Want to Join the Sutton.com 2.0 Private Beta?

The new year is upon us. What’s in store for 2007? Lose some of the Christmas cheer that has settled around my mid-section. Spend a couple weeks loafing on a Malaysian beach in February and launch the new sutton.com.

The site is scheduled to launch in March. We chose to build it on top of the open source project Drupal with CSS guru Dave Shea developing the design for us. We were fortunate to find two excellent PHP developers that have been working hard to make the new site a reality.

Here are some screen shots of the new sutton.com website…

We’ve been working hard on the 2.0 release and there are several things I’m especially proud of:

1. Clean URLs for everything.
2. New FlexiSite architecture. Sutton is the first Canadian real estate company provide our agents with websites and email addresses. We’ve taken FlexiSites to the next level, providing our agents with a modern tool to build their online identity.
3. New listings system.
4. New agent and office search system.
5. Search engine optimized.
6. Standards compliant HTML and CSS. The site is functional on the major browsers and some not so major ones like the Lynx and the Wii browser.

Until the end of February we’ll be running a private beta of the new website. We would like more eyes to play with the site and help weed out the last bugs. The other motive is to build a community of people interested in contributing feedback and influencing the direction of the site.
We’re starting development of 2.1 which will go into Private beta around the same time that 2.0 is launched. If you’re interested in joining the beta please send an email to: .

In your email please describe who you are, why you are interested in joining the private beta and what you think you can contribute.