Ted S, I could kiss you for coming up with this! Eagerly awaiting custom ratings categories and then we'll deploy this on one of my "big boards". We need more of what GARS used to offer, with that level of flexibility, given that our users are mostly rating businesses, not products.

Heck, I'll PayPal you $20 right now if you can get that functionality added in the next couple of weeks.

The upgrade is certainly on my to do list but we just launched our main site and that's the focus right now. Hopefully we'll have time to circle back soon.

As for the donation, thanks but I assure you, I don't release mods for the profit :D

Hey Ted...its my first post and I am very new...after reading you last sentence.... I want to hug you!

I've installed this and enabled it and can't for the life of me find the link to add products for review in the acp.

Did you upload the xml files to the right folder?

:D :D :D

could this be used to rate trails, hikes, rock climbs, etc?

Absolutely. You could extend it to bring in fields like difficulty, time, grade, etc to make it more rich but even out of the box you've got something which can easily rate a climb or other outdoor activity.

You're like a beautiful mind.

lol, thanks. Apparently I had two upload folders.

Perfect! Thanks for this!

Is this functioning well with 4.1.7 ?

As marked, this beta mod works with 4.1.x

Hi Ted - many thanks for your mod - it really is great.

I did read that you were looking at a solution to 'bulk' import the products via xml or csv - This would of course be a fantastic addition.

Are you still planning on adding it?

Many Thanks,

Yes. XML imports will be a part of the next release which is turning into a rather large update the more I work on it.

CSV and other text formats will not be used as they become problematic when dealing with descriptions.

Product Forum users [and prospective users]... Very excited to announce the release of 1.1.0 beta -- a significant update to this modification based on member feedback.

New features include...

- New index allows browsing & searching of products
- After creating a review, users can share it to Facebook & Twitter
- Members can post products w/ modifcation & usergroup restrictions

- Review counts are shown on each user's profile page
- Products can now be grouped into categories
- Import product data quickly through XML feeds

And of course a few bug fixes...

- mySQL change to allow for capturing reviews per user
- Improved logic ot hide empty first posts [thanks to Adrian Schneider]
- Support for 4.0 - 4.1 with dual WYSIWYG editors

Given the scope of the update this is definitely a beta. Give it a whirl and let me know if you find any issues or something missing that I can add right in.

As big a change as this is, there's still a few features not included. See post #4 of this thread for what's coming up next.

Note for bigger boards: Upgrading will rebuild the productforums field in the user table. This can take a few minutes

To upgrade -

1- Upload all files again including the includes and xml scripts.
2- Upgrade the plugin file now found in the /do not upload/ folder
3- Review the Product Forums. Many new features require setting choices

WTF!! Take this plugin down it just renamed every post in my entire forums to a review name!

See next post. We've recreated the issue to debug it directly.

However if you are able to explain when exactly this happened it would be very useful as we are not certain when exactly the issue occurs.

From your brief description, presumably you had added one or more products and reviews when this occured...

Do you know what had last been done? Writing a review? Approving a review? Editing a review?

Had you updated from 1.0.4 before this occured or was it a new install?

Did you run any counter updates or other routines on your forum?

I've been able to re-create your issue, clearly reason to take the beta mod offline as we resolve this.

From the looks of it, one of the triggers to make new product threads or replies which runs through a vBulletin core engine is mis-firing and performing a hard update on other threads. Unfortunately on a clean install we are unable to make this happen again despite trying many variations of settings, even removing checks in the mod for validity... Hopefully we will be able to track this down and issue a release in the next few days.

This was a an updated install and I did recover my forums from a 4 day old backup but this happened as soon as I add a product...

CoZmicShReddeR -

Thanks for the additional info. One of our development forums had the same problem but we're not sure when exactly it happened as that site has hundreds of sub-installs... After upgrading did you add products, create reviews or know if any users did?

In short we're trying to understand what triggered the issue to stop it from happening again.

And of course our apologies for any issues your site experienced. Despite the beta label, I realize things can still happen to real sites. If we can help with anything please just let me know.

Can anyone comment how review threads created on this mod look with the vbulletin app, forumrunner or tapatalk? Obviously I know it wont be fully feature compatible, but I'm looking to create a product review website and would like some platform that includes an app or has one available. Maybe wordpress or some other platform would be better for this?

Since the apps are closed development it's not possible to make this mod render posts with the same product block. The solution we've mapped out for the future is to place the key details in the first post of the thread -- which is currently hidden -- and unhide it for mobile but it's not an ideal fit.

For a true review site I would suggest coding your product & review features first and back into a forum integration as needed. Our main site is a product service as well and that's the approach we took.

That is exactly what happened to my forum. Luckily I did backup prior to installing.
I really need this stuff but I am scared to install it again.

Any idea how it looks with the Vbulletin4 mobile style or a low-bandwidth/mobile style mod?

It's not limited to reviews so I do prefer a forum platform. If only I could do my own coding lol! An app isn't essential, but I'm not seeing any other platform that integrates easy website review templates along with a forum and mobile app availability. Hiring a coder seems like the other option.

What happens if you uninstall the mod? Do you just get basic thread with reviews in it?

Finally, who's currently using this in a live site and can you share a public demo link please?

Sforum,

Unfortunately while we've had the issue happen on one test server we can not recreate it on demand... good for meaning it won't happen, bad for making sure. The mod has been pulled as we look into this and will not be reposted until we are certain it is gone... however if you have any information on when this occurred, such as right after an upgrade, durign a review or posting a product that would be very helpful.

Our goal is to confirm the new version and roll this out in stable form to use on live sites.

It depends on how the mobile skin is built. From our side it will look identical to how full sized forums show it as the code will render the same but if the skin does not allow plugins then it would not display at all.

Of course not, because what you're looking for isn't a mass used tool. There's no market to build product review sites with discussion integration. Custom coding is your only real option if you want something with real potential.

As much as vBulletin can be a platform, out of the box a mod is not going to cut it. Sure this will let you have some review threads but it's still premised on forums without most of the features you would need to stand out. Data is by far the biggest challenge for large product focused sites and of course if you want to play in this space you are not the first -- thus you must stand out.

If your goal is less ambitious and you just want a place for niche product discussions I'm sure this mod could be a starting point but you'll likely still need to bring a developer in to match whatever category you are going after.
You get a post with the reviews, but the product content is gone.

The mod is in beta.

If you're up for it and have a test site or don't mind pulling a backup, try uninstalling the previous version and installing the latest one [posted a few replies back]. This would be a significant help for us to track down the bug.

where is the file ? i didn't see

The mod is offline pending debugging.

Well first problem was empty post, just as many others experienced it.
The moment I tried uninstalling, forum went nuts and every single thread and post were renamed as product I tried to post. I can't remember much, I was pannicking and really upset about it. As I said, this mod has great potential and I really need it. Will be checking this thread for updates.

What do you mean by "empty post"?

Same as described in post 60 in this thread:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...=269808&page=4

Thanks again! As long as it displays nicely on Vbulletin's own mobile style in vB4, that would be sufficient. It is a niche site and this plugin might be exactly what I need. Hopefully you are able to get the issue resolved and somone will make public a test site so we can take a look and play with it live. Since I'll essentially be starting from scratch, I may just try it to play with it anyway if you are able to fix the bug and publish it again.

The bug has not been reported in any new installs, nor is there any testing that has been able to duplicate it in such setups. Doesn't mean it's gone but it's perfectly safe to try on a test site.

You can find the files a few posts back.

Either the templates are not applying to each of your styles or there is a bad url. When you install the mod again we can sort that out easy enough.

tagged, and downloaded the files, only waiting for the product.xml

The mod is offline pending bug fixes. As no one can [intentionally] recreate the bug as of yet, there is no ETA on when it will be fixed.

i have read that ;-) currently testings things on my test forum so i wont mind testing it out for you. and do more then my best to recreate the bug's i found if you want?

Absolutely.

To be clear, the bug is not minor -- it involves all thread titles being renamed so you should not be running this on a live forum unless you have a lot of guts, and backups. That's why it still has the beta tag.

In short, we're trying to see if we can make that issue happen somehow. Unfortunately while some users have had that issue, no one on our test team, or who is using the mod has been able to figure out exactly what caused it or when in the process... And we can't force it to happen to stop it from happening.

At this point it seems that only upgrades had the issue but we're still testing to make sure.