Open-Realty Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use the Open-Realty software with your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account. NEXCESS.NET specializes in hosting realty software and this tutorial is meant to help you quickly setup your site with our web hosting service.

Open-Realty is open source, meaning that you can use and distribute it as you'd like as long as you don't change it.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and are setting up Open-Realty at http://johnsmith.com/or/.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. The first thing to do is to run through the SiteWorx MySQL tutorial and create a database for Open-Realty to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'or' with a user named 'or'. When you do this SiteWorx will prefix the database and user names with some text resembling your domain name.

   With our example domain of 'johnsmith.com' the database name is 'johnsmit_or' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_or'.

2. Download the latest version of Open-Realty from the Open-Realty website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com.

   You should now have a folder on your desktop named 'open-realty115b'. Rename the 'open-realty115b' folder to 'or'.

   Open the 'or' folder and then the 'include' folder. You should see a file named 'common.php'. Open this file in your text editing program. You need to change the values in this file to make the script work with your server. For this example, we'll change the following information:

   • $config['baseurl'] = 'http://www.johnsmith.com/or';
   • $config['basepath'] = '/home/johnsmith.com/html/or';
   • $config['admin_name'] = 'John Smith';
   • $config['admin_email'] = 'johnsmith@johnsmith.com';
   • $db_user = 'johnsmit_or';
   • $db_password = 'mypassword';
   • $db_database = 'johnsmit_or';

   Your screen should look like this:

   

   The other settings in this file can be changed according to your preference. For this example, we'll leave the values set as the defaults. Save and close the 'common.php' file.
3. Upload the 'or' folder to your web hosting account. You can do this using an FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. Once the Open-Realty files and folders are uploaded, you need to change the permissions on a couple folders so the script has access to them. You can do this using the CHMOD command in your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. CHMOD the 'images/listing_photos' and 'images/user_photos' folders to 777.
4. You can now access the configurator. For this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/or/configurator.php'. You should now be on the first page of the configurator. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Click here to begin' link to continue. The script will go through and create all the tables in your database. If you receive any errors, make sure you entered the correct information for your database in the 'common.php' file. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Your installation is now complete. You need to delete the 'configurator.php' file before you can continue. Once the file is deleted, you can access the main Open-Realty page. For this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/or/admin'. You should now be on the login page for the admin control panel. Enter 'admin' as the username and 'password' as the password. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Log in' button to continue. You should now be on the main page of the admin control panel. From here you should first change the default password for the admin account. After that, you can use the admin control panel to manage your Open-Realty system how you see fit. The Open-Realty tutorial is now complete. Your screen should look like this:

   

   For more information on how to use Open-Realty once it's installed, check out the Open-Realty FAQs.

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