Archive for the ‘Site Development’ Category

The Rentables Spring Technical Update

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Technical Upgrade - therentables.comOver the past few months we have been working hard to tweak our service based on user feedback. Here is a list of changes that have taken place so that the website can serve you better:

  1. Ability for landlords and property managers to post online rental listings with or without an account (using the dual-screen login)
  2. Updated account control panel for landlords and property managers making it easy to manage more than 1 listing
  3. Updated search engine friendly URLs for each post to ensure listings can be found on Google
  4. New footer menu with more relevant links
  5. New “Featured Advantage” page explaining the benefits of featuring your listing
  6. New “Advertise with Us” page to explain our new geo-targeted
  7. New Publisher API allowing other websites to embed The Rentables into their own site to display only their own units, or units meeting any user defined criteria
  8. Bug fixes to take care of compatibility issues or minor annoyances as reported by our users

Thank you for constantly providing us your feedback. We take your suggestions to heart, and work hard to ensure we provide the easiest classified website to use for all of our users.

The Rentables University Edition

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

We’ve developed a new program tailored to the needs of colleges and universities that we’ve dubbed as our “University Edition”. This new campaign allows colleges an easy method of offering our service to their students as an effective method for finding off-campus housing. The following video provides a brief overview of the campaign.

The map based nature of our system is very convenient for finding rentals in a specific geographic area. By adjusting the area shown on the map and zooming in or out, listings are updated in real time. A great application of this feature is for student rentals where finding a location close to campus is very important. As explained in the video, to make it easy for schools to participate, we are offering a vanity URL for each school. This vanity URL will take users directly to the rental listings for the area surrounding each participating campus.

For more details on this new campaign, check out the University Edition page or contact universityedition@therentables.com.

Crossing Borders

Monday, July 20th, 2009

We have an exciting new update this week on the expansion front; we’re now international! After enabling support for the Canadian provinces, we’ve crossed the border and set up shop. Beginning in Ontario, we are looking forward to expanding from coast to coast and serving all of English speaking North America in the coming weeks.

With our North American expansion almost complete, we’ll be working to implement some exciting new features to make the rental browsing experience even better. Property managers will love what we have in store next.

New Feature: Custom RSS Feeds

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

The Rentables finished off June with a bang by completing the development of a great new feature. This feature has been at the top of our list for a while, but with all the demands stemming from our rapid growth to date, it has been hard for our development team to find the time to work on adding “fun” features such as this. We’re finally done, and TheRentables.com now features custom RSS feeds.

What does this mean? It means you can now subscribe to custom RSS feeds based on your personal criteria. Subscribing to custom feeds using your favorite reader will let you see when new units are listed in your selected area which meet your personal criteria.

How does it work? All you have to do is select any combination of filters from the left side of our site while browsing your desired area. The difference is that you’ll now see an RSS icon below the filters list (under the map) which you can click to subscribe to that feed.

For example, if you were looking for a 1 bedroom, 1 bath condo in Boston, MA for less than $1,750 per month, here are the steps you’d follow:

1) Search for “Boston, MA”
2) Move the map and zoom in/out to select the area where you’d like to live
3) Select “Condo” as your building type
4) Select “One Bedroom” as the unit type
5) Select “1″ for the number of bathrooms
6) Slide the end marker on the price slider down to $1,750

At this point you’d now have a list of results meeting your criteria, and an RSS icon to subscribe to this feed. You could then add it to your favorite reader to stay up to date on new listings matching your criteria. Try this powerful new feature when searching for your next rental.

New RSS Feed for TheRentables.com Blog

Friday, June 12th, 2009

When we enabled the first RSS feed on our site, it provided an update as each new listing was posted. This was a great addition, but was more useful to computers than humans.

Today we’ve added a new RSS feed for our human friends to keep you current on our latest blog postings. Add this new feed to your favorite reader and stay up-to-date with the latest news, articles, and features from TheRentables.com: http://www.therentables.com/blogfeed.php

Listing Submission Form Changes

Monday, June 8th, 2009

At TheRentables, we are committed to providing our users with the best quality rental listings. Two of the key components in delivering on this commitment are having real-time listings and complete information on every property. To ensure data for each listing is accurate, our submission form requires specific details on each property before the listing can be submitted. Unlike other listing sites, the street address of each property is required. Having detailed data is important because it allows us to offer features like Google Mapping and Street View so users can find exactly what they’re looking for.

Thanks to some valuable landlord feedback, we have modified our submission form to clearly outline incomplete or incorrect fields. This has eliminated any confusion in the posting process, and made our site easier for property owners and managers to use. We are grateful for feedback which is a great way for us to improve our user experience.

Design Refresh

Monday, May 18th, 2009

The new design for TheRentables.com is now live!

After working hard to develop a best-in-class rental listing website, we wanted to ensure that our site looks as good as it performs.

There are several new elements we’ve incorporated in this design refresh. The end result is a more recognizable feel for TheRentables with consistent styling throughout. Our bold new design captures the attention of our users, and provides a more memorable experience benefiting us all:

  • Property Owners – Attractive styling provides a professional and modern platform to post your rental properties for viewing by prospective tenants
  • Prospective Tenants – Visual cues guide you through the process of filtering, comparing and ultimately finding your next rental
  • TheRentables – The unique and memorable brand helps both landlords and tenants remember our site for their online apartment rental needs

RSS Apartment Rental Newsfeed Added

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

Automation is key, so we’ve added a newsfeed feature to our website. By subscribing to this feed, you’ll receive the latest postings in the New England region as they become available: Apartments in New England Feed.

Soon, we’ll be adding a new feature where you’ll have the ability to subscribe to feeds based on your custom filters. This will let you receive real-time updates as new listings are posted which meet your criteria.

Development Blog

Friday, May 1st, 2009

We’ve been making a great deal of progress over the past few months here at TheRentables.com, and would like to begin sharing some of our development updates with our users.

We’ll post our big ticket development updates here, along with some of the smaller but interesting things we’re working on. You’ll get some insight into where we’ve come from, and perhaps a few hints on where we’re headed.

We are always working to make our website the best. We want to be the easiest, most effective way to find your next rental property, so your feedback is important to us. If you’ve got any ideas on how we can improve, new features you’d like to see, or just want to comment on a recent update, we’d love to hear from you.

Stay tuned for some juicy details right here on TheRentables.com development blog.