Using iProperty for Product Listings, not R.E

Hi there,

I think the design and features of iProperty are second to none. We use a Joomla component called EZAutos (which is an offshoot of EZRealty) to power our Product Listings and search on our Boat website. The search is pretty poor and the component does not seem to be keeping up with our needs.

We wanted to automate the way we do things, and as we feed our stock to another larger Boat listing website, I had a scraper made that could take down all the info and photos and store them on my server. Now I want to use all that info and have it write into a ready made DB that has something like iProperty attached to it.

While I imagine I can get by editing Language Files to modify the fields and label I want to use, I am more concerned about the images and category structure.

1. Images
My scraper gets all the images and stores the filename in the DB. There are no thumbnails created but each image is only about 40kb. Will I be able to work with iProperty and link up the images without thumbnails? Do I have to use thumbnails? If so, can I just say each thumbnail is the orginal pic (will be bad for page load but Im not worried)?

2. Categories
The info we get from the site stores the Categories as the Name from the website.
Ie. New Boats, New Motors
How does the structure of iProperty Listings Table have the category name used against the listing or is it a number or reference to a Category table? I think I could have the scriupt changed to use numbers instead of Category name, its just a bit more work.

3. Search Modules
Can you have the 2x smae search modules installed but each with different options? Or is what set in the Settings Global across all Search modules installed? Also, in Advanced Search, can the map be removed so there are just sliders etc.

4. Makes and Models
I was thinking of using the City and Street fields for my Product Make and Model. Obviously no mapping will work but would this affect anything else majorly inside the component?

Finally, as I would be doing alot of modification to lots of files to make this work on my site, I am sure it will be worth it but it will be impossible to upgrade. If this all sounds possible, should I be doing this now or waiting a month for 1.5.4 to come out of Beta and use that.

I guess I am just worried about spending the money and then having a component that is really going to be too hard to work with, and I will have nowhere to use it. I know it will involve alot of work but I am hoping that when it is done, I can just import a new Products Table with all my listings and the website will be up to date.

Any advice or feedback you could give me would be great. I'd really apprieciate it.

Finally, if anyone would be happy enough to send me a copy of their iProperty MySQL DB or just a sample one - it would really help to be able to see how everything works together before I splash out and purchase. PM for email. Thanks