A Working Wordpress Reviews hCard Micro-Formats Plugin

[morestar]

Good day everyone of WebProWorld and beyond, I'm in real but not so ugent assistance is discovering if anyone has managed to find a great reviews plugin (microformats (http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview-implementations)) for Wordpress or if anyone has managed to hack their Wordpress theme to properly display reviews (for the businesses, hcard), maybe by integrating DG Star Rating or something to that effect.

Problem: I did find a Wordpress plugin for reviews that looked promising called WP Customer Reviews (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-customer-reviews/) but it's broken. The backend enabled me to add the business information and according to the screen shots on their home page, the front-end would have looked beautiful and contain all the micro-formated information that the search engines would need to know it was a review page and which business is getting the raving reviews.

Has anyone managed to hack their Wordpress theme to function like the WP Customer Reviews plugin without using it or maybe via another, free and better plugin?

All your input is appreciated and thank you!

;)

[williamc]

I don't know of any myself, but you might want to PM Optic and ask him. He generally knows everything WP.

[chrisJumbo]

Another site listed this plugin as something they recently used. Not sure if it supports microformats.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-star-rating/

Info came from:
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/successful-facebook-integration-case-study

The above also happens to be a nice case study on traffic from Facebook. :O)

[chowell]

What do you mean it's broken? I actually went back & forth w/ their support yesterday via a support ticket on wordpress.org to get it running properly on my theme. (here's where we have the submission form: http://www.jenkaufman.com/about/testimonials-client-reviews/)

Is there something missing and/or is it "breaking" your site?

Please clarify.

[morestar]

What do you mean it's broken? I actually went back & forth w/ their support yesterday via a support ticket on wordpress.org to get it running properly on my theme. (here's where we have the submission form: http://www.jenkaufman.com/about/testimonials-client-reviews/)

Is there something missing and/or is it "breaking" your site?

Please clarify.

Yes on two websites, two themes, one custom, the other Codium (http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/codium), both on different servers:

a. once installed the main content paragraph styles break on all posts and pages
b. once a review in the review queue is approved, it disappears
c. approved reviews don't display on review page

I did see your site today in my searched and wondered why yours worked and my installed didn't.

On a side note, I noticed the robot detection method "Check this box to confirm you are human." is rather useless - no offence - but robots can select text boxes.

Lastly, as we both know, in the back end workings of the plugin, I can set business information but where does that information come into play in the front end??

Could the problem be the version I'm using? 1.1.3.

[ronniethedodger]

On a side note, I noticed the robot detection method "Check this box to confirm you are human." is rather useless - no offence - but robots can select text boxes.

That plugin, if it is what I am thinking of, displays the checkbox on the client-side and only if the browser supports javascript. It will not show otherwise, and form verification will fail. It is simple and effective.

[morestar]

I updated the wp-customer-reviews help forum (http://wordpress.org/tags/wp-customer-reviews?forum_id=10) with my situation, hopefully we'll get some action...and I'm going to try version 1.1.1 as bompus (the developer) suggests.

[chowell]

Lastly, as we both know, in the back end workings of the plugin, I can set business information but where does that information come into play in the front end??

The business information is hidden on the pages you configured using the plugin. It's in the hCard format so the engines can see/read it, but the visitor doesn't have to. In addition, the reviews show on the designated page you choose.

Hope that helps.

Btw... they went thru 2-3 revision numbers on the plugin yesterday alone troubleshooting my theme's issues (Mystique).

You can see the thread here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wp-customer-reviews-star-ratings-not-selectable-wp-305-version

[chowell]

That plugin, if it is what I am thinking of, displays the checkbox on the client-side and only if the browser supports javascript. It will not show otherwise, and form verification will fail. It is simple and effective.
I didn't know they could do that, but if it's true - what a great feature!

[bompus]

I updated the wp-customer-reviews help forum with my situation, hopefully we'll get some action...and I'm going to try version 1.1.1 as bompus (the developer) suggests.

Hi morestar,

The plugin is now at 1.1.4 and fixes many issues. We went through a few revisions today as well but I think we got all the odd theme and caching plugin issues hammered out and we also include an external stylesheet so you can modify the styles easier if they don't match your theme perfectly.

Let me know how it goes if you try the new version of WP Customer Reviews.

[NJ]

That plugin, if it is what I am thinking of, displays the checkbox on the client-side and only if the browser supports javascript. It will not show otherwise, and form verification will fail. It is simple and effective.

Interesting! Could you elaborate? Client-side means that it doesn't run on the server, which indicates it's in JavaScript. How is that hidden from the bots? Or am I missing a piece of the puzzle?

[morestar]

OK pretty good...WP Customer Reviews seems to work!

Question: are you going to be adding any more functionality and control to the plugin too? I'd like to be able to choose whether or not to display the 'website' field in the review form. Is the form using the comment form code or does the plugin do so?

Also, is the code setup in such a way as to thoroughly and absolutely be translated by the search engines as being a review specifically related to the business within the hCard micro-format code? And do all the ratings on the page get averaged out so the search engines can display the average - with the stars - in the search result snippets - with the number of ratings beside the star snippets?

Here is an example:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5253/5455186930_166c329c86.jpg

Overall so far the plugin seems to be pretty good and I thank you for the work you've all done so far on it. Good job!

So far I think this plugin has the potential to go places - it's the first of it's kind, that pretty much works and is free!

Thanks!

[morestar]

Interesting! Could you elaborate? Client-side means that it doesn't run on the server, which indicates it's in JavaScript. How is that hidden from the bots? Or am I missing a piece of the puzzle?

I'm in the same boat as you NJ. Mompus could you clarify how the "Check this box to confirm you are human" box works?

Thanks...

[morestar]

Oops, I tend to scan certain things a lot more than thoroughly read through them.

I found this in the setup:


This enables the aggregate (rollup) format of all combined reviews. It is recommended to use this on both the Homepage and your review page.

Looks good and you have no idea how much I'll be on it...

[bompus]

You can put your URL in here: google (dot) com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets (homepage or reviews page) and see what the search engines will see. They don't always pick up aggregated reviews, and there is no guarantee, but its valid and they do crawl for them.

"Check this box to confirm you are human" is just one method of anti-spam protection. The plugin actually uses several non-intrusive methods that any "automated" spambot would epically fail on.

More options are coming, such as choosing which fields to show on the form. The only required fields right now (I believe) are the name, email address, and rating.

Keep the suggestions coming. We have big plans for the plugin and really do want it to be the best. We've had a very fast release cycle which we need to slow down, and will spend more time adding functionality and options to the plugin now that most compatibility issues are out of the way.

If you like it, be sure to rate it :)

Thanks!

[morestar]

Oh yes, I'll rate it. I'm going through the plugin right now and making a little layout fixes, I'd LOVE it if you through these edits into your next release, i'll show you what I've done with it shortly - user friendliness - and I also found this error in the CSS:


#wpcr_respond_1, #wpcr_respond_2 { margin:0 !important;; padding:0 !important;; }


I believe the two semi-colons would be an error-ful.

Either way I'll post the link to the page I'm working on shortly.

[morestar]

Alright, so what I thought was that it would be good, for user-friendliness (in my opinion) to have make the text Click here to submit your review. actually open the review box (I'm getting all these ideas) at the top, rather than force the user to jump to the bottom - looks nicer...

I used the Animated Collapsible DIV (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex17/animatedcollapse.htm) to show/hide the review DIV and in wp-customer-reviews.php I moved the review form output to the top...

See here: searcharius reviews (http://www.searcharius.com/searcharius-reviews/) using WP Customer Reviews...

Don't mind the look - it's a testing ground for now...

[morestar]

And so maybe, just maybe, you want to brighten up the look at bit in the next release. Basically the table code containing the fields will validate (we can't hate tables) and the open/close div functionality too!

My concern is that when you release updates I'll have to go in and re-hack the plugin again and again...

[bompus]

That's what you get for customizing :) j/k.. I like the idea of the slide down form.. Easy enough to do since we already include jQuery and its a simple one liner... also one more step against the spambot fight. I really like the table layout, and I'm never against tables when used for what they were made for.

I'm working on it right now actually.. adding in the option of what optional fields to -ask for- and which fields -to show- once approved. Your previously posted CSS fix with the double semicolons, and some cleanups will be included. I don't think it will be released tonight so you can breathe.. I want this version to include the goodies and give me plenty of time to test it out.

- Aaron

[morestar]

I added the following to header.php in order to only display this javascript snippet for the review page.



<?php if (is_page('your post ID')) { ?>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/animatedcollapse.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
animatedcollapse.addDiv('wpcr_respond_2', 'fade=1,height=380px')
animatedcollapse.ontoggle=function($, divobj, state){
}
animatedcollapse.init()
</script>

<?php } ?>


And attached is a zip file of the revised code which isn't much but the change contains:


the form moved to the top of the content area
the form div opens once user clicks on Click here to submit your review.
there is some padding between the review title and the stars underneath it


I can't remove the padding underneath Click here to submit your review and the review titles - maybe you can...

You'll notice on the page I linked to that the dates aren't displaying properly - maybe just in chrome and firefox on my end...

[morestar]

That's what you get for customizing :) j/k.. I like the idea of the slide down form.. Easy enough to do since we already include jQuery and its a simple one liner... also one more step against the spambot fight. I really like the table layout, and I'm never against tables when used for what they were made for.

I'm working on it right now actually.. adding in the option of what optional fields to -ask for- and which fields -to show- once approved. Your previously posted CSS fix with the double semicolons, and some cleanups will be included. I don't think it will be released tonight so you can breathe.. I want this version to include the goodies and give me plenty of time to test it out.

- Aaron

Magnifico...it's time to rest...and thanks Aaron...

[bompus]

Appreciate the share.. It's open source, so feel free to modify it, share it, etc.. I think it stays within the license as long as the original credits are given to the author.. something like that.

Here is the upcoming changelog so far.. feel free to add to it if you can think of anything:

= 1.1.5 =
* Some minor CSS fixes, cleanups, and added some spacing to fields
* Adding options for which fields to ask for (and show) on the reviews page
* Review form is now layed out in tables to make it more appealing
* Review form is now hidden on default, and opens with animation when a user clicks to submit a review
* You may now edit reviews in the admin panel

Time for some rest tonight.. It may take a couple days to complete all of the above and test it out on a few themes.. thanks for the kind words.

[morestar]

Oh! And maybe rather than text that says: Click here to submit your review it could be an input button with an action applied to it (to open the div) so that the button will look nice and slick under than theme...

:)

[morestar]

Appreciate the share.. It's open source, so feel free to modify it, share it, etc.. I think it stays within the license as long as the original credits are given to the author.. something like that.

Here is the upcoming changelog so far.. feel free to add to it if you can think of anything:

= 1.1.5 =
* Some minor CSS fixes, cleanups, and added some spacing to fields
* Adding options for which fields to ask for (and show) on the reviews page
* Review form is now layed out in tables to make it more appealing
* Review form is now hidden on default, and opens with animation when a user clicks to submit a review
* You may now edit reviews in the admin panel

Time for some rest tonight.. It may take a couple days to complete all of the above and test it out on a few themes.. thanks for the kind words.

Yes of course, take your time...and with respect to my link, it wasn't really to share but to send to you so you can look at my edits...I should have just PM'd you...

Once we've got all the niceties into it I'll redirect that link from my site to the actual plugin page on your site...

[morestar]

Oh! And maybe rather than text that says: Click here to submit your review it could be an input button with an action applied to it (to open the div) so that the button will look nice and slick under than theme...

:)

...slick under 'any' theme - not than theme as I wrote above...

[inertia]

skipping to the end here, but if it's still relevant I've used this with some success: http://www.wpreviewengine.com/.

Need to pay tho :(

[morestar]

Ya, I saw that too but I think bompus and his team are going to eventually go in that direction - if we're lucky...

WP Review Engine allows you to setup your blog as a review directory, like Yelp (http://www.yelp.com/san-antonio-tx)...

The best early Happy Holiday gift WP Customer Reviews can give us is the option to have MULTIPLE businesses - I was thinking about this all night...

It'd be great if WP Customer Reviews offered the following in future releases we would be in debt to you:


set option to auto approve reviews
ability to add multiple review pages for multiple businesses
a business submission form for business owners to submit (hCard) information about their business
once the business is approved, a page is automatically created and public and is ready for reviews from the businesses customers


This would make WP Customer Reviews a force to reckon with in the realm of Wordpress plugins that offer customer review capabilities!

I'll help!

[ronniethedodger]

Interesting! Could you elaborate? Client-side means that it doesn't run on the server, which indicates it's in JavaScript. How is that hidden from the bots? Or am I missing a piece of the puzzle?

Yes. It is javascript and gets added via a hook into the commenting core and pre_processing functions. I just went through the code with weegillis to adapt it to Mike's PHP Mailer. There is a companion plugin to handle trackbacks which is equally effective, and the two combined pretty much renders Akismet moot for the most part. I am running both plugins without Akismet or CAPTCHA for testing, and am very happy with the setup so far.

If you want, I can start another thread for this. Don't want to get you guys off track with the rating plugin.

[chowell]

Wow, a lot of great ideas for the plugin within a short timespan... Hope that isn't too overwhelming to the developer and/or doesn't put the plugin into a paid format.

Much thanks to @bompus for all the attention and hard work to help us use it!

[morestar]

Great! There was an update today to WP Customer Reviews.

Now I did go through the changes and they're pretty good.

I did find two issues this morning.


in Firefox and Chrome on a Mac and PC the stars aren't showing in the form
when the user clicks on the button to open the form, if they close the form, the same words remain in the box.


In other words, when the user clicks "hide the form" the words "hide the form" remain as the text value of the button after the form is closed (hidden).

That's all for now and thanks Aaron for your quick changes to the plugin.

[morestar]

Sorry, anyone who wants to see what I'm speaking about in action see here (http://www.searcharius.com/searcharius-reviews/).

[ronniethedodger]

The best early Happy Holiday gift WP Customer Reviews can give us is the option to have MULTIPLE businesses - I was thinking about this all night...


Since WPMU is rolled into wordpress now, how would that apply to having multiple businesses? If each business had their own mini-site, then presumably you could control all reviews from the main installation. I don't know much about WPMU, yet. It seems to me that this would a great feature to anticipate for.

[Optic]

I've been using multisite alot lately. Specifically, finding creative ways to use Thesis with WP 3.0 multisite to control design and functionality globally and on a site by site basis (http://jeffsebring.com/thesis-master-custom-stylesheet-for-wordpress-multisite-networks/).

In order for a plugin to work with multisite correctly there need to be some things taken into consideration, for instance database queries must be written in a way that allow them to work with the added sites that use numbered table prefixes. You used to need to write activation hooks to recurse through each blog, an when new ones are created, but I think this has been fixed with 3.1, which is set to release any second now.

I will be interested to see what kind of results you folks are getting in regards to the hcard stars actually displaying in serps. The last time I looked into this, it was pretty much a crapshoot whether or not they would display.

[ronniethedodger]

I will be interested to see what kind of results you folks are getting in regards to the hcard stars actually displaying in serps. The last time I looked into this, it was pretty much a crapshoot whether or not they would display.

Never thought about this and what triggers them to show before you mentioned it. What is the general consensus on rating stars showing up in a result?

[morestar]

I'm worried not about whether the stars show up. My belief thus far is that as the popularity of the review page increases and actually begins to matter, Google will use them in the rich snippet...BING too!

So I just work into everything Rich Snippet/RDFa (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/95155-Are-You-Working-The-RDFa-Framework-Into-Your-SEO-Campaigns?p=488607&viewfull=1#post488607) and go and let the leaves fall where they may.

:)

[ronniethedodger]

I'm worried not about whether the stars show up. My belief thus far is that as the popularity of the review page increases and actually begins to matter, Google will use them in the rich snippet...BING too!

So I just work into everything Rich Snippet/RDFa (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/95155-Are-You-Working-The-RDFa-Framework-Into-Your-SEO-Campaigns?p=488607&viewfull=1#post488607) and go and let the leaves fall where they may.

:)

I am more of a card player, than a playing in leaves kind of guy myself. So I am with you, gonna play the cards I am dealt! ;)

This will probably be something that sticks in my mind while I scan result pages now. See what is what. Darn Optic for even mentioning it.

[morestar]

OK I added what should be my last requests for this pretty sweet wordpress reviews plugin (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/my-review-of-wp-customer-reviews?replies=1) and just wanted to keep everyone in the loop about it's progress over the past few weeks - they've done well. I'm really hoping they can integrate my suggestions. :)

Has anyone started using or truing it out yet?