PRACTICALREI.COM
Site Objectives
The primary purpose of this site is to aid in building credibility for our organization as a source for real estate investing information and potential investment properties.  It will accomplish this by providing relevant news, general information, and tools related to single family residential real estate investing at a local, regional, and national level.  This credibility will be used to sell information products and offer potential investment properties through the sites and via email.  

Additional site objectives include:
• Adsense Revenue
• Product Sales 
• Link to Investment Properties for Sale
Look & Feel
I would like a professional look and feel to the site.  The user should feel confident that they have found a site that has a wide variety of current and relevant information related single family residential real estate investing.  This should be reinforced through the graphics and images shown on the site.  The site should not look like a “get rich quick” type of real estate investing site.   It should have visual elements of media, finance, and single family real estate.
Model / Examples
This site should be modeled on the following sites:

• www.narei.com 
• www.creonline.com
• www.reiclub.com
• http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/topic/realestateinvestment.aspx
• http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/
• http://www.investorloft.com/ 
Proposed Technology
I would like to explore simply utilizing WordPress (www.wordpress.org) for this site.  I have a hosed server with all the required software installed and functioning.   Wordpress would simply need to be configured per the requirements below and the theme customized with a professional look at feel.  I would be open to a similar solution as long as it fits my server environment and is cost effective.
• Operating Sys:  Linux 
• Apache 2.2.10
• PHP 5.2.8
• MySql:  5.0.85
Site Map / Menus
Main Menu (Top – All Pages)
• Home (PracticalREI.Com)
• REI News
o Inman
o Yahoo Real Estate
o Etc.
• REI Information
o Getting Started
o Financing
o Marketing
o Renting
o Lease Options
o Rehabbing
o Wholesaling
o Retailing
• REI Tools
• Contact Us

Properties Menu (Left Side – All Pages)
• Properties (properties.forsale-byinvestor.com) 
• Get on The List (link to forsale-byinvestor.com)

Products Menu (Left Side – All Pages)
• REI Courses
• REI Books
• REI Software 
• REI e-Books

Home Page
The home page should contain the following:
• Header with Logo
• Menus
• Google Adsense
• Offer to become an Inner Circle Member and receive a Free Report / e-book – User will key a name and email address integrated with my email marketing software.
• Interest Rate Display – Will need to find a acceptable plugin that displays this information
• REISS Event Link – Link to signup for our webinar series (www.reiss.com) 
• Content section that will allow me to post article summaries and allow them to click into a full story 
REI News
The main news page should list a summary of various articles from multiple news feeds and allow the user to click the title to read entire article.   When the user clicks to read the complete article, it should launch a new window.
If a user clicks on a particular news feed, the main page should also provide a list of articles along with a summary from that news feed and allow the user to click into the title to read the entire article in a new window.
I am flexible on the news feeds that are provided but I would like at least 4 feeds from the following list or something similar in nature:
• http://nreionline.com/rss/rss.xml
• http://feeds.nuwireinvestor.com/nuwireinvestor/reinv
• http://www.inman.com/rss
• http://realtytimes.com/
• http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_realestate.rss
• http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/
• http://www.marketwatch.com/real-estate
• http://www.realtor.com/home-finance/real-estate/default.aspx
• http://realestate.yahoo.com/info/news
• http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/
REI Information
These pages will be very similar in appearance to the REI News section but will be articles that I post.   So, I need to have the ability to easily post articles including video articles on relevant real estate investing topics on an ongoing basis.   I will be responsible for selecting the articles going forward.   
Written articles will consist of information both internally written as well as information selected from other sites.  In either case, written information will be added directly to the site.  Each article will contain a title, short summary, and typically 500 to 2000 words of text.  Each article may also have relevant images as well such as a company logo to which the article is based. 
In the case of videos, I will need to include clips of approximately 1 minute to in some cases 30 minute video clips that either I provide or is provided by others.  In most cases I the clips will be stored locally but in other cases, I will just need to link to a video on another site.  Like written articles, these articles will contain a title, short summary and potential text around the video.  
REI Tools
This section will be a single page with a list of tools that the user can download.  The tools are simply Excel spreadsheets that they can use to calculate ROI, an amortization schedule, repair expense template, etc.
Contact Us
Include contact information and the ability to post a question/message to us.  This should also be integrated with our email marketing software.
Properties Menu
These are simply links to other sites.  When selected, they should pop a new window.
Products Menu
These pages initially will indicate that they are under renovation – please check back with us in a few days.
In the near future, they will include a list of products.  The main page for each menu item will contain a list of products with a thumbnail image and description.  If a particular product is selected, it will link to a page with additional information on the product.  If they add to cart, it will link to http://www.kickstartcart.com .  These will be setup over the coming months as agreements are finalized.  

properties.forsale-byinvestor.com

This site is simply a listing site for all properties that we or others that work with us have available for purchase.    The site will only list a small number of properties at a time and will not need searching or other extensive capabilities.  There will be one page per property.  The home page will be a menu page that will list the addresses available along with a thumbnail picture and a short summary of the property.  
I need to be able to easily add property information based on a template and have each property displayed in the same format.  
I would suggest using Joomla for this site and create a site template and custom module for displaying property information.  I am open however to using anything that is cost effective for this purpose.
Look and feel should be similar to practicalrei.com but doesn’t need to be exact.
I will get more specific about the layout of the property pages as we get closer to development.