Installing and configuring Joomla Estate Agency

Joomla Estate Agency (JEA) is a real estate extension for Joomla. You can manage properties for selling or renting in the frontend or backend. …

PREPARATION
As is true of many extensions, JEA is incompatible with Joomla’s FTP layer. If you are using the FTP layer, disable it. It’s worth noting that the FTP layer really shouldn’t ever be needed. Needing the FTP layer indicates an underlying permissions problem with your Joomla installation, which should be fixed in any case.

If you have a earlier version of JEA already installed, uninstall it. Go to Extensions – Install/Uninstall – Components, select “jea”, and press “Uninstall”. It is not necessary to uninstall JEA’s optional modules.

If you have any Joomla users assigned to group Jea Agent, temporarily reassign them to another group before uninstalling JEA. If you forget to do this, they will disappear from Joomla’s User Manager but will remain in the database, requiring you to manually drop or modify their records directly in the database.

If you have uploaded images associated with property listings, delete or temporarily rename the directory images/com_jea.

INSTALLATION
Download the latest stable release of JEA. There are also optional search and emphasis modules available for download, which when enabled can be placed on your site like any module. The search module is a small property search form. The emphasis module is a “featured properties” item that displays those properties that have the emphasis flag set.

For a multilingual site, download any JEA language pack(s) needed.

Install JEA at Extensions – Install/Uninstall. Click on “Choose” and select com_jea_xxx.zip. Then click on “Upload File & Install”. Repeat this for any language packs or modules desired. I installed JEA 0.9 and Spanish language pack 0.7; I observed no problems despite the version inconsistency.

For a multilingual site using Joomfish, you will have to manually install language tables. To do this:

1. Download com_jea_xxx.zip to your workstation and unzip it to a temporary directory.
2. In Joomla, go to Components – Joomfish – Content Elements and select “Install”.
3. Click on “Choose” and select one of the XML files in the /admin/joomfish directory you just unzipped. Click on “Upload File & Install”. Repeat this for every XML file in the directory.
4. Done. You may delete the files unzipped in step 1.

Consider adding the JEA project feed to your preferred feed reader or Joomla’s control panel, and from there monitor security updates. Be aware, however, that the feed is mostly support forum posts.

ADD JEA TO A JOOMLA MENU
For a site visitor to see JEA, it must appear in a Joomla menu. For this example we will add JEA to the main menu. Go to Menus – Main Menu. In the upper right corner of the viewport, press “New”. Select as your menu item type “Joomla Estate Agency” and within it, “Properties – Properties layout” (for a list of properties) or “Properties – Search layout” (for a search form). Give your menu item a title (e.g. “Search Properties”). The parameters in the right column can be ignored at this stage, given that JEA has not yet been configured. Press “Save”. Check your work, keeping in mind that at this stage it will lead to an empty page given we have not yet added properties to display.

For a multilingual site using Joomfish, translate the new menu item you just created.

SET GLOBAL CONFIGURATION
Go to Components – Joomla Estate Agency – Configuration. Change values as needed. Press “Save”.

SET PROPERTY FEATURES
Go to Components – Joomla Estate Agency – Properties features. In the “Change table” dropdown box, select a table, such as Properties types. Press “New”. In value, add the name of the new property type, such as “Residential”. Press save. Add other values for Properties types and for other tables as needed. You can add as many or as few as you like, but JEA does require at least one value for Properties types.

Default tables available and examples of possible values are:

* Properties types (dropdown box)
E.g. Residential, Commercial
* Properties states (= property condition) (dropdown box)
E.g. Excellent, Good, Poor
* Departments (= province) (dropdown box)
E.g. Copán, Cortes
* Towns (= municipality)
E.g. Santa Rosa, San Pedro Sula
* Areas (=neighborhood or village) (dropdown box)
E.g. Bo. El Carmen, El Rosario
* Advantages (=amenities) (checkbox)
E.g. Parking, pool, maid’s quarters
* Heating types (dropdown box)
E.g. Fireplace, central heat
* Hot water types (dropdown box)
E.g. Electric, gas
* Slogans (dropdown box)
TODO: Figure out what this is for

For a multilingual site using Joomfish, translate the table values you just entered.

To add, rename, or remove tables, you must edit the files:

1. joomla_root/administrator/language/en-GB/en_GB.com_jea.ini
2. joomla_root/language/en-GB/en-GB.com_jea.ini
3. joomla_root/language/en-GB/en-GB.mod_jea_emphasis.ini
4. joomla_root/language/en-GB/en-GB.mod_jea_search.ini

The third file will only be present if you have the emphasis module installed. The fourth file will only be present if you have the search module installed. If you have installed JEA language packs for other languages, then similar files in each installed language must also be edited. For example, for the Spanish equivalent of the files cited above, substitute es-ES for every instance of en-GB.

The renaming of a table will be illustrated by the example of changing “Department” to “Province”. Open one of the above files and find the line “DEPARTMENT=Department”. Change “Department” (the lower case value that follows the equal sign) to “Province” (without quote marks). Search the file for similar references, such as “DEPARTMENTS LIST=Departments list” and change them accordingly. Do the same in the other files. Not all files will have the name you are changing. Save your work and upload to the Joomla server.

TODO: Document adding and removing tables.

CREATE AN AGENT USER IN JOOMLA
For ease of use and security, agents should be issued accounts that allow them to add and modify their listings from the frontend without having permission to enter the backend. Go to Site – User Manager and click on “New”. Fill in details as appropriate, assigning the new user to the group “Jea Agent”. Click on “Save”.

TODO: Decide if it would be good practice to create contact details for each agent (Components – Contacts – Contacts), properly categorized, and linked to the user just created. If so, document this. Perhaps the site admin only needs to fill in the contact’s name and encourage each user to fill in the rest of their details themselves, but I see no way for the user to do this in the front end, and I don’t want to give JEA users access to the back end. Perhaps a user management extension such as Community Builder is the answer?

CREATE MENU ITEMS IN JOOMLA FOR AGENT’S USE
The agent user will need entries in the user menu to add and manage listings. Go to Menus – User Menu and click on “New”. Select Joomla Estate Agency – Manage – Add New Property. I used “Add New Listing” for Title. For Access Level, select “Registered”. Click on “Save”.

Click on “New”. Select Joomla Estate Agency – Manage – Manage Properties Layout. I used “Manage Your Listings” for Title, “manage_listings” for Alias, and in Parameters (Basic) I selected “Selling”. For Access Level, select “Registered”. Click on “Save”.

Order the menu items as desired, probably setting the existing item “Logout” as last.

For a multilingual site using Joomfish, translate the new menu and menu items you just created.

ADD AND EDIT A LISTING AS AGENT USER
TODO: Write this section.

REFERENCES
Demo: front end, back end
Support forum
How to rename tables