FW Real Estate – Documentation

The FWRE Saved Searches addon adds a Save Search button to the property search module, allowing visitors to bookmark their current filter criteria and receive email notifications whenever a matching property is published. This brings interested buyers back to your site automatically without any manual follow-up.

How It Works

When a visitor applies filters on the property listing page, the Save Search button appears, letting them store those criteria. Logged-in users save the search directly to their account. Guest visitors are prompted to register or provide an email address before saving.

When a new property is published that matches a saved search, the subscriber is queued for notification. The email is dispatched the next time the cron URL is called — notifications are not sent in real time.

Frontend User Section

Logged-in users can view and delete their saved searches from the frontend User Section. Each saved search is listed with its filter criteria, giving users full control over their active alerts.

Setting Up the Cron Job

Notifications are dispatched only when the following URL is called:

https://your-site.com/index.php?option=com_fwrealestate&task=cron

The exact URL for your site is displayed in Settings → Addons for easy copying. Set up a server cron job to call this URL at your preferred interval. For example, to send notifications daily at 8:00 AM:

0 8 * * * curl -s "https://your-site.com/index.php?option=com_fwrealestate&task=cron" > /dev/null

The cron URL must be called externally via curl or wget — it is not triggered automatically by Joomla's scheduler. If no new matching properties exist since the last run, no email is sent for that subscriber.

Email Template Settings

Email notification templates are configured under Settings → Addons.

• Email subject — the subject line used for all saved search notification emails sent to subscribers.
• Common email template — the HTML body that wraps the full notification email, surrounding all listed properties for that notification.
• Property listing template — the HTML template applied to each individual property entry displayed within the notification email.
• Send emails link — a read-only field showing the cron URL to call when dispatching pending notifications.

To install this addon, open the Add-ons panel inside FW Real Estate. See Getting Started → Add-ons for details on free addons, paid addons, and site verification.