IDX website

An IDX website puts your MLS board’s live listings — everyone’s, not just yours — on your own domain, searchable under your brand, with every inquiry landing in your database instead of a portal’s. IDX (Internet Data Exchange) is the reciprocity framework that makes that legal; the engineering that makes it real is a board data feed, a sync engine, and compliant display. This is the pillar page for our IDX cluster: what the machinery involves, the Canadian board-by-board reality, and where each deeper guide lives. Our authority here is first-hand and stated plainly — we operate a direct TRREB feed in production as an approved board data vendor, and these pages document how that actually works.

How listing data reaches a website in Canada

Every IDX website you have seen runs on one of three data paths. A direct board feed — the board licenses its data to an approved vendor over RESO Web API infrastructure, the vendor syncs it continuously and renders it under the board’s display rules. This is the fullest data and the freshest cadence, and it is what we run: our TRREB integration polls the board’s RESO Web API feed every 15 minutes, mirrors photos to our own CDN (feed contracts govern image serving), and holds a listing back until it is complete — details, geocoding, photos — so search never shows half-hydrated results. The full board story is TRREB IDX website. Second, CREA’s DDF pool — national coverage through one application, at the cost of a thinner field set and no sold data. Third, widgets and iframes — someone else’s search embedded in your page, cheapest and weakest (the traffic and SEO stay effectively theirs). The three routes are compared decision-style in MLS listings on your website.

We say the quiet part directly: BrokerFold consumes direct board feeds, not DDF. DDF is a legitimate route with real uses; we chose feed depth and freshness over breadth, and our guides tell you when the opposite choice is right.

IDX, VOW, and the sold-data line

IDX covers active listings for public display. The moment sold prices and off-market data enter the conversation, you are in VOW territory — registration walls, terms of use, and a different agreement class. The three-way decision (IDX vs VOW vs DDF) is the most useful single page in this corner of the site: IDX vs VOW. If your market makes sold data valuable — in Ontario it decisively does — the VOW family documents the compliant implementation end to end.

What separates IDX websites in practice

Feature lists converge; four operational facts do not. Board coverage, today — which boards a vendor runs live in production, not on a roadmap (our national landscape guide, IDX websites Canada, leads with this question). Freshness — the sync cadence and what happens between syncs; minutes matter when a hot listing terminates or reprices. Media compliance — photos served from the vendor’s own infrastructure under the feed contract, not hotlinked from board CDNs. Completeness discipline — whether a listing can appear half-loaded. These four are where our first-hand receipts live, and every page in this cluster returns to them.

Where this cluster goes next

This wave extends the cluster along the do-it-yourself axis: what IDX on WordPress actually takes in Canada, the DDF route step by step, TRREB-specific integration reality, and what a DIY stack truly costs to run — each written as a complete how-to first and an honest comparison second. They will index here and from the directory as they publish. Start anywhere; the pillar’s advice is one sentence long: buy the feed and the freshness first, because the search interface is the easy half of an IDX website.