[DEV] Frequently Asked Questions

What was changed?

A new plugin has been installed. Foundry is a property importer plugin with Daft and Acquaint CRM capabilities. Foundry is fully supported long-term, and it receives regular security and feature updates. Foundry works with almost any theme, however it has been built to take advantage of Saturn theme’s features.

Why change the theme?

In order to install the Foundry plugin, I had to switch the theme to a lighter one, called Saturn.

Neve is, indeed, a good theme, but it’s an off-the-shelf theme, and it has too many features.

I was able to replicate the original design 1:1, and improved the page speed and mobile responsiveness. Saturn requires the native block editor, which is part of WordPress. I was able to remove Elementor, Otter Blocks, Responsive Menus and a few other redundant plugins.

Why Saturn?

• Saturn gets regular updates.
• Saturn is not an off-the-shelf theme, but a property theme, optimised for SEO and speed.
• Saturn is lightweight, slim and does not require a page builder, working out-of-the-box with the native WordPress block editor.

How does Foundry work?

Foundry imports properties at regular intervals from Daft or Acquaint CRM. It then creates custom posts in WordPress. Every property is a custom post with specific fields: address, description, type, beds, baths, BER, latitude, longitude and so on. They are searchable, filterable and indexable by Google.

How is Foundry supported by the developer?

• Foundry gets security updates every time WordPress or Chrome/Firefox get an update, and specific features need to be updated (free).
• Foundry gets quality updates based on cumulative customer feedback (free) — e.g. a feature requested by a customer gets pushed across the board, if deemed useful by the developer (for example new property carousels or new single property templates or new property cards).
• Foundry gets bug fixes based on customer feedback (free).
• Foundry gets feature updates based on customer feedback (paid).
• Foundry gets new importers built based on customer needs (paid).
• Foundry gets lifetime updates.

As an example of a quality update, a new single property template has been implemented, based on Byrne Malone’s design.

What are Foundry’s specifications?

Foundry works with WordPress 6.4+ (tested with 6.5), PHP 8.3+ and MySQL 8+.

Foundry has been built specifically for the Irish property market.

What are the next steps?

The single property template requires a quick enquiry form below the agent details, and a few design tweaks.

I also need a few more properties, so I can properly test the property grid, the single property template and the property search.