order specified under Taxonomy -> Status Options. Similarly, photos and videos will appear on listings in the order they are displayed on your server.

To re-order items, select the Reorder button at the bottom of the table and then drag the rows up and down to suit.

4 – Photo and videos

Handling of photos and videos has changed in v6. There’s no longer any ‘Interior-‘Exterior’-‘Technical’ categories, just one long list. In addition, photos have to be listed as ‘Live’ in order for them to appear online.

Upload handling has been re-vamped and can now handle a wider range of image sizes, and uploads should be quicker.

Single-listing photo exports are now possible, avoiding the massive ZIP file downloads required before.

5 – The WordPress plugin

SmartBroker server v6 requires that you use Plugin v6 (or later). Older plugins will  not work with v6, and the v6 plugin will not work with old SmartBroker servers.

While the essence of the plugin has not changed, you’ll need to do a little re-coding of your WordPress site once you install the updated plugin. For full details, read the Installation instructions for the plugin.