Lets combine funds for a Reviews CMS with business/product directory
 

Many people are in need of a Reviews CMS. Those using GARS are stuck on vb3.8 until a vb4 replacement is found.

Lets combine our cash together to have a Reviews CMS created. We will need a qualified developer with a proven track record. As its a big job.

Here is the description of what is needed:

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A review is basically the same as an article, but has custom fields functions, possibility to add predefined questions to those fields and rating functions. The author gives ratings. Users can respond to the review with comments and with ratings. This yields an average user rating. Examples of review software: jreviews, ireviews,

• 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 store like display option.
• Option to choose to only have editor rating functions or only user rating functions or both.
• Optional 'Buy now' button on forumdisplay for affiliate products.
• Navigation treeview menu widget to display categories.
• A review can be in multiple categories/sections.
• Reviews should have:
• Author ratings, with pretty AJAX stars, bars and other pretty rating scales. Author ratings can be turned off.
• Member ratings. Member ratings can be turned off.
• 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
• Images with text wrap and image caption
• Image carousel or another solution to allow a large number of images to be displayed.
• Google maps integration. (show/browse all vendors/hotels/restaurants on a map)
• 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
• Allow for thousands of categories
• Excellent SEO / link structure in pages and navigation

Please mind that anyone who pledges to this project can add functionality requests.

GARS is used by a LOT of boards and it has been abandoned. For example: I have 11.000 reviews in GARS. I know many others that also have thousands of GARS reviews and are stuck on vb3.8 until they can migrate their reviews to a new system. So without a replacement, these boards are stuck on vb 3.8. A reviews CMS seems to be our only hope.

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So who is willing to pledge money to this project?

I'm not sure how much we will need, but it will not be cheap. Its a big project. I'm willing to take up an even share. So if 5 people pledge, then I'll pay 20%.

Basic idea would be to create a company and everyone buys a share. Then the product is sold to everyone out there. Whether everyone makes money or it costs him is up to our luck.

I'm not interested in reselling the product. I just want a good reviews application for my sites and the sites of others that join in.
I do not mind investing in it, as the software will be only available to those who do so.

I can easily use affiliate network functions to earn commission on affiliate products or paid listings functionality to make the money back. Especially as Google rich snippets will make the reviews come up in google maps, google places, etc, so that will drive traffic and advertisers to the site.

I'd be in.

This is much needed. I would like to see where this goes and take part.

I forgot to reply here, of course I am in. We seriously need this.

Same here..

Based on requests from PetertDavis I added/amended the following to to the functionality:

• 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)

I'm in with some three figures.

I would throw in 200$, but as we can see from lack of participation I doubt this attempt will be a success story. Same as my try here.

Not everyone has posted publicly yet, but 7 people so far want to invest. I certainly would not call it a lack of participation. So far people are willing to invest an even share of the costs with a maximum of €300 per person. Would you also want to take part as such?

It would indeed be nice to get more participants, so the cost per person is lower.

Alright, couldn't see that. Would be fine to keep things updated regularly to increase the interest in it. Thanks.

I am intereted in this. We need a project manager to not just organize the wants/needs, but to get the developer lined up and collect from all parties involved. We need to talk about lifecycle for the mod as well. I have automotive industry needs that are slightly different than some of the other industries, but they can be covered with custom fields probably.

Not sure if I will convert to VB 4 yet, but Ill contribute $50 to the project.

I want to help but I've already spend more than I meant to on my board, and I don't really need reviews that badly. The most I could really contribute would be very small- probably about $20. I only mention it because maybe if you find enough people willing to give small contributions it might add up to something substantial.

If anyone has specific wants or needs, then please send me a PM or just post in this thread. If its remotely compatible with this project, then I can add it to the functionality list.

Didn't Adrian say this was going to be in 4.1.x?

Yes, IB did. Then it was retracted. Then stated again. Then retracted. And that was a year ago. There is possibly going to be a custom content type builder in vb at some point. But I very much doubt it will be able to produce an advanced reviews content type. If IB ever gets to it.

I'm in for $250 if it can do a list of reviews using the review fields similar to this...

http://www.brassreview.com/reviews/showcat.php/cat/77

Would be great to see this happen as a native VB type

I'm working backwards here to start a new community so I'm not as cornered as some feature wise. If the features are there to do something like this ( http://www.contractortalk.com/reviews ) then I'd be interested for sure.

Thats the idea.

So where are we at this point? Start looking for a dev?

There are still people joining the initiative. Im currently getting an indication of the cost.
After I have that I will get back to everyone to give a clearer picture of what the cost per person will be. Once everyone agrees with the costs, I will know how many people are part of this project. Then I will open a new thread in the paid requests forum and write up the functionality more extensively.

The new thread will solicit quotes from developers who have created advanced addons before.

i would love to be part of it too, but cant afford too much!!
ive been looking for something like this!!

I would like to join but if IB releases their version in the future, our efforts will be wasted, right?

To build a decent review system it would probally be a few thousands......

Censura.info is not nice out of the box but better than anything a few hundred can create..... slow development, slow support . unfortunately... still better than reviewpost.

Censura has no other integration than login. Their reviews system is completely separate from vbulletin. No integration of profile, avatar, usergroup permissions, moderation, infractions, content discovery or editor.

I would be interested in something like this as well...

This is why I purchased the CMS in the first place I am glad to see I am not alone in expecting it as a feature. My initial launch momentum was ruined by the pre gold release and now I need to do some catch up.
I have the tree structure set up in CMS but importing a database to articles is a problem it is far too much to enter manually. we need a submission form and a paid listing option.
If you look at some of the IB sites you will see they have a vendors submission that is somewhat like a directory for reviews .

The yellow pages mod comes close to what I was looking for but it is buggy and lacks support. I need something that is A+ and will work on a mobile app. I am willing to contribute too.

Edit: never mind.

Ok, I'm still in this game. If you are interested, please turn subscriptions for this.

I AM READY TO START THE PROCESS IN HIRING A CONTRACTOR TO DO THIS ON MY OWN. If you want in on this, then let me know. I have a $3,000 budget for this and I will have it completed inside of 60 days from today as my target delivery date. I am planning to have this slanted heavily towards automotive. 1) Dealer Reviews and 2) Vehicle Year/Make/Model/Trim/Options ... and maybe 3) Parts & Accessories reviews as well.

I will put up project tracking tools on www.stevebluhm.com and I might use eLance.com to handle the contract becuase it just makes things easy and I don't have to worry about the money as they can handle it and we can all be involved on the site with me being in charge though.

I you are interested, let me know via PM and we can get started. Your level of interest in investing in this project will directly relate to the amount of input you will have. (i.e. a $300 participant will have his/her requests taken more seriously than a $20 participant.)

* The other option is that I find a good developer and I will make this a commercial plug-in with a basic free version plus a paid version that will probably run something like $50 per version release, and hopefully I can get 50 or 60 paid versions launched so I can make my money back.

Ok, that's my suggestion - I >REALLY< need this modification, like yesterday, and I can't wait any longer so I have to jump on it myself. If I am running off half-baked, please send me a PM and let me know.

I'm already working in a CMS system, which has nothing to do with vB CMS and vbAdvanced (even if vbAdvanced is a totally different product, and I totally respect what the author did).

Most of you will say that I'm strange person, and really I'm. But I don't plan to explain here the deep reasons, something that maybe will be without sence for most of you. But I believe that I have a great imagination when it comes to coding, and finally my mods are not so buggy, ehh?



Well, here are some features. Keep in mind that I call them articles, but you can call reviews or whatever you want:

1. Homepage, Category listing, Article page:
   1. You can choose from 5 predefinied Layouts or create your own.
   2. Drag and Drop blocks to layout.
   3. Configure each block per page. eg in homepage you may want to show 5 latest articles with thumbs, but for the same block to show 10. etc etc
2. Four (4) types of articles:
   1. Normal Article
   2. Normal Article with Likes/Dislikes
   3. Article with Discussion (thread)
   4. Article with Reviews
3. Different type of rating questions per category
4. ..... many more that I want to keep secret for now as the mod will be ready by the end of July. But, sorry if I disappoint you, but features like external connections (except Google Maps), are not in my plans at least for the first release.
5. Give a look at the screenshoot. Have you seen dragable block which contains tabs? How many tabs is up to you (just check the checkboxes that you want).

Maria

It will be ready in a month from now (even if I plan it for July 31st), and it will costs you 1/20 of your budget
Maria

I love your work.

If you want to start a separate project feel free to do so.
The project in this thread is still advancing. If you want to be part of this and there are particular features that you need in this, then feel free to share them, so I can include them in the list.

Mary, I respect your work and you really did some great mods. However, coding an own CMS does not make sense in that case, at least in my opinion. In our case we just converted from Wordpress to vBulletin CMS and it was hell, the URLs of more than 50.000 articles changed. With vBulletin CMS we at least got the safety to build on a reliable and stable component, which is supported by a whole company. A CMS can be a crucial part of a website.

I would love to see you coding addons for the official CMS though. That would be really great and everyone could stick with the current solution. Just a thought.

It's difficult to explain what exactly I'm doing. But maybe tomorrow I'll post a video in YouTUBE to be more understandable. I'm not actually coding a replacement of vB CMS. Ley's try with an example of my microCLASSIFIEDS. It has the homepage (I repeat, homepage of microCLASSIFIEDS, not vB), it has a page for listing Ads, and finally a page for showing the Ad itsself. You know very well, that even the best design can satisfy all users. Some user don't want xxx block, some others want xxx block but in different position and so on.

This is what I'm doing. All available blocks in a container, from where the user can drag and drop them anywhere he wants. Just I'm not stoping there. Except the microCLASSIFIEDS blocks, should be blocks coming from forums and CMS. An example. Lets say that someone wants to show Latest Threads, Popular Threads, Sticky threads. He can just drag and drop these block to the page (with visual effect... seeing it with data). But he can also drag and drop them in a Tabs container to save space, and make it more attractive.

Last but not least: Static blocs: Video, Audio, Images, Banners, Texts, Navigation menus and many more.

So at last the pages of microCLASSIFIEDS, should be exactly as the user wants to be.

I talked about CMS because the first Mod that I'll use budled with Drag and Drop features should be a multifaced Articles system. Depending on the settings can be Articles, Reviews or anything you like. Even recipes mod.

Maria
PS- Don't confused with the nickname. This is my company's name.

So far I am also interested to help finance the project.

Hi Everyone,

Alfa PMed me about this project, so I would like to offer some information about my background and what I'm working on. It might be a fit for some of you.

For nearly 10 years I ran a successful automotive forum called autopia.org. The new owner has taken it in a different direction, but the original community had a large product review database, product catalogs and how-to articles. I used a combination of GARS, Censura, Price Tapestry and phpMyDirectory to construct my monetized content. I created mashups on the vBAdvanced home page and forum pages to promote reviews, products and vendors. I learned a lot and had excellent income from both sponsors and affiliate sales. The issue was 1.) software support and 2.) maintenance.

Based on my experience, I'm building a CMS called Plugin Pages that works on the idea of catalogs. I'm not using vbCMS to build it because I want portability. My CMS is currently working on vBulletin 3.8 (beta), WordPress 3.x (beta) and vBulletin 4.1.x (alpha).



The primary goals for Plugin Pages are:

1. Generate Revenue for Website Owner
2. Rapid Catalog Development
3. Create Content with Microdata Markup for Google Rich Snippets
4. Import Data from Content Providers
5. Automatic Update of Data Where Possible
6. Smart Cross Promotion Between Catalogs

The base catalog type is a product catalog. I started there because that's where the money is (e.g., promoting products). I have plans to add screens and templates for:

1. Coupon Catalogs
2. Review Catalogs
3. How-to Article Catalogs
4. Video Catalogs
5. Recipe Catalogs
6. Business Listing Catalogs

The Review Catalog will be a special type in that it attaches to other catalog types to create its own catalog. That way any other catalog type you build will instantly have reviews built-in. This has the effect of doubling your catalog pages.

Once I get the core system out of beta I will release an API to allow other developers to build new catalog types, widgets, etc.

I will take the Review CMS features list Alfa created and use it for guidance. If you have any other input, I'm all ears.

Thank you!

Pete

For a better understanding here's a link to the Plugin Pages.
Sounds interesting Pete, so far as I understand it will be not possible for a user to create a new product review when it's not already listed in the catalog?
Is it possible to add all kind of products into the catalog or is all just imported from content providers?
Sorry if asking this, but what's in for you? Because add-ons in this kind of complexity are most paid or kind of Multi-level marketing stuff.
Thanks.