Been looking for a mod like this for a while, its perfect for my site, so have installed it on my test board to try it out, only issue i have found so far is when i click on add new product it says this feature is not currently in use, had a look through setting, but cant see what i need to change to get this to work ?

not compatible with 4.1.7. any updations?

You'll need to be more specific to get any support.

You need to have configured the default forum option and of course enabled the option to let members post products. Both are in the Product Forums admin options.

sorry wrongly posted here..instead other thread..

Sorted now thanks, I hadnt set the new product forum ID.

Have a few bugs would like to report..
When a member adds a product, it come up with this is an empty post, I have selected the correct forum ID (in this case 105) and give the forum the permissions to able to post to it.
Also I have set the screen new reviews to no, but they still need moderating.

Are you moderating new products? Where do you see this output? Does forum 105 have Product Forums enabled?

Does the forum they are posting the thread to require moderation?

Thanks for this Ted S, this is something I will definitely follow closely.

At the moment its not as developed as I'd like it to be and Ill just wait a few more months till all these features are added before installing it. Certainty won't mind paying up for a premium version of this with all the planned / suggested features. I mean just got custom simple custom coding done and it already cost me a few hundred and i'm sure theres alot of people like me who have been looking for this and will pay good money, if it was something truly stand out.

Suggestions:

I think more attention should be paid to the formatting with pre-defined categories. So for example if we choose "book" category the pre-defined style (you can customise) is chosen. The reviews can have their own custom fields like "readability of book" which you can enter unique to that category. And when the review comes out its automatically formatted such that image size is smaller(than say travel), etc, i mean just provide a template for each new category which we can edit ourselves would be good enough.

Another suggestion would be displaying similar products, having a filtered search system, making use of the tags to find similar products.

Also more attention should be given to people who leave reviews, a "read all reviews" below thier name, option for them to be a top 10 reviewer, average rating of their reviews, how many reviews they gave, etc.

And of course these implemented in the CP so pple can choose to use them or not.

Hope these suggestions help build a even strong product, will check in again soon :)

We don't do premium mods, over the long term it's just not financially practical to support someone for years over a few dollar sale, nor is mods our business model. But thanks for the vote of confidence in the idea!

As far as your suggestions -- great comments all around.

Of course there's always a line between a solid general mod and something specific to a particular site. Category dimensions are great but vary widely and it's just not practical for us to build books vs dvds for a handful of sites when one site will use "readability" as 1/10 and another prefers "page turning" as a yes/no even within the category. Thus we're looking at custom fields that would let you build in what you want.

The same issue is of course true in the mod in general. Putting out a release with a core feature is something we feel benefits the community and us but while we'd like to tweak it into something that really breaks the mold not just for forums [i think even basic structured data does that] but for the ecomm / online research world, there has to be enough use to justify it.

Usage grows over time and we tend to let it mature before going as far as we'd like to make sure what we're doing is indeed useful.

Hi Ted - I must admit, I am struggling with this. I can find the links, but I am not sure which variable I need to add in order for the product name to be added to the URL - using {vb:raw title} for example causes the URL to have a number of spaces in it - which is obviously messy.

I would quite like to do this for the Categories as well, so it would look like mypage.com/category/computers - rather than mypage.com/productforums.php?catid=1

Any help would be much appreciated on this.

Will you be adding the option for custom fields? It's the main thing holding me back from adding hundreds/thousands of products with the bulk upload.

Also, speaking of the bulk upload - do you have any data mapping services you would recommend? It's taking me quite a long time to organise the data in Excel and then format it to the required XML format. I know you mentioned before that CSV upload wasn't an option - but this would be a million times easier.

Finally, I know we spoke before about mass editing - I'm concerned that with all the data being uploaded, it is likely to change on a regular basis - could an option be created whereby if a product is added with a matching SKU to a previous product, then it overwrites the previous fields?

Many thanks for your Mod again.

The script doesn't do this, you'd have to either build it yourself or make a manual mapping through htaccess to trick things.

For example, you can edit the plugin to output a second variable, {vb:raw urltitle} which runs through the php function urlencode() first or which has spaces and special characters removed / converted.

Assuming the mod keeps picking up use, yes, we will be.

CSV is a pain to parse as you're counting by the number of comma separated items, not the element names. That means you still have to build the structure, but if you mess up with a single column or special character, the row is skipped or, as is so often the case, gets brought in incorrectly.

I'm sure there's a tool that can convert out from CSV and over to XML easily.

Right now the XML importer throws away duplicates but we can certainly have it update records instead keying off of a UPC / SKU / title match.

If it had an editor, used the vbulletin editor I'd be all over this.

As far as how it is right now, Its simple and to the point. I like that. When do you think you will add the editor Ted? I'm hanging on a thread here waiting to start using this.

We haven't scoped the next feature release yet to know how much work is involved but given how busy commerce is this time of year, it will likely be a few weeks.

Zeigt mir keine Fotos oder den Verkaufstext an??

Thanks Ted - will give it a shot.

On another note, is there any possibility of expanding the search options to search for all relevant keywords in the description as well? For example, at the moment a user can search by title, but say they were looking for reviews of a particular product type, say Black Television, or Smart phone - and these words aren't included in the title, then they don't appear in the search or filter results - it's not the best user experience.

Additionally, allowing a user to sort reviews by say price, or popularity (views) or # of reviews, or even newest first would also be helpful.

Thanks.

Support is offered in english and english only.

Certainly possible however we'll likely need to move the mod over to a FULLTEXT index to allow for a more sophisticated matching process rather than looking up individual words. We've come up with a weighting system that makes this work better than many are use to with similar searches but it does slow down the speed of the addon and is certainly not a perfect search solution

I just saw your mod and installed it. Something I have been looking for a long time and thank you for putting this together.

I just have a few questions:

• Your mod doesn't create a link to the "productforums.php" page. Correct?
• We have a closed membership forum and "adding an new product" doesn't really need a "approval" from the mods. Can this be turned off?
• I might have understand the instructions wrong but I created a dedicated forum for the "product reviews" and added the id from this forum in the Cpanel. This doesn't mean if somebody posts a new thread in this forum it will be added automatically to your mod. Correct? but users have to go via the link in the "productforums.php" page?

Thanks for any help

Correct. Every site is different so we leave it up to you to decide where you want it to be linked too.



You're the first to ask so it's not a feature option. Making the change however would be simple... If you want the raw code edits let me know.


When you designate a forum as a product-forum area, threads can be created with product data but do not have to be created this way. The new thread button will still trigger normal posting [if enabled at all] while a link to productforums.php start the new product.


Most installs turn off posting in that forum and use the link in productforums.php to startup products since this is not a common task. Reviews are started from within a product thread.

Funktioniert nicht -.-

Support is only provided in English.

Is this not English :))

This is an empty post

Although I write everything into the text only appears url, etc.:

Have you enabled the mod in the forum you are making product posts too?

You're the first to ask so it's not a feature option. Making the change however would be simple... If you want the raw code edits let me know.

Thanks for your quick reply and help to all my questions.

Yes. It would be great if I can have the raw code edits. I can edit the files myself then

Michael

All edits will be to upload/productforums.php function addproduct

Find

Find

Remove it.

Find

Change it to active = 1

That's it.

PERFECT. Worked like a charm.
Thanks so much again for your quick reply and help.

NOMINATED

I need some help, I have a forum with this:

forum id 5 for products
forum id 12 for reviews

in forum id 12, only registered users can view the content.

===============================================

my configuration:

Create New Thread on Review YES
Review Thread Forum ID 12

One review per user NO
Screen New Reviews NO
Minimum Posts to Review 0
Allow Members to Post Products YES

New Product Forum ID 5

---
in forums ID 5 and 12
Enable Product Review Forum Features? YES

===============================================

When I post a review, this review is created in forum id 5, it's not created on 12.
and all users can view this review.

sorry my english.

hi,

my problem is that is posting the title ,but no description! ... "This is an empty post"

thanks

update: forgot to enable it.

tks

you active???
Enable Product Review Forum Features? YES
http://www.*yoursite*.com/admincm/fo...f=*IDFORUM*&s=

works...

thanks

of all, I'm still waiting for the answer to my question. :rolleyes:

Is there an option to make Review an Article in CMS?

Nope

Hi Ted, not sure if it's me tinkering around with the styling, but I'm getting the following with any review posts;

Before Review;
<!-- BEGIN TEMPLATE: prodforums_review_postcontent --> Excellent

After Review;
<!-- END TEMPLATE: prodforums_review_postcontent -->

Any ideas?

Turn off template comments [general options and explained more by more in the install file].

This will not update any review retroactively

Ted, when do you think the vb4 editor will be working with this?

I don't have an ETA on the next update at this point. We're hoping for more interest in the mod to warrant a large update soon but if not we'll continue to make small updates to support those who are using it.

I would like to suggest that :)

I can do what I ask? Please answer to see if what I try to be done or not:confused: