Just finished installing HP c/w RentalHive theme. Installed suggested demo content.
Do you have any recommandation to make it a «real estate» Theme?
I’m at the start of a new website so I can even change the theme (i.e. ListingHive) easily.
Thanks,
Luc
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Hi @LuckyLuke,
I’m not HivePress staff - just trying to help in the meantime.
Can you please describe what you feel is lacking in RentalHive to make it more like the ‘real estate’ theme you have in mind?
In general, WordPress themes cover the main design and feel of a website, and, new functions or features are typically added by installing one or more HivePress extensions, or third-party plugins.
If you’re yet to familiarise yourself with the HivePress extensions, you can find them all here:
I hope this helps!
Cheers,
Chris 
Hi @ChrisB
Thanks for you reply.
Rental sets things and price for a certain period of time. As for real estate, it is more like a listing of «things» for final sale, no time schedule involved. Since we’re at an early stage of implementing the website, decisions we make now will be carried over a long period of time. So I was looking for tips or recommandations to make sure we’re on the right track.
We want to build an opened real estate website for brokers and consumers who want to sell their house by themselves. Brokers would have to buy a regsitration before publishing. Consumers would have to create an account before publishing and would have to pay a % according to price of the house.
We expect that consumers won’t be very comfortable with selling their house by themselves.
So we’d like to have a directory so they can choose a broker within the list of brokers according to broker’s reviews and public profile.
A broker could be assigned to a house for sale by a consumer and, therefore, the listing would be transferred to the broker (originally, the consumer would have listed his house by himself). OR the consumer would choose a broker and have the broker list his house.
I hope this clarification will help.
Thanks
Luc
Hi,
I hope you had a lovely weekend. 
Thanks for choosing our products and for providing all the details!
As Chris mentioned, themes are mainly responsible for the design, while the functionality is provided by plugins. In other words, you can think of the theme as the visual foundation of the website, so the choice of theme mainly depends on whether its design fits your project.
Regarding the functionality, you could consider the following approach:
You can create a dedicated Brokers page [e.g., Experts – ExpertHive] that is visible on the frontend [go to WordPress Dashboard > Pages > Add New, give the page any name you prefer, and publish it. The page content can remain empty. Then go to HivePress > Settings > Hosts > Hosts Page and select the page you’ve created] and add it to your header or footer menu [go to Appearance > Menus and add the page to your header or footer menu]. This would allow users to browse available brokers and contact the one who best fits their needs. You could also add a Top Brokers block or something similar to the homepage to highlight selected brokers or simply showcase some of them: How to customize pages - HivePress Help Center.
If you want brokers to have an active plan before they can publish their profiles/listings, you can use the Memberships plugin.
While Memberships doesn’t have a specific option to charge for registration itself, you can achieve a similar flow by restricting profile fields behind a membership plan. For example, brokers could create an account and start filling out their profile, but they would need an active plan for the full profile information to become available to users: How to block vendor fields without active plan | Loom. This can effectively work as a paid broker registration.
If the house purchase is handled directly on your website, you can configure the buyer’s fee or commission in WordPress Dashboard > HivePress > Settings > Users > Buying. You can set either a percentage or a fixed fee, for example, to cover transaction expenses: How to set up commissions - HivePress Help Center.
You can also charge brokers or house owners for sales using WordPress Dashboard > HivePress > Settings > Vendors > Selling, where you can configure the commission or fee applied to vendors.
Additionally, custom commissions and fees can be configured individually on the vendor profile level when needed.
By default, only administrators can change the author of a listing from the WordPress dashboard. However, there are a couple of ways you could structure this workflow.
One option is to have users choose a broker first and communicate with them using the built-in Messages functionality. Once they agree to work together, the broker can create and publish the house listing from their own account.
Another option is to use the free Claim Listings extension. In this flow, the house owner creates the listing first. Once they agree with a broker, the broker can click Claim Listing on the listing page. You, as the site owner, can then review and approve the claim, after which the broker becomes the listing author.
A quick note regarding the strings: you can change or rephrase any of them using the free Loco Translate plugin: How to change any static text - HivePress Help Center, How to translate HivePress - HivePress Help Center.
If you’d like guidance on implementing any of these features, please let me know and I’ll be happy to help!
P.S. You can also check this playlist: How to build a vacation rental website like Airbnb or Booking.com - HivePress Help Center
Thanks for your reply. The weekend was nice with very hot temperature!
I’m familiar with themes and plugins. What got me confused is that I downloaded (imported) demo data after creating my Child theme. Then, I set up French as the first language and used LocoTransate. The thing is that some extensions are not fully translated (or not at all) so some chains have to be translatedI before going any further.
So I started translating some chains to reflect what we’re trying to achieve. And the good thing is that terms (vendors, listings, hosts, etc.) wil be translated exactly to be seamlessly integrated. Once this will be done, it will be easier for us to configure everything else.
Your suggestions are a good start. And the more I «play» with HP, the more I find it was a good choice to achieve what we’re aiming at.
I will certainly write here if I need any guidance.
Luc
I’m glad to hear that HivePress has been useful for you so far.
Thanks for the details.
Most of our free extensions are translated by volunteers into different languages since they are open-source products. However, some strings that come from premium themes or plugins may still require manual translation.
If you have any issues locating a specific string, please don’t hesitate to ask.
The main principle is that strings are usually grouped based on the functionality they belong to. For example, the “Send Message” string can be found under Loco Translate > Plugins > HivePress Messages, and other strings can usually be found in the corresponding plugin or theme translation files.
P.S. Well, the weather this summer is being a bit temperamental 