Build a Listing Agent Website in 4 Steps

Carson Gibbons
HackerNoon.com
Published in
5 min readJan 2, 2017

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Whether it be for commercial, industrial, residential or mixed-use space, displaying the properties your real estate brokerage represents is a crucial portion of any sales funnel. Not only do you need to have properties listed accurately and promptly online, but mechanisms for customer outreach and lead generation must be put into place to maximize ROI for any bustling brokerage. Today I will be showing you to how to build a simple real estate website that satisfies some common website requirements including dynamic pages, listing management, blog articles, author management, SEO ability, contact form and website search.

The real estate website that I will be using is a content-ready web application from Cosmic JS. It is a multi-page website that is built using Node.js, Bootstrap and Cosmic JS for easy website updates.

I’ll be using Cosmic JS for this example app. Cosmic JS is an API-first CMS that makes managing and building websites and applications faster and more intuitive. By decoupling content from code, Cosmic JS empowers developer flexibility while ensuring content editors can plan and deploy content as it best suits them. We’ll be using Cosmic JS to install our example app, deploy and make content updates moving forward from the cloud-based Content Management Platform.

If you haven’t already, get started by Signing Up for Cosmic JS. Helpful resources are provided below to streamline your development operations.

Real Estate App Page

Real Estate App Demo

Real Estate App Codebase on GitHub

1. Create a New Bucket

Your bucket’s name is the name of your website, project, client or web application that you are building. I named mine “Real Estate Agent” to remain concise for our example blog.

2. Install the Real Estate Agent Application

Once you’ve signed up and named your bucket, you’ll be prompted to start from scratch or “see some apps”. For this blog I simply clicked the right button to “see some apps” so that I could begin the installation process for the Cosmic JS Real Estate Website.

App Installation Options

Cosmic JS gives you the ability to filter between programming languages such as Node.js, PHP, React, AngularJS and more.

Simply click “Install” underneath the Real Estate icon to get started, or visit the Cosmic JS Apps Page.

3. Deploy to Web

I clicked “Deploy to Web”. I can then edit Objects while my web application is deploying. You will receive an email confirming the deployment of your web application. If you encounter any issues during deployment, you may be routed to the Cosmic JS Troubleshooting Page.

Confirm Deploy Location and Branch

Deploy Branch Confirmation Modal

I’m drawing from a repo, my branch is clarified and I have a deployed location that matches my slug / bucket name that I made in Step 1.

Deploy, Deploy Away

A little reassurance that you’ll soon be up, alive and well on the web. :)

4. Edit Global Objects

Now you can edit Global Objects, Files, Users, Media and more. Editing is a dream come true in the Cosmic JS Dashboard. To read more about how Cosmic JS was built with editing content in mind, read Building With the Content Editor in Mind.

App Deployment Confirmation

It’s as easy as signing up, creating a new bucket, installing the web application(s), edit objects and deploy! I get my confirmation email to access my web application and also see my options for bucket upgrades like custom domains, one-click SSL, webhooks and localization.

Cosmic JS is an API-first cloud-based content management platform that makes it easy to manage applications and content. If you have questions about the Cosmic JS API, please reach out to the founders on Twitter or Slack.

Carson Gibbons is the Co-Founder & CMO of Cosmic JS, an API-first Cloud-based Content Management Platform that decouples content from code, allowing devs to build slick apps and websites in any programming language they want.

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Carson Gibbons
HackerNoon.com

Traveler | Podcaster | Director of Sales at Preciate.org Prev: @cosmic_js | carsongibbons.com | IG: @carsongibbons