Hi guys,

 

I'm looking into the possibility of helping a mate out (an estate agent) by developing a new website for him using wordpress to replace his current static site. At the moment when you click on "properties to let" it takes you to an external website, which is something we don't want.

 

He currently uses an online property management service (LetMC) which allows him to enter each properties' details and it then gets uploaded to rightmove, zoopla etc etc using an XML file generated by LetMC. This is a link to a sample XML file from their website http://portal.letmc.com/PropertySearchService.asmx?WSDL

 

In a nutshell, I need to know how I would go about using this XML file, to automatically create property pages on his own wordpress site once he adds them through his LetMC property management service.

 

I have no experience of using XML prior to this, but have spent the last few hours watching tutorials and reading up on it so am grasping the basic concept of it. It would be great if anyone on here who has had any experience of using some sort of 3rd party feed to dynamically create content within a wordpress set up, could point me in the right direction.

 

Cheers,

 

James

Easiest way would probably be to use XSLT or a PHP parser to translate the source file into WXR (WordPress eXtended RSS) for a custom post type & associated taxonomies, then import that programmatically using a cron job.

 

WXR is, as the name suggests, an extension of RSS, which is XML. Converting one to the other is just a matter of mapping XML nodes.

There's another plugin called feedwordpress (all one word) which will pull in that feed and if set up right can post each individual feed item as a new post on your site. Which is great for your sitemap but a word of warning.

 

If your site relies too heavily on feeds and not enough on fresh user generated content you could get a hit off google after their last algorithm change (called penguin I think).

 

But find a happy medium between the two and its happy days with tonnes of free content..

thanks for this guys

Hi,

 

I know this is a bit late but how did you get on with this project?

 

I'd really appreciate feedback on this

 

Many thanks,

 

G.