Click this link to view a Demonstration created by one of our Wrapper experts.

IDX Broker hosts MLS Listing feeds on a sub-domain hosted by IDX, Inc. This is the most effective way to integrate live MLS Listing data into your website because it ensures that each and every results and details page includes it's own Search meta tags, title, tags etc. There's no need for you to create these pages and optimize them for Search Engines.

Note: If you paid a setup fee, or work with a developer/designer to integrate IDX Broker into your site, this is information that may not be useful or neccessary to you.

If you didn't, or if at some point you plan to become proficient in updating and managing every detail of your IDX pages, please review the information below.

HTML Snapshot Wrapper

The fixed wrapper is a "snapshot" of the HTML of your primary website at the time that the site is integrated. An integrator will often ask that you provide a template page. The navigation and background on that page becomes the navigation for all of your IDX-hosted MLS listing data pages.

Below is an example of a Snapshot Wrapper integration for an example site called GreatPropertyForSale.com.

Notice that the HTML in the Global Header and Global Footer textboxes is PURE html. That means that it's not PHP, ASP, or any of the other development languages commonly used to create dynamic websites. Not that because Javascript is consider a client-side language, you can enter Javascript into the Global Header and Footer textboxes.

For this example, we will scroll down to the bottom of the Header html. This tells us WHERE in the HTML this site's HTML source code was split:

In the case above, the <!-- Split Here --> point was at the beginning of a <TD>. This makes sense. Often the split will need to occur before the main body text. The opening HTML for that body area is often either a <table>, <td>, or <div>. The closing </table>, </td>, </div> can then usually be found at the START of the Footer HTML.

Perfect. So now we know that the opening and closing tags are in the correct place. How did we know? Because when we went to the site GreatPropertyForSale.com and hit CTRL+U in order to view the HTML source, it's clear that all the content we DON'T want on every single page appears between these opening and closing HTML tags. 

What's left?

• Each href URL needs to be Absolute, not Relative. This includes hrefs called by CSS <style>. For example, "/image1.jpg" needs to become "http://www.greatpropertyforsale.com/image1.jpg". According to Google, absolute URLs reflect good SEO practices.
• Remove any Javascript file references that are unnecessary. For instance, if you have a JS file that modifies a form on a page not hosted by IDX Inc, you can remove that file reference because it will reduce the load time of your IDX pages.
  

Live Wrapper

The live wrapper is for advanced developers. This tool is designed to provide a way to host and manage the HTML output to the IDX pages. It also allows you to include php, asp, and other server-side web pages in order to add robust functionality to your IDX pages. Please contact us if you are a developer or have advanced HTML skills and would like to manage your IDX pages with global header and footer include files.