I don't believe that really there are so many who have stucked on vB3.8 for GARS. I know this mod, actually I've bought it, and I can say that at the time that it has released, it was the best.

In any case, if you're so sure that there are so many boards using it, then bring me 30 of them to pre-order my Reviews AddOn, and I'll do this importer. I think that is a fair proposal. If "you" (in general) don't like to risk buying a new addon, why you expect from me to risk my time to do this bridge and finally see that I'll have only a couple of sales more?
I believe that this is the main reason that none coder risks to do such a bridge.

Chris

That was already in the functionality listing. I do not expect anything from you. Its positive that you are creating a reviews addon. I hope that it will eventually resolve the needs that many have. Including myself. Like with the other developers: we will see how it goes. I'm just keeping the functionality list up to date for anyone who is interested and for when a developer is hired. (If that proves necessary for the needs of myself and others)

But I do know that there are a lot of boards who use GARS. Just check out thevbgeek.com , the thread on adminzone.com or the GARS group on vb.com
Some of us have a very large number of GARS entries. I have 11.000 myself. Without an importer, a reviews addon is useless to those boards.

Hello,

I want to keep you informed on some changes in the features and on the date of the release:

1. Release day rescheduled to Tuesday (2 days later) due to the changes that I did.
2. Even if I had integraded vB threads to work as discussions, finally I removed this feature for the following reasons:
   1. I didn't liked the interface. As the view listing page contents tabs, I found it ugly to have 2 tabs for main listing text and for reviews, and for discussions to have a link to the thread.
   2. By using a seperate (not vb forum table) for keeping discussions, is much easier to:
      1. Build a GARS importer
      2. It will be also easy to move these data to another system and not feel prisoner on vB structure (like GARS from vB3 to vB4).
   3. I used for discussion the Facebook commenting interface, something which is very popular on now days. Maybe it has only 1 sublevel for comments, but I think that is enought.
3. I added more usergroup permissions to help you sell subscriptions. eg:
   1. Can show Address details
   2. Can show Contact details
   3. Can use Google Maps
   4. Maximum concurrent listings
   5. Also a nice permission is "Can has business profile". With this option members on this usergroup (if they want to activate it), will have an extra Tab in their profile with their Business data (including Map), and also other usefull statistics.
4. Also, in categories, I added some more fields to make the system more flexible. As example: You can choose per category if the listings there counts towards to the limit of the concurrent listings or not. ...or... if the Author can vote or not on his listing. I believe that this is useful as it has no sense the author to rate his own products, but from the other side is a must if he is reviewing someone's else product.
5. .... rest are still secrets:)

Chris

A general annoyance my users have with GARS is that a vendor can not be in multiple categories. So I added this functionality to the requested features list.

Chris, that looks promising.

I am looking forward to seeing this I had almost given up and started working on a Joomla version. What about an ability to import category on a fresh install ? I have been working on a dewy decimal style category system that nest categories and cross references related subs.

Hello,

I don't like to play with your dreams and your expectations, but what you'll see tomorrow in my demo, is good (I want to believe) reviews module for vBulletin. It's not a custom work according to the listing that Alpha1 has post. Custom work, means smaller market (unless if you full the system with Yes/No switchers to enable/disable features. Also the custom work costs a lot. I did the custom version for Classifieds, but this costed to my client 25,000 Euros till now.

My Reviews comparing with iReviews (I think that this is the only one that exists for vB4), has more features, better interface (even if design taste is something that varies from user to user), makes extended use of Ajax, and the most important, is coming with 100% visible source code, for those who want to extend it.

Chris

So we can expect something in the next 2 hours? ;)

I'm excited!

no news?

Take your time, I'd much rather stability than something plagued with bugs

interesting. I wondering when the demo will be available as i am interested in this also.

I know that I'm out of time, but this is because I'll add special Ajax plugins, but also to add more features. Pitty that vB's templating system doesn't helps a lot. As long as I can't add PHP in templates, I can't do many things. I have a very nice slider rating, which changes color as long as user moves the slider. Unfortunatelly it can't works with vB. Works, but using only one color as background.

In any case, I started the final step to build the main page. Here is a screenshot showing the top article.

Chris

An importer from GARS should be TOP priority, otherwise is as good as nothing for a very big amount of forums.

Should be available at an extra cost of $25. Please note that this file will be encoded and locked by domain. The same applies to installation file for the main script. Other than this, all the core files are coming with 100% visible source code. I think that this is the best solution as you're having all the files with visible source code to modify them as you want, but from the other side it also protects my intellectual property by preventing multiple installation. Finally the installation files are one time use files.

Chris

--------------- Added [DATE]1325065354[/DATE] at [TIME]1325065354[/TIME] ---------------

Yesterday I spent my whole day installing vB3 and GARS. After lot of tests I realized why nobody wasted his time to build a bridge for it. The approach that Morgan has for rating (because this is the critical point), is, (always in my opinion) totally wrong. It's the first time that I've seen rating scale to be different per question in the same category. Even in different categories is not logic to have different rating scales.

Example: Let's say that you've a category for reviewing Software. In this category you've as rating questions:
- Features
- Design
- Usability
- Support
According to the way that GARS works, you can set Features to has rating 1-10, while in Design 1-5, Usability 1-7 etc etc.

Sure not all scripts are following the same scale. eg vB uses 1-5, iRater (as I seen) uses 1-10, I'm using 1-100 etc etc. But all scripts are using the same scale for all questions in all categories.

So the final point. The importer should works only if you used the default scale (1-5), or any scale (eg 1-10) but SAME for ALL questions, in ALL categories.

PS- There is a point that I haven't tested yet. To change the scale and then rebuild the ratings. If it changes accordinally the rating, should be ok, but you need to do an extra work before transfering data.

Chris

I've added a rating slider based on YUI to my site (for reputation ratings). Its simply a matter of showing a blank star or a colored star on hover. Images come from a sprite. And set the rating on onclick. Or is this not what you mean?

The original script that I'll include in the PHP version is:
http://www.christeris.net/multislider_php/index.php

And a funny version of it is:
http://www.christeris.net/multislider_funny/index.php

The only version that can works with vB is:
http://www.christeris.net/multislider_vb/index.php

Chris

simple is better imho. Stability and fast loading is always best.

I think those are too complex. Why not just add rating stars?

I'm more than happy with stars. If this is too pretty, I will most likely pass on this. I just want a simple, very stable working review section that uses the vb editor.

I don't want pretty. Hope this helps.

Nice! Congrats one the fine work.

Its really nice to see that this thread has so far resulted in one released addon and two forthcoming addons.

Adrian, that looks nice!

Chris, I took a peak at your demo site and this surely looks promising. I like your approach.

I have added another feature to the list:

• Allow for thousands of categories

The reasoning behind this feature is that vbulletin can not have more than 500-1000 forums, as it will cause performance issues and over 1000 - 1500 forums will result in functionality loss due to forum manager limitations.
If a site already has a significant number of forums, then reviews and directories can easily accumulate to 500+
For example: one of my company directories has categories per country & state and therefore has hundreds of categories.
The affiliate network automatic population function, will will allow us to quickly add a mass of entries, for which we will naturally need a mass of categories.

Is planned for a near future to use forums or separate tables.

The overview you have posted is gone.

I hope that you will consider all the features in the functionality list, because the ones that you excluded so far, are the ones that bring in the cash.

The post was deleted.
All features from the list will be implemented.

Added new template for Products and Games.
New template for Real Estate soon.

Wow, sounds like you guys need a CMS built around Reviews with a Forum as a support service. I cannot imagine 1000 forums, even 200! That number seems insane. O few servers running that comes to mind. Am I missing something ? 99.9 % of the people are most likely well under this amount. More like between 50 and 100 seems to be the norm.

Never the less, looking forward to all these new releases!!!

Happy New Year everyone!

I guess you need to state something about a lite version, to be able to discuss this further.

After gold release, a lite version will be released here but did not decide what features to include yet.

New template for Real Estate (you can see custom fields in threadbit)

@ ForumsMods

Whan is the gold Version available?

When all 'in progress' features are finished.
Text = Implemented
Text = In Progress
Text = Not Implemented
Text= Not Implemented (Next tasks to be implemented)

• Reviews should have different sections, so you could for example have sections for movie reviews, restaurant reviews and product reviews.
• permissions per section
• The overview of reviews of each section, should allow for different display options, to be set by the admin.
• A review can be in multiple categories/sections.
• Reviews should have:
• Author ratings, with pretty AJAX stars, bars and other pretty rating scales.
• Member ratings
• Combined rating averages.
• Rating value should have an alt text. For example: if you choose to have ratings with 1 - 5 stars, then hovering over a 5 star rating could state 'excellent', while hovering over a 1 star rating could stat
• Admins should be able to define rating questions and custom fields.
• Custom fields should allow:
  1. fields that work like tags. i.e. clicking on the word 'spaghetti' in a custom field would lead to all restaurants that serve spaghetti.
  2. fields with AJAX autofill functions.
  3. single line text fields
  4. multiple line text fields
  5. mandatory fields
  6. tickbox fields
  7. payment methods icons
• Google maps integration.
• Product video playing inline (youtube, vimeo, etc)
• Amazon.com & other major affiliate network integration (automatically pull prices from Clickbank, Commission Junction and Amazon and add affiliateID to purchase link)
• Automatic population of fields from amazon/other affiliate networks by ISBN or productID: image, product title, author, description, product details(up to weight)
• Allow paid listing trough subscriptions and paid expanded listings. When a user pays for an expanded listing more custom fields become visible. For example: url, extended description, products & prices, offers, photos, Google maps, logo, etc.
• A 'featured' widget that shows x companies. Companies can buy a listing in this widget.
• Allow online and offline payments.
• Allow users to claim listings. (for example: a restaurant owner can claim the listing for his restaurant and buy features for it)
• When users claim listings or when listing owners buy expanded listings, first then let them agree to T&C.
• After the user has agreed to it, also send a notification by email that they have agreed to the T&C.
• Setting to moderate all edits & content posted by listing owners. (to avoid spam & unwanted content)
• Allow users to post feedback to reviewed company. (visible in the listing, but separated from normal comments)
• If the listing is claimed, then send this feedback to the owner. (email/pm) This feature can be bought by the listing owner.
• Permission setting to hide comments to listing owner.
• Permission setting to hide listings not owned by user.
• Ability to compare prices of all vendors that sell product X
• Summary charts for all restaurants that serve Y. i.e. a table that lists those restaurant, with the data from custom fields, as the admin defines.
• Search for restaurants that have specific data in custom fields X, Y and Z.
• Use rich snippetshttps://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/09/3.gif so that Google will show reviews & ratings
• Reviews should be loaded with interactive AJAX/jquery functions.
• CkEditor for users and admin side
• Infractions & moderation tools
• Reputation
• CMS widgets
• New entries & comments in 'What's New'
• Searchable with vb search engine / Sphinx
• Subscribe to entry
• Tags
• Usergroup permissions
• Use of vb attachment system
• vb postbit is shown
• vb avatar is shown
• profiles link to vb profile
• design can be integrated
• GARS importer

And here are some screenshots from me. I'm coding a simple Review AddOn and nothing more. There are no exotic features and will never be. But it has 100% of the features that you'll find in stand alone scripts. My intention is to be simple in use, with a design that will not looks like one more forum, stable, secure, and most important easy in modification. There are comments on every action, and I'm not using any vB functions which (most probably) will be changed to the next vB upgrade.

PS:
1.- As its not clear in the screenshot for Amentities, please note that you can set an unlimited amount of group icons, and assign them to categories. eg Hotels will have different set of icons than Computers etc.
2.- About the Affiliates links that you maybe seen in the permissions. Keep cool. It's not something like in the feature list. Its very simple, but I believe that this is what most users wants. According to usergroup permissions a user can add Links like: Buy it from Amazon at $390 (hand written text) and place the link with his affiliate code. He can add as many links as he wants.

Chris

I'm very impressed to see this going ahead, a good start into 2012.
Happy new year.
@Adrian
A listing of reviews in the user profiles would be a nice addition.

@Chris
When can we expect to see a demo?

Thanks to both for the great work.

The big story is the view article page. When this will complete all others are just copy and paste functions from my Classifieds addon. Not more than 2 days. Admincp is ready, the same the add article page.
See an article at:
http://www.christeris.net/vb4/review...le&articleid=1
The "Comments" tab is also working.
Login and Add Article at (select as category: Hotels-> By the Sea):
http://www.christeris.net/vb4/usercp.php
demouser1 - demopass1
demouser2 - demopass2
demouser3 - demopass3
Please note that I've activated all entries in the add article form. Most of them will be hidden to end user according to his permissions.

Chris

I just saw this today... It's still possible to participate ?

I don't think that still works as "Let's combine funds....". Should be 2 independed addons and you can choose any of them, which mostly meets your requirements.

PS- Registered at Oct 2010, and first post here after 1+ year??;)

Chris

Ok well ... then idea is to wait for them to get ready ?

Are both of these mods going to let users create brand new reviews?

Looks good! Looking forward to the pro version.
Thanks for all your effort bringing this to life.

Thank you Chris, very nice.

how far are from having a version available?

If you see the following page finished after 6-7 hours, then I'll release it during this weekend.
http://www.christeris.net/vb4/review...le&articleid=1

Chris